The Diallic Language

Why Diallic?

The language is called "Diallic" only because it is the language of a literary work called The Sundial, a philosophical epic poem much like Lucretius's De Rerum Natura and Hesiod's Theogony. "Diallic" is not the indigenous name of the language, but is simply what I have come to call it as it is being developed.

The purpose of developing an entirely original language for The Sundial is to engineer an intuitive metaphysical worldview from which a particular philosophical system will emerge. Just as the concepts of ancient Greek philosophy emerged in part from the structure of the Greek language, the philosophical system inherent in The Sundial will emerge naturally and easily from the structure of Diallic. This process works two ways: first, the process of creating and deriving words from basic roots is influenced by the native worldview of the hypothetical Diallic culture; but also, the language itself has an influence over the types of metaphysical conclusions that are drawn by its speakers-- it determines to some degree what "makes sense" to those speakers. Most often this influence takes the form of etymological connections and associations, though grammatical features can also have an impact.

So far, I have created an outline of the grammar which describes the phonology and phonemic inventory, the morphology, and includes the most important function words (i.e. pronouns, prepositions, particles and conjunctions, etc.); however, I plan to add a thorough description of the syntax and phrase-structure rules.

The dictionary is also under construction. The words are constructed from the ground up: I first established a root structure, then devised different ways that the roots would manifest themselves (i.e., as nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc). Out of the possible roots (some 60 pages, when listed), some have been assigned general meanings and basic root words are derived from them. The dictionary (in progress) lists these basic root words and a few select derivatives.

Finally, there will eventually be an outline of the philosophical system that goes hand-in-hand with the language, along with other features of the culture, such as the musical system, the mythology, the calendar, and the religious practice. The Sundial is ultimately not a work of fiction, but a commentary on modern life and thought, an attempt to return to a "first philosophy" which will be meaningful in a modern context but which can also accommodate a spiritual and mythologically-oriented way of living and thinking. The story, mythology, and language of The Sundial is set in a fictional context, but nevertheless it will be an allegory for a new way of looking at the world.

Texts

Here's a translation of the Lord's Prayer in Diallic.

This is an interlinear translation of the Babel Text in PDF format.

Table of Contents

• I. Sounds and Script
• II. Phonological Structure and Ablaut
• III. Grammar
  • A. Verb Morphology
  • B. Participles and Infinitives
  • C. Noun Morphology
  • D. Adjective Morphology
  • E. Pronouns
  • F. Demonstrative Pronouns and Adjectives
  • G. Adverbials
  • H. Prepositions and Verb Prefixes
  • I. Particles and Conjunctions
  • J. Derivational Affixes
• IV. General Syntax

I. Sounds and Script

Diallic has a relatively simple phonemic inventory. It makes distinctions between voiced and unvoiced obstruents (with stop and fricative allophones) in three points of articulation: labial, dental, and velar. There are six vowels and two diphthongs; no length distinctions are made (more precisely, all long vowels become one of the two diphthongs). Double consonants are pronounced long, as in Italian sonno.

Diallic also has its own indigenous script. It is obvious that it was slightly influenced by Tolkien's alphabets (especially in the early stages), but a lot of the similarity simply comes from using the same style and slant of pen. Furthermore the script has taken on an evolution of its own over the past several years and now has a distinct look and feel. For practical reasons, I have given the script an alphabetical order, and the entries in the dictionary will be roughly grouped in that order.

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop
Fricative
Nasal
Trill
Lateral
Glide

Phoneme	Pronunciation	Script
æ	as in cat
v	as in vat; sometimes as in bat
d	as in that; sometimes as in dance
g	as in get (never as in george)
e	as in pet, hair
w	as in English
i	as in hit, feet
?	glottal stop, like the sound in the middle of "uh-oh"
s	as English s; between two vowels, or before a voiced stop or nasal, as z
h	as in English
ai	as in high (never as in stay)
l	as in English
a	as in hot, father, but
m	as in English
n	as in neck or ant (never as in ink)
ŋ	as in sing, ink
o	pure o, as in Spanish Yo
r	trilled as in Spanish
u	as in goo (never as in cute)
f (p)	as in fat; sometimes as in spin
t	as in thin,pronounced at the teeth (never a flap as in butter); sometimes as in tap
k	as in king
au	as in house, cow (never as in law)
y	as in English (never a vowel); ty as in chin, dy as in jump, and sy as in ship

Note: When the Diallic script is used to write English words, a diacritic dot can be placed over consonants to signify that they should be pronounced as fricatives. For example, "farm" would be written:

The same diacritic can be used to differentiate between tightness and laxness in vowels (a distinction that is important in English, but not in Diallic). For instance, the words "keen" and "kin" are written, respectively:

(You might notice, by the way, that the text written at the top of the page is not Diallic but a passage from the Latin Vulgate.)

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II. Phonological Structure and Ablaut

1. Onsets and Nuclei

The Phonological structure of Diallic, within morphemes, is basically Consonant-Vowel; across a morpheme boundary more complex patterns can occur. Each syllable consists of an Onset and a Nucleus (and a possible Nuclear Adjunct). Onsets can be Simple (t) or Branching (tr, consisting of a stop/fricative + liquid/glide), though branching onsets in which the two components are homorganic are prohibited (so there are no onsets like fw or tl). Root structure is often obscured by processes of metathesis, epenthesis, etc. Nuclei can have one or two metrical positions, but the second must be an off-glide; this means that all long vowels become either ai or au.

The most basic roots in Diallic consist of the pattern ONO-: an onset, a nucleus, and another onset to which is attached the inflectional morphology. So some basic word shapes are

v(V)n-	(vener "to drink, to wet")
kl(V)t-	(klot- "door")
tr(V)kw-	(trekwer "to chase, to pursue")

Because of the different kinds of onsets, there are different classes of nouns. (See Noun Morphology)

• A root whose second onset is a stop, h, or a glide (w or y) will become a Class 1 noun, like kof "catch". If the second onset is a glide, an -a ending is added to the nominative, e.g. "fowa".
• A root whose second onset is a nasal (m, n, ŋ), a liquid (l, r), or s will usually become a Class 2 noun, like lauŋ "choice, dilemma".
• A root which has a branching second onset with a glide (w or y) will become a Class 3 noun, like rosi "interpretation, gist" and troku "pursuit".
• A root which has a branching second onset with a liquid (l or r) will become a Class 4 noun, like glotar "fragment, piece" and agul "box, container".
• Some roots are composed of a single onset; these become Class 5 nouns, like fya "act, deed".

2. Ablaut

The Nucleus in a root word undergoes Ablaut. There are three grades and two "valences": the grades are Long, Short, and Null; the valence refers to whether the vowel is a mid front (e) or a mid back (o) vowel (i and u do not occur in the nucleus position in the basic roots).

• e is used to form verbs; o forms nouns. After a branching onset with a glide, o will become a, as in dwan "power".
• The continuous stem of verbs features the diphthong ai, which derives from an archaic long e.
• Likewise, Class 2 nouns feature the diphthong au, which derives from an archaic long o.
• The Null grade occurs in adjectives and in dual verbs. The empty vowel space is usually replaced by one of the low vowels (a or æ) with frontness or backness depending on the following syllable. If it follows a branching onset with a glide, the glide becomes a vowel and fills the null-grade vowel space (i.e., h-d- becomes had(is) "early, first", but sw-t- becomes sut(is) "beneficial".

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III. Grammar

Its regularity actually makes the language a little unrealistic; the assumption is that, like Homeric Greek, Diallic is an artificial literary language made from several related dialects. Perhaps due to its use as a religious and traditional language, it was extended to large numbers of non-native speakers. Irregularities have since been ironed out and salient patterns have been amplified so that overall the language of The Sundial is extremely simple and symmetrical.

A. Verb Morphology

Verbs are constructed in a very straightforward manner. The basic component, of course, is the verb stem. The verbal stems are those words discussed above (See Phonological Structure and Ablaut). For our example, we will use the stem fer- "to shape".

1. Regular Verb Construction

The sequence of morphemes attached to the verb:

• Aspect is expressed by reduplication of the first onset of the stem. Perfect aspect (have xed) uses normal reduplication (i.e., the first consonant and vowel is copied and attached to the stem); a verb in the Perfect refers to a present state that results from a past action. The Anticipatory aspect (about to x) uses "marked" reduplication, which means that it changes the vowel of the reduplicated syllable (usually from e to o); a verb marked for Anticipatory aspect refers to a present state that will bring about a future action-- rather like a mirror image of the Perfect.
• The stem expresses duration through lengthening the vowel. An Aorist stem has a short vowel (e); this means that the action is thought of as instantaneous, like a snapshot (but note that it is not necessarily in the past, as the Greek aorist often is). A Continuous stem has a long vowel (e becomes ai) and depicts the action as happening across a period of time. There are many ways to translate this form, but the simplest is to use the English progressive tense (i.e. "I am Xing"). In the few verbs whose stem vowel is o (i.e. those whose first onsets are branching with w: DW-N => doneya), the Continuous is marked with the diphthong au.
• Tense/Mood is expressed by the vowel following the second onset; three tenses are distinguished: Present, Past, and Future. Mood alternates the vowels of the tenses; there are four moods: Indicative, Subjunctive, Optative, and Imperative.
• Person is differentiated for first, second, and third person, singular and plural. The dual requires a pronoun, since it does not differentiate for person.
• Voice determines whether the subject is performing or experiencing the action. In Diallic, the Middle voice refers to reflexive actions (accusative sense), actions in which the subject's interest is involved (dative sense), and with almost all intransitive verbs.

Here a few forms of this verb, with glosses:

feræ	"he/she/it will shape"
(but feræt eŋas)	"he/she/it will shape us"; the t appears when the following word starts with a vowel
fafairea	"I have been shaping"
(but fafairem is)	"I have been shaping"
fairosai	"You (s) were being shaped"
foferimi	"I may be about to shape myself"
fefere(t)	"he/she/it has shaped"
feferoma(d)	"we had shaped"
fairondai	"they were being shaped"

tu dememil yokwi fafareïd y'eŋara yolas.

These two ravenous pains have shaped our lives.

It should be noted, however, that the Dual form is rare in both pronouns and verbs, and quite often a dual pronoun will be used with a plural verb, and vice versa. Often this is a result of metrical considerations.

2. The Irregular verb esya "to be"

All Diallic verbs are completely regular, except the verb esya "to be":

The 2s Imperative form is occasionally reduced from assi to si; the negative Present 2s Imperative is regularly found in the reduced form sio "do not be!"

3. Negative Verbs

The last set of changes undergone by Diallic verbs is the addition of the negative particle o as an enclitic. The verb and negative enclitic are written as a single word, but this does not affect the form except in the Passive voice. The examples from above, made negative, are

feræto	"he/she/it will not shape"
fafairemo	"I have not been shaping"
fairosayo	"You (s) were not being shaped"
foferimio	"I may not be about to shape myself"
fefereto	"he/she/it has not shaped"
faferomado	"we had not shaped"
fairondayo	"they were not being shaped"

4. Polythematic Verb Endings

There is a certain subset of sentences in which the verb takes polythematic endings--endings which indicate not only the verb's subject, but also the direct (and very rarely indirect) object. This variation has certain religious overtones that make it prominent in the sections of The Sundial composed of ancient hymns; it conveys a very formal and religious tone.

Subject	Object
	Intrans/ Reflexive	1s	2s	3s	1pl	2pl	3pl	Passive
1s	-mi	-Ø	-nse	-ŋke	-meŋ	-moŋ	-ŋkes	-mai
2s	-si	-spe	-Ø	-ske	-seŋ	-soŋ	-skes	-sai
3s	-ti	-twe	-tse	-(t)	-teŋ	-toŋ	-lkes	-tai
1pl	-madi	-madwe	-matse	-malke	-Ø	-madoŋ	-malkes	-madai
2pl	-dyi	-dime	-dise	-dike	-dyeŋ	-Ø	-dikes	-dyai
3pl	-ndi	-nwe	-nse	-ŋke	-neŋ	-noŋ	-n	-ndai

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B. Participles and Infinitives

If the verb stem contains the r sound, the active infinitive ending will become -l by dissimilation.

Infinitives often take personal pronouns as enclitic suffixes (much like Spanish). When the third person pronoun is attached to the infinitive, it changes from he to ke.

ferelse	"to shape you";
feriesar	"to be shaped by you"
feroloke	"not to have shaped him/her/it"

The Infinitive preceded by the definite article forms the gerund. Though the infinitive's form never changes, the gerund can be declined through the inflection of the article. Gerunds can govern objects (in the Accusative and Dative), however, there are no clauses in which the subject of the gerund is different than that of the main clause (i.e. "He hates me helping her."). Such clauses are expressed using the complementizer (e.g. "He hates that I help her.").

ye ferel	"shaping" (NOM and ACC)
ye ferelo	"not shaping"
yo ferelke	"of shaping him/her/it"
yi ferelme	"for shaping me"; "in order to shape me"
ki me feri(t)	"for (the fact that) he/she/it shapes me"; "in order for him to shape me"
yar ferie	"by being shaped"
kar feritai	"because he/she/it is being shaped"
fewomi yar ferie	"I came to exist by being shaped"

There are also two "gerundive" constructions, indicating roughly necessity and probability. These simply involve prefixing the modal particles ofta and gana onto the participle or infinitive. Attaching the prefix to the participle yields an adjective, and attaching it to an infinitive yields a noun.

ye gamferie	"the necessity to be shaped"
gamferedye	"having to be shaped"
ye opferel	"the obligation to shape"
opfereŋis	"obliged to shape"

For the declension of Participles, see Adjective Morphology.

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C. Noun Morphology

Syntactically, the two Grammatical cases are the NOM and ACC. The NOM is assigned by a following finite verb, and the ACC is assigned by a preceding active transitive verb or a preposition that assigns the ACC. The GEN, which is basically the adjectival case, is assigned to any Noun Phrase that falls inside another NP (i.e., bracketed between an article and noun; c.f. Greek). DAT, ABL, INST, and LOC are treated as adverbials; therefore they are usually placed before the verb.

Certain verbs take DAT or GEN objects: however, the verbs that take DAT objects are actually intransitive verbs, and those that take GEN objects usually represent transitive verbs whose D.O. has been elided, leaving only a partitive genitive phrase. (i.e.: "I drink of water" is actually "I drink (a gulp) of water")

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D. Adjective Morphology

Note the umlaut that occurs in stems with a null-grade vowel. The empty vowel slot is filled by one of the two low vowels (æ, or a), depending on whether the following syllable's consonant is front or back.

The comparative prefix is ar- (artim, sharper); the superlative is ava- (avatim, sharpest; avædi, dearest, most beloved).

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E. Pronouns

Diallic pronouns have a slightly different accidence than nouns and adjectives. There are usually no gender distinctions, though a few rare gender forms (huis, hie) are used for clarity in the third person singular. In the first person plural, there is an inclusive (we = you and I) and an exclusive (we = he/she/they and I) form.

The possessive adjectives corresponding to each of these pronouns (and the demonstratives and pronominal adjectives in the next section) are formed from the bare stem of the pronouns; they are declined according to the type 1 adjective declension above (see Adjective Morphology). The forms are ma/mis "my", eŋ(al)a/eŋ(al)is "our", sa/sis "your" (singular), oŋa/oŋis "your" (plural), ha/his "his/her/its, hara "their", ella/ellis "each other's".

The prefix i- gives the third person pronoun an intensive force. (This may be the definite article, in its contracted form, affixed to the front of the possessive adjective.)

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F. Demonstrative Pronouns and Adjectives

ye	definite article
we	relative and interrogative pronoun
la, lis	"this"
da, dis	"that there, that near you"
ta, tis	"that"
tya, tyes	"some(one, thing)" "a certain"
um(is)	"any(one, thing)" "-ever" (also used as an indefinite relative)
em(is)	"one, alone" "only"
yaim(is)	"the one, the single, the very"
waim	"what exactly, what one"
laim(is)	"this only, this alone, this very"
daim(is)	"that there only, that there alone, that very thing there"
taim(is)	"that only, that alone, that very"
aum(is)	"no(one, thing)" "none"
ail(is)	"every" "all" "each"
fle, flis	"many" "much"
ofle, oflis	"few"
an(is)	"same" "like" "such" (also used as the specific relative)
al(is)	"other, another" "else" (also used as a reciprocal pronoun)
tyal(is)	"some other, someone else"
aumal(is)	"no other, no one else"
umal(is)	"any other, anyone else"
aille, aillis	"every other, everyone else"
fille, fillis	"many other"
ofille, ofillis	"few other"
sætir, -is	"either (of two)"
lætir, -is	"other (of two)" (also used as a reciprocal pronoun)
ostir, ostris	"neither (of two)"
wætir, wætris	"which (of two)"
ke	complementizer (always neuter singular)

When used as adjectives, these forms take the adjectival declension (see Adjective Morphology).

Of the words above, the definite article ye and the complementizer ke are unusual. Both are found only in the "neuter" or "inanimate" singular form. ye is declinable in principle, but often (especially in poetry) it is contracted and attached to the beginning of the noun or adjective of whose clause it forms the boundary; for instance:

ye troku	becomes	y'troku (pronounced "itroku")
yo trokuo	becomes	y'trokuo
ye æm	becomes	y'æm

ke (which is cognate with the 3rd person pronoun) only serves to introduce substantive clauses. In Diallic a substantive clause can be case-marked by declining its complementizer; for instance:

leros ke se traikwia	"You said that I was following you" (lit. "You said that I am following you"; an indirect statement occurs in the same tense as the original statement.)
fewosi kar se ferua	"You came to be because I shaped you"

Note that the verb following the complementizer is in the subjunctive mood.

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G. Adverbials

-æ	"-ly" adverbial ending	(wæ: "how" indeterminate)
-æm	time	(wæm: "when")
-æmu	way, manner	(wæmu: "in what way, in what manner, how")
-æro	extent, degree	(wæro: "to what extent")

Dative	wi	"to/for whom/what" "why (for what purpose)"
Accusative	wan(a)	"to where" "whither"
Instrumental	war	"by what route, by what means" "how, why (by what means)"
Ablative	wava	"from what" "from where, whence"
Locative	wa?	"at what" "where"

Like infinitives, adverbials can be used with articles to form noun clauses.

y-læm	"now, the present" (lit: "the (things) at this time")
yan læm	"(the) up to now" = "the past"
yava læm	"(the) from now on" = "the future"
yava tæm	"since then, after that"

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H. Postpositions and Verb Prefixes

The cases themselves carry the most basic "positional" meanings, with the Accusative indicating motion toward, the Instrumental indicating motion through, and the Locative indicating position. To these case-endings are attached various other morphemes, originally adverbs but now rather like postpositions, which further specify the meaning of the case. The Ablative case denotes motion from, and is in fact a fusion of an earlier adverbial element with the inflection of the noun. The Ablative, therefore, is not used with postpositions.

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I. Particles and Conjunctions

?e?	"yes", "indeed, very"
ra	interrogative
ile	"for, because"
yor	"therefore, so"
kya	"also, even, too", "not only... but also"
okya	"not even"
kiya, tatya	"even if"
fe	"and", "both... and"
ai	"and not, but not"
ul	(whether/either) "...or"
ya	"if", "if... then"
isto	"except"
ra ya	"what if"
tat	"but, yet", "while... still" (weak adversative)
dad	"although... nevertheless" (strong adversative)
ya?e?	"if only, would that"
ŋa	counterfactual particle
hæ	"as, how, than"
hæfar	"just as, just like"
hæsya	"as if"
læŋki	"even now, still"
mesi	only, just, merely
far	"just, exactly, quite"
otta	verbal particle denoting probability or weak obligation
gana	verbal particle denoting necessity or strong obligation

J. Derivational Affixes

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IV. General Syntax

The general syntax is head-initial, but like English, Diallic exhibits some head-final features, such as adjectives coming before nouns. The main departure in Diallic from head-initial structure is Noun Phrase framing--adjectives, adjectival Prepositional Phrases, and other descriptive elements are framed inside the Def. Art. and Noun.

The basic syntactic tree is as follows:

A. The Definite Article

• The definite article usually marks old information, i.e. information that the addressee is assumed to already know. Therefore it is used with places and proper names after the first time they are mentioned.
• The DA is often used with abstract nouns (e.g. "(the) courage"); when it is not used, it has a peculiar meaning: "some courage", "courage of some kind".
• The DA is used in place of the possessive adjectives when the possessor is obvious (e.g. "The man drew (his) sword."). The possessive adjective takes the place of the definite article, and as such, is placed in the Determiner position in the NP. On the other hand, the genitive of the personal pronouns, which can be used interchangeably with the possessive adjective, is placed after the definite article (e.g. Ye hara lauŋ, (The) their choice).
• The article can be used with adjectives and participles, rendering them substantive. This construction is based on elision of the noun which the adjective or participle modifies. This construction also often replaces a relative clause.
• The article can be used with adverbs or adverbial phrases, without nouns. It is assumed that the adverbial acts as an AP inside the NP. (See above: )

  f) The article joined with the infinitive creates the gerund. (See above: )

• Since the NP encloses adjectival phrases, one finds all noun modifiers placed between the article and its noun: adjectives, nouns in the genitive, prepositional phrases, and (restrictive) relative clauses.
• Noun modifiers that fall outside of the article-noun frame are in the "predicative" position; a form of esya should be understood.
• The DA is a determiner. Other important determiners are: this, that (near you), that, etc. (See above: )

B. Questions and Relative Clauses

C. Time and Space

D. Participles and Absolute Constructions

E. Pronouns

F. Subordinate Clauses: Causal, Purpose, Result

G. Indirect Statement

H. Conditional Sentences

I. Modal Sentences

J. "Gerundive" Constructions

K. Indefinite Clauses