amiu - "linguist"

[pauraque_bk]

For ellen_fremedon:



ammíiuaú naý nrúl "I know language"

X-SAMPA (ignoring tone): [ {m:iIU{u n{1 nr\ul ]

Since Ellen does indeed know language, I'm going to get a little denser with my explanations on this one, so bear with me.

ammíiuaú "that which is spoken"

The root verb here is mí "to speak deliberately". m- and -i indicate no actor and no target, respectively. a- and -u together form a circumfix indicating a restrictive, object-head relative clause. mí doesn't have an object in this sentence, so the whole clause is understood to be a nominal formation -- such is the fate of the Headless Relative in Amíu. (If you're guessing that the word "Amíu" itself is a form of this clause, you're right.) -aú is the first person marker; our new noun is now assigned the first person.

naý "knowledge; understanding"

'Understanding' is classed with the emotions, so its written form gets the emotional determinative, the nose. The phonetic is /nai/ "tree". (I have to admit this is a pun on my part -- tree of knowledge.)

nrúl "I have it"

This is the main verb. The root is rúl "to have deliberately". n- indicates a second-person actor (the speaker, in this case). The zero suffix indicates a first person target -- it must be ammíiu. The only word left is naý; it is the object of nrúl.

So, in the most literal terms, we're saying "I deliberately have knowledge directed at that which is deliberately spoken". But a much better translation would be "I know language" or "I'm a linguist"!

As always, I'm open to requests for icons, examples, explanations, anything. Next up will be "tracing mansions" for spican.

Edited to correct my X-SAMPA.

Comments

[spican.livejournal.com]

"I deliberately have knowledge directed at that which is deliberately spoken"

I love "deliberately have knowledge"--what a cool distinction! Have you borrowed that from any language you know?

And whee, I'm up next! :)

Re:

[pauraque]

I can't think of any language that uses the distinction in quite that way, so it may well be an invention of my own. The limited verb system was the original "conlang bunny" for Amiu, so the deliberate/nondeliberate distinction was one of the first things I decided on -- long enough ago that I don't really remember how I got the idea.