Zompist Bboard Again

Nánuvai is the primary language of the Tehemne people, spoken in the northeastern region of the main island of Níhi in the Eresian archipelago.

Some quick phonological notes, more or less copypasted from my old thread:

Nasals: /m n ŋ/ ⟨m n nh⟩
Stops/affricates: /p ᵐb t d k q~ʔ/ ⟨p b t d k q⟩
Fricatives: /(f) v ɬ̪ s ʐ ʃ x ɣ/ ⟨f v lh s r sh h/x g⟩
Approximants: /l j w/ ⟨l y w⟩
Short vowels: /ɪ æ ʌ ʊ/ ⟨i e a u⟩
Long vowels: /iː eː ɒː uː/ ⟨í é á ú⟩
Diphthongs: /ʊ͡ɐ e͡ɐ æ͡ɪ æ͡ʊ ɒ͡ɪ ɒ͡ʊ/ ⟨ua ea ei eu ai au⟩
/ʐ/ is [ɽ] intervocalically, and after other fricatives.
⟨h⟩ is the default orthography for /x/; ⟨x⟩ is used after ⟨n l s t⟩ to disambiguate digraphs from clusters, because I have silly preferences about orthography. There is no ⟨th⟩ digraph, but ⟨tx⟩ is used to prevent readers from treating this sequence as /θ/.

Both /f/ and /q/ are marginal phonemes that really only appear in loanwords.

Stress is weight-based and roughly initial or antepenultimate. I will be expanding on this, as well as phonotactics, in much greater depth soon.

This has been bumping around in my head for many years now and I want to actually develop it into a proper respectable conlang. I especially have some ideas for how Nánuvai treats location that I hope are intriguing, which I will share extremely soon.

I've long been intrigued by the idea of having location feature prominently in the grammar. I am certain nobody remembers any details of South Eresian but it features prominently a verbal applicative voice that promoted the context (especially location, though not exclusively) of the verb to the subject position:

South Eresian does some of this when using the locative voice:

mó jáxraha tépena
mó jaxr-@ha tépena
all burn-LOC.V city
The city burned (all burned in the city)

tláxaha cuá na huehuéla
tláx-@ha <kw-á na ~-wéla
rain-LOC.V LOC-PRO INDIR PL-woman
It rained (there) upon the women.

Cuá cannot be omitted because it marks there is a pronominal locative argument.

Nánuvai and South Eresian are unrelated, however, in-world, Nánuvai and Acranasian (from which SE is descended) had heavy contact and it constitutes a very prominent substrate in South Eresian. I want to bring location to be a much deeper and more pervasive element.

One particular idea I have is to mark expected vs unexpected location via verbal voice. After all, places carry an expectation of what kinds of actions are usually engaged in there; if you are in a farmfield, you are likely farming, if you are in the kitchen you are likely cooking. Something like this, though this is very simplified and will certainly not be the actual form these things take:

núr in ushta ruag
sleep LOC house woman
The woman sleeps in the house

pesetam in sánag ruag
plant.seeds LOC field woman
The woman plants seeds in the field

núrai ruag lu sánag
sleep-3SG woman DISSONANT.LOCATION field
The woman sleeps in the field

Forgive me for gaps in terminology or analysis here; it's been a long time since I really conlanged, and a longer time since my linguistics degree, and I fear the rust is showing.

South Eresian's orthography has an awfully Hispanospheric feel to it. Is ⟨x⟩ /ʃ/ in it?

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Jun 23, 2026 9:04 am South Eresian's orthography has an awfully Hispanospheric feel to it. Is ⟨x⟩ /ʃ/ in it?

It is! This is something I went with a super long time ago and I just stuck with it. Notably ⟨j⟩ is /x/, which totally gives that away. :p

Risla wrote: ↑Mon Jun 22, 2026 8:28 pm I've long been intrigued by the idea of having location feature prominently in the grammar.

In that case, may I repost these publications:

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Feb 16, 2025 7:56 pm Firstly, Ameka & Levinson’s The typology and semantics of locative predicates: posturals, positionals, and other beasts. (This is actually the Introduction to a Special issue of Linguistics, all of which is extremely interesting.) I particularly like the typology presented on pp863–864 as an overview of the possibilities.

Then there’s ed. Levinson & Wilkins’s Grammars of Space: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. This is a rather long book but with lots of detail on individual languages — each chapter is very interesting. (This is, IIRC, the book which first developed the typology discussed in the previous reference.)

I think you’d love the latter book in particular — it’s long, but has no shortage of absolutely fascinating tidbits on locatives and related matters.

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jun 23, 2026 4:37 pm

Risla wrote: ↑Mon Jun 22, 2026 8:28 pm I've long been intrigued by the idea of having location feature prominently in the grammar.

In that case, may I repost these publications:

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Feb 16, 2025 7:56 pm Firstly, Ameka & Levinson’s The typology and semantics of locative predicates: posturals, positionals, and other beasts. (This is actually the Introduction to a Special issue of Linguistics, all of which is extremely interesting.) I particularly like the typology presented on pp863–864 as an overview of the possibilities.

Then there’s ed. Levinson & Wilkins’s Grammars of Space: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. This is a rather long book but with lots of detail on individual languages — each chapter is very interesting. (This is, IIRC, the book which first developed the typology discussed in the previous reference.)

I think you’d love the latter book in particular — it’s long, but has no shortage of absolutely fascinating tidbits on locatives and related matters.

I really appreciate this, thank you so much!

Cool

I noticed there's an agreement suffix, only for the dissonant location. Plus VOS became VSO. Is that an oversimplification like you said, or is it representative of the actual forms?

It's kinda like split ergativity, if I squint my eyes. And instead of ergativity it's uhhhhhh locativity or something. And instead of alignment it's just the verb markings entirely.

chelsea wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2026 4:30 am Cool

I noticed there's an agreement suffix, only for the dissonant location. Plus VOS became VSO. Is that an oversimplification like you said, or is it representative of the actual forms?

It's kinda like split ergativity, if I squint my eyes. And instead of ergativity it's uhhhhhh locativity or something. And instead of alignment it's just the verb markings entirely.

Both of these are intentional. Dissonant (maybe I can call it dislocative?) voice triggers subject marking, while consonant (...conlocative?) voice takes the location as the subject and is zero-marked. My Malagasy background may be showing with apparent unmarked VOS and marked VSO word order.

Some other random ideas I'm considering:

Maybe I'll have separate lexical items for common things that can be either place or object (ie "I sat in the house" and "I built a house" would feature different words for house), and some derivational morphology for less common things.

Verbs of motion: I think they should be broadly satellite-framed, as this seems consistent with the concept of locative dissonance/consonance: the way you move through a forest (eg hike) is different from the way you move down a paved road (walk, run). Vocabulary here might get quite granular.

It seems like there's a natural split between location as the context of an event vs movement through space with respect to a place. I'm still full of muddled thoughts on how to approach this. Something I definitely want to do is deictic affixes to express whether a place is near or far (again, probably taking a page out of Malagasy's book here, because Malagasy's system is ridiculous). A fragmented example I found in an old notebook:

aushenilanhde
ausheni-la-nh-de
Ausheninh-DIST-CLS-ALL
to far Ausheninh

Risla wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2026 7:49 am My Malagasy background

Oh?

Maybe I'll have separate lexical items for common things that can be either place or object (ie "I sat in the house" and "I built a house" would feature different words for house)

I’m reminded of French’s ‘place of’ preposition: ‘at home’ is chez moi, which can be used only as a preposition and not as an object. (Though not the other way round, of course: I’m pretty sure you can say dans la maison.)

It seems like there's a natural split between location as the context of an event vs movement through space with respect to a place. I'm still full of muddled thoughts on how to approach this.

The book I linked earlier talks a lot about this, as ‘topology’ vs ‘motion’ (plus a third subdomain, ‘frame of reference’ — basically position relative to something else, like ‘in front of’ or ‘ten metres north of’). It’s hard for me to suggest anything more specific without knowing something more about your thinking as to approach…

Something I definitely want to do is deictic affixes to express whether a place is near or far

I’m wondering now how this would interact with the ‘collocative/dislocative’ marking. If there’s any kind of agreement, the cross-cutting patterns could get interesting.

Risla wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2026 7:49 am Maybe I'll have separate lexical items for common things that can be either place or object (ie "I sat in the house" and "I built a house" would feature different words for house), and some derivational morphology for less common things.

Aha, so you can distinguish between "I built a house" and "I built in the house"?

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2026 8:59 am

Risla wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2026 7:49 am My Malagasy background

Oh?

It was my Field Methods language back in university. Again, absolutely wildly rusty, but I did study it intensively for a year! It's a truly fascinating and bizarre language and is worth looking into. I should refamiliarize myself with it.

Maybe I'll have separate lexical items for common things that can be either place or object (ie "I sat in the house" and "I built a house" would feature different words for house)

I’m reminded of French’s ‘place of’ preposition: ‘at home’ is chez moi, which can be used only as a preposition and not as an object. (Though not the other way round, of course: I’m pretty sure you can say dans la maison.)

I can see it. I drew my influence for this particular idea from Ojibwe, much further afield but which I also have a background in (yet more so than in Malagasy), which can have totally unrelated verbs for the same action depending on verb type, such as "eat" (wiisini (VAI) vs miijin (VTI) vs amo (VTA)). I've already noticed you've looked into Ojibwe already so I don't think I need to expand on this further!

It seems like there's a natural split between location as the context of an event vs movement through space with respect to a place. I'm still full of muddled thoughts on how to approach this.

The book I linked earlier talks a lot about this, as ‘topology’ vs ‘motion’ (plus a third subdomain, ‘frame of reference’ — basically position relative to something else, like ‘in front of’ or ‘ten metres north of’). It’s hard for me to suggest anything more specific without knowing something more about your thinking as to approach…

Afraid I haven't read the 600 page book yet

This third subdomain seems like I could have it pattern more closely with VoMs. But I'm still wildly indecisive about what I'm doing here and should probably sit down and start working it out.

Something I definitely want to do is deictic affixes to express whether a place is near or far

I’m wondering now how this would interact with the ‘collocative/dislocative’ marking. If there’s any kind of agreement, the cross-cutting patterns could get interesting.

I'm thinking about having some giant mess of a system that conflates, to some degree, distance with tense with evidentiality. After all, if you know about a distal event, it must be in the past, and the longer the distance the further into the past. The knowledge is also likely to be less direct, though not necessarily.

Malagasy influence is quite clear here. Malagasy has a prefix t- that occurs on adverbs of place to indicate tense (I am simplifying, of course. This seems like a decent summary of what's actually going on here )

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2026 1:04 pm

Risla wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2026 7:49 am Maybe I'll have separate lexical items for common things that can be either place or object (ie "I sat in the house" and "I built a house" would feature different words for house), and some derivational morphology for less common things.

Aha, so you can distinguish between "I built a house" and "I built in the house"?

Oh yes, these would be very distinct from each other, also not least because you're very likely to build a house in an expected location to build a house, but are unlikely to engage in construction work while inside the house!

Risla wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2026 5:03 pm I drew my influence for this particular idea from Ojibwe, much further afield but which I also have a background in (yet more so than in Malagasy), which can have totally unrelated verbs for the same action depending on verb type, such as "eat" (wiisini (VAI) vs miijin (VTI) vs amo (VTA)). I've already noticed you've looked into Ojibwe already so I don't think I need to expand on this further!

A little bit, but not sufficiently to remember what all the Algonquianist acronyms mean… could you elaborate please?

Afraid I haven't read the 600 page book yet

Tsk, tsk, tsk…

I'm thinking about having some giant mess of a system that conflates, to some degree, distance with tense with evidentiality.

Wonderful!

Malagasy influence is quite clear here. Malagasy has a prefix t- that occurs on adverbs of place to indicate tense (I am simplifying, of course. This seems like a decent summary of what's actually going on here )

I’ll have to have a look, thanks!

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2026 6:37 pm

Risla wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2026 5:03 pm I drew my influence for this particular idea from Ojibwe, much further afield but which I also have a background in (yet more so than in Malagasy), which can have totally unrelated verbs for the same action depending on verb type, such as "eat" (wiisini (VAI) vs miijin (VTI) vs amo (VTA)). I've already noticed you've looked into Ojibwe already so I don't think I need to expand on this further!

A little bit, but not sufficiently to remember what all the Algonquianist acronyms mean… could you elaborate please?

VAI = intransitive verb with an animate subject
VTI = transitive verb with an inanimate object
VTA = transitive verb with an animate object

Animacy is very hard to predict (my favorite is that rocks are animate in Ojibwe, and that strawberries are inanimate but raspberries are animate) but the animacy distinction is extremely pervasive throughout the grammar in a way I hadn't realized noun classes could be until I studied the language.

---

A couple definite random historical sound changes from Old Nánuvai in no particular order:
/Nb/ → /ᵐb/ (this is why nasal + stop sequences are allowed for the other stops but don't appear here. /ᵐb/ also doesn't appear initially)
/b/ → /v/
/æː/ → /e͡ɐ/
/oː/ → /ʊ͡ɐ/

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2026 6:37 pm A little bit, but not sufficiently to remember what all the Algonquianist acronyms mean… could you elaborate please?

Here are some Blackfoot examples

tsá anistápssí-waatsiksi?
what be(AI)-sg.nonaffirm
What is it?

"it" is a non-human animate entity, whereas it is inanimate here:

tsá anistápíi-waatsiksi?
what be(II)-sg.nonaffirm
What is it?

From Blackfoot Grammar, 3rd ed, Donald G. Frantz.

nonaffirm refers to "non-affirmative endings," a class of suffixes that forms questions. These can also take different forms depending on the animacy. -waistsaawa is for inanimate plural objects:

áaks-owatóó-'p-aistsaawa?[1]
fut-eat(TI)-theme(21)-ip.nonaffirm
Will we eat them?

The stem for eat is Iowatoo[2] whereas the AI version of eat is ooyi.

Sorry it's not Ojibwe, I don't feel like digging through that 1000-page Nishnaabemwin grammar for examples lolololokbye

[1] The -w disappeared since semivowels disappear word-initially and after consonants, except the glottal stop.

[2] The capital I (eye) is a "breaking I" which means it causes a preceding k to become ks. The future prefix is prototypically yáak which became yáaks. Usually the breaking I just reduces to normal i, but i-absorption activated in this case: i -> ∅ / s_{a,o}.

Thanks both!