Iberian West Germanic / Kastixex – WIP

Kastixex /kas’tiʃeʃ/ from “Castilish” from Old Spanish Castiella This new project is based on an alt-history in which a group of mostly Old English speakers ended up on the Iberian peninsula and then their language underwent sound changes similar to those that led to the development of Spanish and Galician. I would imagine that there …

Yet another change to Denkurian mood formation

I decided to make a 2×2 system of verb stems and personal endings to form the four fundamental moods of Denkurian. The verb stems are called direct and indirect, whereas the personal ending sets are called primary and secondary. The various combinations yield moods thusly: direct + primary = indicative mooddirect + secondary = imperative …

Changes to the optative mood

I changed the formation of the optative mood to make it more internally consistent. The optative is based on historical formant *-ka, which is attached to the present subjunctive form. The past optative is formed by adding the past formant *-u to it, forming *-ko, and the irrealis formant *-i, is added to the present …

New Post, New Conlang

It’s been a long time since a blog post. My main conlang now is Denkurian, a mostly IE-inspired a priori conlang.  You can find some more info in the navigation bar above.  Here below are some new words I recently coined: godathi v. to become. irr. pst. godot.laukhethi v.  to need.nehimain adv. please. (from future …

Verb Classes

I modified Shonkasika’s verb paradigm a bit. I made the aorist (a sort of gnomic and present habitual) and the past habitual members of a full-fledged habitual/gnomic aspect, bringing the total to four: simple(unspecified), habitual, perfect, prospective. The habitual will have two possible regular formations: the most common and currently productive way is a suffix …

Synthetic Progressive Form

I changed Shonkasika’s progressive form from a periphrasis (an adverbial participle + a be-verb) to a synthetic form. Unlike the other verb inflections, which are suffixes, this one is a prefix: je- before consonants and jey- before vowels. This prefix can occur alongside just about any tense-aspect-mood form, although it is most common with the present, past, and perfect …

New Minor Noun Declensions

I created a couple of minor declensions for Shonkasika nouns. Instead of forming its indefinite dual in –bre and its indefinite dual in –bi like most animate nouns, a few animates form them in –ndre and –ni respectively: thoges, thogendres, thogenis ox, two oxen, oxenhiros, hirondres, hironis chicken, two chickens, chickenspodis, podindres, podinis child, two …

Irregular verbs revisted

In an effort to create some justified ‘regular’ irregularity, I’ve been working on Shonkasika’s older, non-productive way of forming the future tense. Shonkasika used to form a ‘hypothetic/potential’ verb form by ablaut of the final vowel in the verb stem before the personal endings. Over time, this form was reinterpreted as a future form. An …

Personal Pronouns now have duals, too!

I added dual forms to the personal pronouns of Shonkasikas. Most add -bre to the plural stem to form the dual. The 3rd person inanimate pronouns take -ri. This pattern mimics nouns. I believe other pronouns and determiners will also have dual forms. Adjectives and verbs do not have dual forms. Dual nouns and pronouns …