Secret Language of Grandmothers

The Secret Language of Grandmothers (SLOG, Wâmêg Pâpâm ['wæ,mɛg'pæ,pæm]) is a language created by EmPtA pOmPtA.

SLOG is the first language of most people in the city of Mudgement. It is spoken to a lesser extent on Earth, but mostly by nuns. In Mudgement, the Archmadams are the arbiters of the language, and attempt to regulate it much in the same way the Académie Française does for the French language. In the schools where the Archmadams rule, the Official Dialect of SLOG is spoken on pain of death, but most students and faculty speak other dialects outside of the schools and the Frectrum. The Archmadams' authority of the language extends only to Mudgement, although they hate that other communities of speakers allow the language to evolve.

Communities of nuns on Earth and elsewhere outside of Mudgement acquired the language when one of their number awakened feverishly in the night and could suddenly only speak SLOG. The other sisters were tasked with interpreting and learning her language until they could understand it and speak it themselves. Outside of Mudgement, the language is only spoken in abbeys; outsiders are actively discouraged from learning and speaking it. Across cultures, children are chastised and told myths about what will happen if they say words from the language. For example, in much of Europe, children are told that if they use SLOG, the nuns will take them "where the horses roam."

Despite this air of secrecy, in 1994, a pair of linguists, Perribel Lunchthrust and Elengeamoan Peacebasket, were able to infiltrate a covey of ngungs and document some of the features of the language. The following is a brief account of the grammar and vocabulary the researchers were able to put together shortly before they were found dead, encased together in a cocoon of dried camel's milk and fur, with looks of absolute peace on their faces.

## Phonology

SLOG has 17 consonant phonemes. Romanizations are in parentheses where appropriate. The first of a pair represents an unvoiced consonant, the second represents a fully voiced consonant:

The rhotic consonant (romanized as r) is an alveolar approximant that may shift to a voiced alveolo-palatal fricative depending on the environment and the speaker. In coda position, it often appears as the fricative, but in initial positions is realized as the approximant, with some exceptions.

**rguxter** [ɹguχteʑ]

The consonants l and r may be occasionally used as syllabic resonants, but when they occur together, they are pronounced [ɾl] and any stress shifts to the preceding syllable. Before a back vowel at the beginning of a word, r and l are voiceless [ɹ̥] and [l̥], romanized as hr and hl, respectively.

Fricatives are voiced when followed by a voiced obstruent. Voiceless stops are never aspirated, and voiced stops are fully voiced. The consonant cluster /ng/ is always pronounced [ŋg], and never [ŋ] alone.

SLOG has 9-11 vowel phonemes:

While the phoneme is /ɔ/, the vowel ô may be realized as [ɒ] or [ɔ], depending on the surrounding consonants.

Two consecutive vowels are always separate syllable nuclei; there are no diphthong phonemes.

The vowel pairs e and ê and u and ù are typically considered separate phonemes, but in modern speech e and u are commonly mutated into ê and ù respectively, except when stressed. For the purposes of syllable structure, vowels may be classified into “strong” (â, ê, î, ô, ù, û) and “weak” categories (a, e, i, o). Strong vowels are never found word-finally. Weak vowels are less common in syllable nuclei, as any strong vowels in the word historically triggered strengthening harmony in the following syllables with weak nuclei. The vowel /u/ is neither weak nor strong, since it can be stressed like a strong vowel but may also appear in a word-final position like a weak vowel (though it tends to drop off, as in Japanese), and is otherwise restricted in its environments like the weak vowels.

### Stress

SLOG has a few basic stress rules, although the patterns aren’t super consistent. Stress tends not to be a contrastive feature, and homophones are usually different parts of speech that are easily distinguished from context, or clarified periphrastically. Properly, all stressed vowels and sonorants are phonated with harsh voice:

**yalrgux nônôrumpuk pôgrara!** [jaɾlguχ nɔnəɹumpuk pɔgɹɹə] “you must eat the bone!”

In a di- or trisyllabic word, primary stress falls on the penultimate syllable, unless it contains a weak vowel, l, or r. For example:

**krîčunka** /kɹɪ 'tɕun ka/ “escape”

**nùmùxsâč** /nʊ 'mʊχ sætɕ/ “baker”

**mîčùč** /'mɪ tɕʊtɕ/ “jar”

**pênxwûn /**'pɛn χwʌn/ “martyr”

**wôyo** /'wɔ jo/ “snag”

**solîbkle** /so 'lɪb kle/ “crater field”

**ùyôt** /'ʊ jɔt/ “shield”

If, however, the penultimate syllable contains a weak vowel, l, or r, there are three possibilities. First, the word may be trisyllabic with a strong vowel in the antepenultimate syllable. If this is the case, that syllable is stressed:

**nùmyaxon** /'nʊm ja χon/ “philosopher”

**nùmrgùx** /'nʊm ɹ gʊχ/ “nomad”

**nùmbasgîk** /'nʊm bas gɪk/ “donor”

**pânorun** /'pæ no run/ “food”

**ùyewêj** /'ʊ je wɛdʑ/ “lever”

**kêblkle** /'kɛb l kle/ “aviary”

Second, the word may contain a strong vowel only in the ultimate syllable. If this is the case, that syllable is stressed:

**solîbč** /so 'lɪbtɕ/ “earthworm”

**krisolîb** /kɹi so 'lɪb/ “suction”

**klearâg** /kle a 'ɹæg/ “road”

**karyûnč** /kaɹ 'jʌntɕ/ “shame”

**arâgx** /a 'ɹægχ/ “snake, eel”

Finally, the word may contain no strong vowels or in which case the penultimate syllable is once again stressed:

**šiluk** /'ɕi luk/ “cat”

**kriwa** /'kɹi wa/ “construction”

**klwa** /'kl wa/ “bank account”

           Polysyllabic words receive their primary stress on the penultimate syllable, and secondary stresses on every other syllable to the left, assuming both of those have strong vowels or /u/ as their nuclei, or contain no strong vowels at all (rare):

**sùčwêčùnka** /ˌsʊtɕ wɛ 'tɕʊn ka/ “had one done x?”

**sùkwûnôgûx** /ˌsʊk wʌn 'ɔ gʌχ/ “did one start x?”

**norûnûk** /ˌnɔ nɔ 'ɹʌn ʌk/ “it is eating itself”

Polysyllabic words that do not have strong vowels in these positions cause stress to move outward until it finds a strong vowel:

**sùčaxônčùspùk** /ˌsʊtɕ a 'χɔn tɕʊs ˌpʊk/ “aren’t you thinking about them?”

**sùčaxômpùk** /ˌsʊtɕ a 'χɔm ˌpʊk / “are you thinking about them?”

## Grammar

### Nouns

Nouns are hardly inflected at all, aside from being marked for plurality, alienable possession (as we’ll see below) and, in the case of mass nouns, for discreteness/partitivity. In the protolanguage, the plural form of a noun was marked by reduplicating the nucleus and coda of the last syllable, and this remains the default form of pluralization for newer words and loanwords.

**mîčùyùk, mîčùyùkùk** “pebble, pebbles”

**ùyômi, ùyômîmi** “knife, knives”

**hrôka, hrôkâka** “star, stars”

**kriweyîm, kriweyîmîm** “glance, glances”

**pânorun, pânorùnùn** “food, foods”

**pâbâsgîk, pâbâsgîkîk** “gift, gifts”

Other older nouns, thanks to diachronic quirks, are irregular in their pluralization. For instance, some are identical in the plural and singular:

**kle** “place, places”

**mênt** “city, cities”

**šaxônkle** “brain, brains”

**mîbyûm** “penis, penises”

Still other nouns are slightly different in the plural, even though they still derive from a reduplicated suffix:

**uxsâč, uxsayâč** “cake, cakes”

**kôč, kôčùč** “tree, trees”

**xûng, xûnxûg** “flower, flowers”

**ùtmûj, ùtmûdyûj** “fool, fools”

**nùnč, nùnsùč** “goblin, goblins”

**nùnč, nùmnùyùx** “coward, cowards”

Note that in the last two examples, the words are indistinguishable in the singular, but have distinct plural forms. In a few rare cases (mostly paired body parts), the singular and plural forms are unrelated:

**ùč, ùyôkle** “eye, eyes”

**pîm, ùyôdyîm** “hand, hands”

**pâm, mîtùča** “ear, ears”

The suffix **-sa** can be affixed to a noun as a form of partitive article, meaning either an individual unit of a collective noun, or “some of” a mass noun. For example:

**êj** “water” vs. **êdyûsa** “drop of water”

**dûki** “flesh” vs. **dûksa** “some flesh”

SLOG has no explicit distinction between definite and indefinite nouns, but where the distinction is important, definiteness can be indicated by referring to the noun in the fourth person (obviation). This removes the noun in question from focus, assuming we already know about it. See below.

### Pronouns

SLOG has seven personal pronouns, plus an eighth indefinite pronoun meaning “someone” or “something” (Table 1). A few things are notable about this system. First, number is only encoded in the first and second person. Second, there is a clusivity distinction in the first person plural. Finally, SLOG contains a distinction between proximate (3rd person) nouns and obviate (4th person) nouns, which is used in part for anaphoric distinction. Less interesting but still noteworthy is that there is no distinction between animate and inanimate or masculine and feminine in the 3rd or 4th person; everyone and everything is either **kâk** or **yox**.

Table 1. Personal and indefinite pronouns in SLOG
 Singular
 Plural
 Exclusive

As will become clearer below, these pronouns are typically dropped as the subject and object of a sentence unless used for emphasis…

**wawêčk** “we build them”

**wawêčk kyrer** “we build temples”

**wawêčk wêč kyrer** “it is we who build the temples”

…or to remove ambiguity.

**šwôgûx krîtčùskyûl kâk noruntč nùndûki** “they didn’t discourage eating the soul”

**šwôgûx krîtčùskyûl noruntč nùndûki** “eating didn’t discourage the soul”

### Possession and Genitive Phrases

#### Inalienable possession

Like some other languages, SLOG has two forms of possession: alienable and inalienable. Inalienable possession is used to refer to body parts, family members, thoughts, and actions, and is marked either using a possessive pronoun that precedes the possessee (when the possessor is a pronoun; Table 2) or affixing the prefix **gu-** or **gw-** to the possessor.

Table 2. Inalienable possessive pronouns
 Singular
 Plural
 Exclusive

For example:

**gwùč ùyôčùnkâka** “our legs”

**gupu ùyôkle** “your eyes”

**gunùmyaxon šaxônôn** “the philosopher’s thoughts”

#### Alienable possession

Alienable possession refers to anything else being possessed. This kind of possession is formed using a particle **yîm** and a prefix (or occasionally infix) on the possessee (Table 3) when the possessor is a pronoun. Otherwise, the possessor and the **yîm** particle are separate from the possessee.

Table 3. Alienable possessive prefixes. The first in the list is the default, while others apply in other phonological environments. Prefixes used with nouns starting with a vowel are italicized.
 Singular
 Plural
 Exclusive

For example:

**yîm trùyôt** “someone’s shield”

**yîm ônyîdnûn** “my personal failings”

**yîm nùmyaxon ùyoxwûn** “the philosopher’s book”

The second person plural, third person proximate, and indefinite forms of possessed nouns can include an infix if they start with a fricative:

**šiluk** “cat”

**yîm škiluk** “her cat”

**yîm štiluk** “someone’s cat”

**yîm špilukuk** “y’all’s cats”

Nouns starting with a š or x in the second person singular possessive, or with r in the first person singular possessive are modified with the prefixes **puy-** and **ôd-** that replace the first consonant of the noun:

**hrôka** “star”

**yîm ôdôka** “my star”

**xûnxûg** “flowers”

**yîm puyûnxûg** “your flowers”

Verbs and verb phrases can also be possessed alienably:

**yîm ônkrîtlônk** “my discouragement of it”

**yîm puweyîmpuk karyo** “your witnessing the murder”

#### Genitive Phrases and Relative Clauses

More general genitive phrases are formed using the same method as alienable possession:

**yîm gwâdûki pâpâm muxox** AL.POSS IN.POSS.god voice thief “thief of God’s voice”

Note that in the first example, an inalienable possessive phrase (“God’s voice”) is the possessor and “thief” is the possessee

Verbs and verb phrases can also be possessed alienably:

**yîm ônkrîtlônk** “my discouragement of it”

**yîm puweyîmpuk karyo** “your witnessing the murder”

This same syntax can be used to form relative clauses. For example:

**yîm puyûnxûg** “your flowers”

**yîm gùxùpùk xûnxûg** AL.POSS cultivate.PERF.2sg.3 flowers “the flowers that you grew” or, more literally, “the flowers of 'you grew them',” where “you grew them” possesses the flowers.

**yîm puweyîmpuk karyo** “your witnessing the murder”

**yîm weyîmpuk karyo** “the murder that you’re witnessing”

### Verbs

In SLOG, a basic verb may be composed of one word in the present tense, inflected for negation, subject, and object agreement; or an obligatory auxiliary in the past indicative, future indicative, and present imperative mood, along with aspects and modalities derived from those in the protolanguage.

#### The verb stem

The perfective and imperfective aspects are distinguished in the verb stem. Ancestrally, the perfective was expressed by reduplicating the verb, but after thousands of years of sound changes, the differences are mostly irregular. For example, in the imperfective, the verb stem meaning “see” is **yîm-**, while in the perfective, it is **weyîm-**. Occasionally, the imperfective and perfective forms of the verb stem are identical. To avoid confusion, the particle **ùgra** is used to express the perfective aspect.

**ùgra mi-/y-** carve.PERF vs. **mi-** carve.IMPF

The usage of the imperfective vs. perfective aspects of verbs is generally intuitive for English speakers, but the perfective aspect is sometimes used as a simple past in spoken SLOG:

**yîmônk hrôkâka, pâmônk kêb, hlôsônk miyâmôk**

see.PERF-1s.3 stars, hear.PERF-1s.3 bird, care.for.PERF-1s.3 child

“I saw the stars, I heard the bird, I cared for the child”

#### Polypersonal agreement

All verbs are required to agree with both their subject and object (and perhaps direct object) by attaching the appropriate suffixes. The most basic forms of these suffixes are shown in Table 4, although they may undergo changes depending on the environment imposed by the verb stem. Suffixes in bold are reserved for intransitive verbs, those in italics are reflexive.

Obviation is used to distinguish subjects and objects that have already appeared in discourse:

**yînkyûl** see.IMPF-3.4 “they see that” or **yîmyûlk** see.IMPF-4.3 “those see it”

It is most commonly used to distinguish third person subjects and objects; the subject will usually be proximate, and the object will be obviative.

#### Negation

Verbs may also take an optional negative suffix **-čùs-**, infixed before the subject and object suffixes. In general, the suffixes are pretty much the same with the addition, with some exceptions. The exact interpretation of the negation is context-dependent, but typically refers to the action of the main verb in the sentence. Other parts of the sentence may be negated in other ways, but most typically by stressing the negated word. The negative polypersonal suffixes are laid out in Table 5.

**šaxônčùsônk** think.IMPF-NEG-1s.3 “I’m not thinking about it”

**yînčùskûk** see.IMPF-NEG-3.REFL “they can’t see themselves”

#### Reflexive and reciprocal construction

The reflexive form of a verb is derived from the same pronoun as subject and object.

Reflexive: **yîmômôm** “I see myself”

Reciprocal phrases are created using the auxiliary verb **nêtêr** “share”, conjugated reflexively.

**ùgra nêtkûk čâsč** PERF share-3.REFL kill-INF “they kill each other”

#### Infinitives and antipassives

The infinitive and antipassive forms of the verb both use an indefinite pronoun suffix meaning “someone” or “something.” Depending on which of the original indefinite pronouns this was (\*ter “someone”, \*cu “something animate”, or \*hāġ “something inanimate”), the modern morphology of the infinitive and antipassive forms differs from verb to verb (Table 6).

Paradigm 1 includes verbs with historically human subjects, sometimes with human objects. Most verbs fall under this paradigm, and this is where most new verbs fall. Paradigm 2 includes transitive (or formerly transitive) verbs with historically human subjects and non-human animate objects. This is a closed class, and includes the fewest modern verbs. Paradigm 3 includes transitive and intransitive verbs with historically animate subjects (human or non-) and inanimate objects.

Infinitive/gerundive:

**rguxter** “to walk; walking”

**šaxônčâg** “to think (about something); thinking (about something)”

**krîtlônk pwâčâg** discourage.IMPF-1s.3 stack-INF “I discourage stacking”

A fourth class of verbs exists entirely in the infinitive with an inanimate subject and no object, and exist as complete verb phrases in this form. These are stative verbs like “rain”, “be dark,” “be cold” and are mostly related to weather or other environmental conditions:

**yukyâg** “it’s raining”

**tyûyâg** “the moon is out”

**yùtyâg** “it’s sunny”

**gùčoyâg** “it’s dark out/in here”

**dwûnyâg** “it’s hot out/in here”

**wôgwayâg** “it’s cold out/in here”

Antipassive/detransitive: **yîmômpter** “I see something”

### TAM auxiliary verbs

These words do not behave like verbs in the sense that they are not inflected for subject, object, and negativity, and in fact are only able to take a single prefix (**sùt**) for questions. They are used to convey only a specific set of tense, aspect, and mood combinations. In the protolanguage, the past and future tenses were conveyed using words related to “predict” and “memory”, and were used with prepositions meaning “beside,” “ahead,” “away,” and “far away” to convey where in time relative to the present they occurred. These prepositions were used the same in both the past and future tense, which is thought to reflect ancestral ideas about the circularity of time. Today, these verbs and prepositions have become agglutinated into fixed combinations with specific modal and aspectual information (labeled I, II, or III according to their prepositional ancestry), depending on whether they precede verbs in their perfective or imperfective forms. Table 7 shows the auxiliaries in their declarative forms.

**šwôgûx nônôrunônk yuxsâč** PAST.I eat.PERF-1s.3 cookie “I ate the cookie”

**gwûnôgûx nônôrunônk yuxsâč** FUT.I eat.PERF-1s.3 cookie “I’m about to eat the cookie”

**yalôgux nônôrumpuk yuxsâč** IMPR.I eat.PERF-2s.3 cookie “eat the cookie”

**šwêčunka nônôrunônk yuxsâč** PAST.II eat.PERF-1s.3 cookie “I had eaten the cookie”

**gwûnčûnka nônôrunônk yuxsâč** FUT.II eat.PERF-1s.3 cookie “I will have eaten the cookie”

**yalrgux nônôrumpuk yuxsâč** IMPR.II eat.PERF-2s.3 cookie “you must eat the cookie”

**šwêkêb nônôrunkyûl yuxsâč** PAST.III eat.PERF-3.3 cookie “long ago, they ate the cookie”

**gwûnkêb nônôrunônk yuxsâč** FUT.III eat.PERF-1s.3 cookie “eventually, I’ll eat the cookie”

**yâlkêb nônôrumpuk yuxsâč** IMPR.III eat.PERF-2s.3 cookie “you should eat the cookie”

**šwôgûx nôrunônk yuxsâč** PAST.I eat.IMPF-1s.3 cookie “I was eating the cookie”

**gwûnôgûx nôrunônk yuxsâč** FUT.I eat.IMPF-1s.3 cookie “I start to eat the cookie”

**šwêčunka nôrunônk yuxsâč** PAST.II eat.IMPF-1s.3 cookie “I habitually ate cookies ”

**gwûnčûnka nôrunônk yuxsâč** FUT.II eat.IMPF-1s.3 cookie “I eat cookies more and more”

**šwêkêb nôrunônk yuxsâč** PAST.III eat.IMPF-1s.3 cookie “I no longer eat cookies”

**gwûnkêb norûnkyûl arâgxùx kêblb** FUT.III eat.IMPF-3.3 snakes birds “snakes eat birds”

### Interrogatives

Any sentence can be made into a question by adding the **sùt-** prefix to the main verb in the sentence:

**sùčaxônčùspùk čùyùkùk** QUESTION.think.about.IMPF-NEG-2s.3 planets “aren’t you thinking about planets?

TAM auxiliaries also take the **sùt-** prefix (Table 8):

### Passive voice

Take for, for example, this active sentence: **norûnkyûl yâmok uxsâč** eat.IMPF-3.3 human cake “the human is eating the cake”

In the passive, SLOG uses the passive phrase **yrk uxsâč**. It is useful to know that the word **yrk** is derived from a verb meaning “obey”, so we can think of the patient in the passive sentence as obeying a command from the agent. In this case, the “command” is the phrase **norûnkyûl yâmôk** “the human eats it,” referring to the cake.

**yryûlk uxsâč norûnkyûl (yâmôk)** PASSIVE-4 cake eat.IMPF-3.4 human “the cake is being eaten (by the human)”

The passive particle no longer carries any specific semantic weight other than conveying the passive voice, but is still inflected for the number and person of the patient. In passive construction, a would-be third person patient is always obviative.

Table 9. Passive particles inflected for the patient of a passive sentence.
 Singular
 Exclusive

### Causative sentences

Causation is accomplished in a manner similar to the passive voice, and can be analyzed diachronically from the perspective of a command; the causative particle **yal-** is derived from the old verb meaning “command”. Take the following sentence:

**nônôrunkyûl yâmôkôk uxsâč** eat.PERF-3.4 humans cake “the humans eat the cake”

We can take the subject of the original sentence, **yâmôkôk**, and have it obey the command **nônôrunkyûl uxsâč**:

**yâltk nônôrunkyûl yâmôkôk uxsâč** CAUS-indef eat.PERF-3.4 humans cake “The humans are made to eat the cake” (lit. “someone makes the humans eat the cake”)

The causative particles are inflected in pretty much the exact same way as the passive particles (Table 10), and also have lost semantic weight other than implying causality. However, unlike with passive construction, there is a third person form of the causative particle, chiefly used for non-pronominal “commanders”.

Table 10. Causative particles
 Singular
 Exclusive

Compare:

**yâlk nùmxwûn xùyùpwêkyâg paxwûnûn** CAUS-3 teacher read.PERF-3.indef students “the teacher has the students read something”

vs.

**yalyûlk xùyùpwêkyâg paxwûnûn** CAUS-4 read.PERF-3.indef students “they have the students read something”

or

**yalyûlk xùyùpwêkyâg** CAUS-4 read.PERF-3.indef “they have them read something”

1. ↑ Not considered a mass noun
2. ↑ The second person plural possessive infix only applies to words that begin with š followed by a vowel. To contrast, compare **yîm pešxûnxûg** “y’all’s flowers”
3. ↑ In this case, the possessee is the murder, and the possessor is the abstract “you witness it.” The affix on the possessee is thus in the third person, but since the possessee starts with **k**, it doesn’t change.
4. ↑ Whether the stem is *mi-* or *y-* depends on the subject and object.
5. ↑ The verb *nùmyrter* is now used to mean "obey" or "serve"
6. ↑ [jrk]
7. ↑ The verbs *pyêrter* and *ùyrter* are now used to mean "command"
8. ↑ Pronounced identically to the 3rd person form [jælk]