Theetiaimlowy

# Phonology and romanization

## Vowels

 æ
 e
 i
 ɨ
 ɔ
 o
 u

# Basic translations

Never delete these. And they must be completed before you publish this sheet. Translate the following words, phrases, and sentences to the language:

# Addtional information

Theeti is a SOV synthetic language spoken by the Aimlowy. It has some points of contact with the Tadzi vocabulary, but the evolution of the language has made them difficult to identify now.

## Parts of speech

Every word can be a noun, a verb or an adjective, depending on its context. For example, the word 'gal', meaning 'eye' can mean the body part (as in 'thu gal feelyl', 'I close my eyes'), to see (as in 'thateel iwam gal', 'the man sees the woman') or 'eyed' (as in 'thateelgalleegyn', 'the man with the black eyes').

The noun that comes first is the one most relevant in its group.

### Pronouns

The basic Theeti pronouns are:

 2nd
 3rd

In reality there are many more, which can be generated using the usual noun declination and the plural form.

'eetophu' means 'we two', 'eetothee' 'we three', 'eetogee' 'the few of us' (when more than three). The forms in -da, such as 'eetoda', mean 'we all', 'you all' etc.

If the pronoun follows a noun, it acts as a possessive adjective ('inomthu', 'my house'). It's important that in compound words the possessive comes directly after the main noun, to avoid confusion with the other elements of the sentence.

### Nouns

Nouns don't have gender. They are declined in number and have a singular, dual, trial, paucal and plural form, each one encoded with a suffix.

 Dual
 Trial
 Paucal
 Plural

Some nouns derive from periphrasis, like Leethlowigal ('he who watches the water') and have an irregular plural form (Eleethlowigal, 'they who watch the water').

However, some other periphrastic nouns such as Leethooalui ('he who helps'), being relatively new in the language, follow the usual rules ('Leethooaluida', 'the helpers').

Nouns can often encapsulate entire sentences and relative clauses are formed this way. A sentence like 'I saw the woman who gave the children food' becomes 'I saw the children-giving-(past)-woman' and is translated to 'thu iwamkhymkoomedilbuylsyw galbu'. 'iwamkhymkoomedilbuylsyw' could be also an individual sentence: in that case, it would sound like 'iwam khymkoo medilbuylsyw', meaning 'the woman children-gave food'.

When creating compound nouns, as in every word, the first one is the main focus of the sentence. Sometimes multiple nouns can be merged together as one word, namely when two subjects share a verb, two verbs share a subject and/or object and similar cases. For example, 'the man and the woman eat' translates to 'thateeliwam ooal khymkoo', with 'thateeliwam' meaning 'the man and the woman'. It could also mean 'the woman-like man', but the only way to distinguish the two meaning is through context.

### Adjectives

There aren't words which are exclusively adjectives without being a verb and a noun too. Adjectives follow the noun they refer to and don't have to agree in number. Instead they merge with the noun and form a new word, which can then be declinated as usual. 'The tall man' translates to 'thateelemsam', 'the tall men' translates to 'thateelemsamda'. Often an adjective is a whole sentence, as in the previous examples.

### Verbs

#### To be

There isn't a verb for 'to be'. To say 'I am tall' you simply say 'thu emsam', since 'emsam' means 'tall' but also 'to be tall'. That wasn't always the case: the proto-verb 'khy' (Taadzi 'kii') was used to convey the meaning of 'to be'. 'I am tall' was originally 'thu emsam khy', but the verb ended up being barely pronounced in normal speech and disapperead. It is still found in some ritual formulas and particular expressions.

#### Tenses

There are 8 different tenses:

 Remote past
 Past
 Near Past
 Present
 Near Future
 Distant Future
 Indefinite Future

The Present remains unmarked.

Future tenses take the 'dee' marker and reduplicate (with some changes) it to go further in the future:

 Future

Past tenses take the 'bu' marker and apply a similar strategy:

 Past
 Remote Past

Indefinite tenses take the first past/future marker and combine it with the 'mo' suffix.

 Indefinite Past

#### Moods

There are 4 different moods:

 Indicative
 Imperative
 Dubitative

Not all tense/mood combinations work:

* Hypothetical mood can be used with all non-Indefinite tenses.
* Indicative mood can be used with Present and all Past tenses.
* Imperative mood can be used with Present and all Future tenses.
* Dubitative mood can be used with all non-Indefinite tenses. It is mandatory to use it with the Future tenses if not in a Hypothetical construction.

Here is a table:

To create verb form, you follow the usual SOV pattern, but this time as VMT (verb-mood-tense).

#### The passive voice

The passive voice is formed by suffixing the active verbal form with -fy.

Often it is used to form the equivalent of past participles using the verb in the passive form as an adjective.

#### Negative voice

The negative voice is formed by suffixing the base voice with '-sym'.

## Syntax

Every sentence is divided in three groups: subject group, object group, verb group. Everything must be placed within these groups and every one of them must be a single word. A grammatically correct sentence thus consists of three separated words. While allowed in some cases and generally intellegible, longer constructions sound unfamiliar and incorrect, so they are usually avoided.

```
e.g.: The man eats the food
	thateel		alygu		khymkoo
	The man		the food	eat
```

### Subject group

It's always the first word of a sentence and contains all information about the subject/subjects of the sentence.

All subjects are put one after the other with their adjectives/adposition etc.

```
The man and the woman eat the food.
	thateeliwam	alygu	khymkoo
	man-woman	food	eat

The tall man and the strong woman eat the food.
	thateelemsamiwamnukeel	alygu	khymkoo
	man-tall-woman-strong	food	eat
```

### Object group

The object group contains everything related to direct and indirect object. Such a distintion doesn't really exist, since all verbs must take an object by default. To form sentences as "I sleep", "I live" the object would be the verb repeated as a noun ('thu daly daly' = 'I sleep a sleep'). To avoid repeating the same word, the particle 'ooal' is put in place of the object ('thu ooal daly' = 'I sleep it' = 'I sleep').

When the verb can have multiple arguments (like 'to give someone something'), the object group hosts only the direct object and all other modifiers merge with the verb ('to someone-give something').

### Verb group

The third and last group is the verb group. It works exactly as the previous ones. Since there's no real distinction between parts of speech, the verb can be modified with adjectives as any other word.

### SOV pattern and sub patterns

The global structure of a sentence is generally:

```
		SUBJECT		OBJECT		VERB
```
This basic pattern can be repeated indefinitely inside of the Subject and Object subgroups (as long as the sentence remains fairly easy to parse). The verb group can only take an additional Object group, which can then be divided as we mentioned. This allows for more complex constructions, like:

```
		S				O				V
 S O V S O
 SOV

 The man the food takes
 sees (from) tree
 the woman tree is tall

thateeliwamgal khymkoo fyphibalemsam

The man who sees the woman takes the food from the tall tree.
```
'thateeliwamgal' could have other nested groups inside of it, as for example:

```
S			O						V
thateel S O V gal

			iwam	feelyl	gal
```
= 'thateeliwamfeelylgalgal' (meaning 'the man who sees the woman who closes her eyes').

Although tricky to pronounce and parse, such constructions are frequently used and the stress pattern of the word helps the speakers resolve ambiguities.

### Subordinate clauses

In Theeti coordinates are generally preferred and explicit constructions are always converted to implicit when possible, concatenating words. Other clauses rely on verb moods and their combination in the principal and dependent clause. For example:

* temporal clauses use the Hypothetical mood in the dependent clause and the Indicative in the principal.
	+ 'when I go home, I eat' becomes 'if I go-(Hyp) home, I eat-(Ind)'
* hypothetical clauses use the Hypothetical mood in the dependent clause and the Dubitative in the principal.
	+ 'if I go-(Hyp) home, I eat-(Dub)'
* causative clauses are formed either by placing independent and dependent clause one after the other as coordinates or by adjectivating the main verb
	+ 'I eat because I am at home' becomes either 'I eat. I am at home' or 'I being-at-home-eat'

Some tenses don't allow certain moods: when a mood tense combination isn't available, the verb takes the next possible mood in this order: Indicative, Dubitative, Hypothetical.

### Questions

Questions are formed using the Dubitative mood. Question words like 'who', 'where' become the object of the verb and the original direct and indirect objects become adjectives of the verb.

## Numerals

The number system used in Theeti is complex and counterintuitive for non natives: it's based on a particular way to count on the hands which allows one to count up to 150.

One hand counts the numbers 1 to 5 on a phalanx of the other. Every five numbers a new phalanx is added. The counting starts already on the first phalanx, so on a single finger you can count up to 15 (5 + 2\*5). After a finger is complete, you go to the next and repeat the process. In this way you can count up to 75. When the hand is finished, you close it and continue, up to 150. The problem with this number system is that a hand is considered to be finished not on its last finger, but on the next one. In this way 'geese', 'a hand', means 6 and not 5, and 'two hands' means 11. The same applies to fingers and whole hands. 'a finger'('um') means 16 (not 15), 'two fingers' means 31 and so on adding 15 each time. A 'closed hand' ('feelyl') means 75 and so on.

This derives from the original forms '(nge)geese', '(nge)um', '(nge)feelyl' which meant 'one plus a hand/finger/closed hand', but the 'nge' was eventually dropped and lead to the present system.

## Stress pattern

The stress always falls on the last syllable of a word. When there are longer words, minor stresses are put on the last syllable of each subgroup to make the sentence more intellegible.

```
'the man who builds the house by the river'
'thateelinomluilsilumta'
'thatéel-inomluìl-silumtà'
'man/by-the-river-house/build'
```