#sryk

[viohra]

More Sryk Grammar

The verb “to be” is completely nonexistent in the language, and given that the agent of the action is inflected for tense, aspect, and polarity and the action is only inflected for noun class of the agent there’s really no reason to have a copula. However, the agent of a copula is not put into the ergative case and remains in the absolutive along with the predicate, taking the inflections as any ergative noun would.

Ex:

Yhs vnûvarat — the woman kills the person

Yhs vent — the woman is a person

Yhs vnûjvarat — the woman killed a person

Yhs venût — the woman was a person

Yhs vnû3ajvarat — the woman doesn’t kill the person

Yhs venajt — the woman isn’t a person

Yhs vnûwajvarat — the woman didn’t kill a person

Yhs venwajt — the woman wasn’t a person

In each of these examples you can see how the agent “woman” changes from vnû in the ergative to ven in the absolutive and that even without the verb, the 3rd person human nounclass -t ending is still applied in every case.

Yhs 3ajśájjá, müskä 3ajśjá — /ɨħs ʕɑjːɕajːa , mysːkæ ʕɑjːɕːja/ — I’m not a person, I’m a cat*

*note: this is formal, “3ajśájjá” and “3ajśjá” can be reduced to pronouns as “ajjá” and “já”** respectively, which in fact attach to the predicate,,, because things aren’t confusing enough without pronouns.

** “Já” is seen in Northern Zehzhik dialects as “jä” which also carries the meaning of “I am”.

[viohra]

Sryk Vowels

So Sryk’s whole phonology is a bit overcomplicated with some consonants like R having six separate pronunciations, but the vowels are pretty straight forward once you know the rules.

Orthographically there are only 4 vowels — a, e, i, and u with the latter not appearing in any root, not even possessing its own dedicated character, only a diacritic for foreign words. The u is seen only in areas where it rounds the previous vowel, except in some cases where it’s added to a vowelless/vowel-muted consonant.

Rule 1: Vowel Harmony

Sryk has strict vowel harmony where the first, last, or penultimate syllable sets the harmony. If the first syllable is <i>, then all following vowels are fronted and/or raised (eg <a> is pronounced /æ/). If it’s <a>, then the opposite happens; all following vowels are backed and/or lowered (eg <i> is /ɯ/). If the first vowel is <e>, it is pronounced /ə/ but the rest of the vowels take the harmony of the final vowel unless the word is 4 or more syllables long, then it’s the penultimate syllable that determines the vowel harmony; however in the case that that vowel is also <e> such as the roots <deraze> and <derazeura>, the harmony falls on the first vowel that is either <a> or <i>. <e> usually remains unchanged by vowel harmony but may drift from /ɛ/ to /ɤ/ depending on the speaker, surrounding consonants, and the present harmony.

The syllable the contains the vowel that holds the harmony is the syllable that is stressed.

Vaneki /vɑnəkɯ/

Vineka /vinəkæ/

Venaki /vənæki/

Venikare /vənɯkɒrə/

Rule 2: Rounding

Some templates, cases, and conjugations add rounding to the vowels. Orthographically represented by <u>, this vowel simply rounds whatever it’s attached to.

Rule 3: Vowel Colouring

This part of the vowel system works independently of the vowel harmony system and “overrides” the conventional front vs back divisions in sound. The letters â and î exist to indicate the effect. Vowels modified by î drift towards /i/ while vowels modified by â drift towards /ɑ/, however in these cases it’s easier probably to memorize each modification under every harmony

A-Harmony <aî> — /ɛ/

I-Harmony <aî> — /e/

A-Harmony <iâ> — /ɤ/

I-Harmony <iâ> — /ɨ/

Rule 4: Consonant Effects

Certain consonant affect the vowel quality. Palatal consonants act much like î and uvelar/pharyngeal consonants act like â. Plosives have a centralizing effect that could be marked as ê if such a letter existed.

[viohra]

“Man of the People”

ABS: Vékkaʻʻy3äisé /vekːɐʔːɨʕajse/

ERG: Vkakaʻʻy3äisé /fkɐkɐʔːɨʕajse/

• • •

I’m stealing from Arabic again. This is an example of Sryk’s version of Idafa with a wordphrase like “X of (the) Y” and is used to show possession. It works by placing the first noun (the thing being possessed) in the absolutive, ergative case, or any of the adpositional cases (depending on function in sentence), then inserting /a/ and the second noun in the prepositional case with the onset consonant doubled.

The entire construct is then treated as a single word with the first noun dictating noun gender, number, and vowel harmony. Additionally, the first noun takes any adposition

[viohra]

Form 1: Kaująti vįkajkHa-l-vara-t ŕairąsī-si3atęq́a-u7

Transliteration: Kojty vkäjǧäjväräŧ d’ersyysy3aŧq’o7

IPA: /kɒjtɯ fʲkæjɣæjværæt̚ʔ ʈʼɛrsɯːsɯʕɑt̚ʔkˠʼɒħ/

Translation: The men killed the dog in fear of its teeth.

Literal: The dog the men had killed due to fear of the teeth of it.

* * *

The symbols in order are: “dog”, “man”, plurality marker, past tense marker, “kill”, 3rd person human marker, “tooth”, “fear”, “in/for/due to”, plurality marker, “of”, 3rd person animal marker

This sentence showcases the 3 cases (abs, erg, gen). The last word “for fear of its teeth” is an example of a 3-letter root being made into a 7-letter root with the addition of the postposition denoting “fear of”.

Only three of the symbols are literary symbols, the rest are logograms.

[viohra]

Some Sryk Stuff

I’ve slowly been developing the template system for Sryk, it’s hard due to job, school, and personal motivation, but I at least know the direction I want to go.

Right now the language is a verb-based language ie most of the lexicon is derived from the verbs; nouns take one of four forms: figurative/nonphysical noun (verbal noun), inanimate noun, animate noun, and human noun, all of which come from a single verb. Each verb has 2-4 root consonants with vowel colourings. The nouns have 3 cases: absolutive, ergative, and adpositional, each having a singular and plural form and all being highly inflected.

An example root is KaTaRa, meaning “to chop”. Nouns are in the absolutive case and spelt phonetically to make things easier.

Verb: krara — to chop

VN: katara — chopping

IN: kraš — axe, cleaver

AN: kotra — beaver

H: ketš — axeman

Interestingly enough, the adpositional cases of this root is only used for innumerating the word (ex: krarad’oj /kɾɑrɑʈʼɔj/ means 3 axes). That is because the root is a complete root. In the language, adpositions are added to the root of a word to create a new root. An example of this is the adposition denoting possession “-za” attaching to the root “s’aja” (to see). The new root is now S’aJaZa and it’s put into the adpositional case as ś’äza (in the eye); even though it’s a 2-letter root, it’s actually treated as a 3-letter root.

S’ajʻakkataš /sʼɑjʔɑkːɑtɑʂ/ — eye of the axe

[viohra]

Ok here’s the Sryk/Zehzhik numerals. The top rows are the numbers 0-11 with the top picture the formal versions, the bottom the informals. The secondary rows in each picture show the diacritics mark 0, 12, 24, 36, and 48, both having alternatives

The system is base 60 so it’s pretty interesting to work with

These two symbols are the same number, which is 59.

Now here’s a giant ass fuckn number represents 10*60^4+25*60^3+4*60^2+44*60+19… which is 135017059, which is more or less 6 syllables long in either Sryk or Zehzhik

[viohra]

Kraš kraarõikrarèʻ katšèby

/krɑʂ krɑːrɤjkrɑrɛʔ kɑtːʂɛbɨ/

"The axeman chopped the axe with an axe"

• • •

The symbol you see written 4 times is “katara” meaning “chopping” and thus is found in this sentence as “axe”, “axeman”, and “to chop”. It’s important to note that onset /kt/ becomes /kr/ and coda /r/ becomes /ʂ/ (as does a mutated r as seen in the last word); this is why the word for “axe” in the absolutive case is “kraš” even though it’s spelt “ktar”.

Katara is a cognate to Zehzhik’s word “ktor” meaning “axe”.

[viohra]

Deraze — horror, ugly, horrible, terrible, terrifying; ROOT

Dras — a horrible thing

Dórzë — a monster; imp; demonic creature

Dyrs — a demon; a anthropomorphic monster; (figurative) a murderer

Derazóra — place of [above]; ROOT

Dërzóra — a horrible place, a hell