A Grammar of Ciran

Ciran— called noa goveša ‘the Speech’ by its speakers— is the language of about 55 million people in the Aravalian Plain in the northern hemisphere of Erea. It is the official language of the Kingdom of Ciran, as well as in Delon, Carmina, Ždol, and many other Aravalian states. It is also widely spoken in many areas of Fareo and the Garganaš.

Ciran is heavily dialectalized, with regional variants being found in each Cirani province and in each state. The standard language under Cirani law, and the literary language of much of the Plain, is the Medine dialect, the dialect of the capital Ciran City.

Besides Medine, only two other dialects have literary significance: Ášle, the dialect spoken in Ášla, due to the importance of the city in printing and performing arts; and Delone, the dialect of Delon, the former imperial capital. Neither of these is strikingly different than Medine, and in written form they are almost indistinguishable. The more divergent dialects are largely rural and unwritten.

Phonology

Consonants

Allophonic variation

r has several allophones depending on dialect. Medine speech tends to favor that of a lateral, non-retroflex approximant, while Ašle favors an uvular approximant. Delone and several rural dialects have an alveolar trill instead.

Vowels

All vowels are pronounced clear and distinct. Medine dialect does not have diphthongs, though in rapid speech ai, au, ei, ou tend to diphthongize.

There is no length distinction, though there is a slight quality distinction. e and o in open syllables tend to be pronounced more open, while in closed syllables they tend to be pronounced more closed. When stressed, either implicitly or when explicitly marked (é, ó), these vowels also tend to be pronounced more open.

Stress

Stress regularly falls on the penultimate syllable. Irregular stress is marked with an accent.

Phonological constraints

Broadly, Medine has a regular CVC syllable structure.

Acceptable initial clusters:

• any voiceless fricative + t: ft, st, št
• any voiced stop or fricative + l, r: gl, dr, vr
• s + f, v, n, m
• t, f + s
• mn

Acceptable final clusters:

• any voiceless stop + s: ps, ts
• l, r + any voiced stop or fricative: lv, rž
• any nasal + any voiced stop of the same articulation: mb, nd, ng, *mg

Examples: fseg-da, žro-vle

Verbal Morphology

The Ciran verb is heavily inflected for person, number, mood, and tense.

Present (éron)

In the -ar conjugation, verbs with stems ending in -c or -g change to -š or -ž, respectively, in the II.s. and III.s:

• pocar 'to drift': pocao, pošeo, poše, pocon, pocoš, pocu
• legar 'to read': legao, ležeo, leže, legon, legoš, legu

In the -en conjugation, verbs with stems ending in -š or -ž change to -c or -g, respectively, in the I.s., II.pl., and III.pl. In the -ir conjugation, the same shift happens, but only in the I.s:

• sešen 'to dry': seco, sešeu, seše, secun, secoš, secu
• nežir 'to sleep': negai, nežei, neže, nežen, nežeš, nežü

Historically, these alternations are the result of sound change from Araval. Where Araval had legeo, sound change caused the g to shift to ž, producing the modern form ležeo.

Interestingly, Old Ciran showed a tendency to generalize these irregular shifts, rather than eliminate them, so that verbs fitting the candidate pattern were altered, even though they may not have been subject to the original sound change that motivated the alternation.

For example, tašir 'to break' has I.s. form tacai even though the Araval form is actually tatsir with I.s. tatsai which should have yielded *tašai following the correct sound changes.

Some verbs have irregular stems:

• esar 'to be': ao, eo, e, son, soš, su
• far 'to do': fassao, fasseo, faš, fasson, fassoš, fassu

Past

The past is formed from the present by infixing the final letter of the infinitive between the verb stem and the personal endings.

Due to sound change, there are a number of root alternations that occur when forming the past tense forms:

In -ar and -ir:

• *tr, *sr → šr, *dr, *zr → žr
• *pr → fr
• *br → vr
• *lr, *rr → dr

In -en:

• *tn, *cn → sn, *dn, *gn → žn
• *bn, *pn, *mn → mm

Additionally, a number of verbs use irregular verb stems in the past:

• esar 'to be': fuao, fueo, fue, fuon, fuoš, fu

Past anterior

The past anterior is formed by inserting -ec- into the past tense forms, after the past infix.

The same root alternations that occur in the present tense for roots ending in -c occur in the past anterior when the -ec- infix is inserted.

• esar 'to be': fucao, fušeo, fuš, fucon, fucoš, fucu

Future

The future is formed by infixing -et- into the present tense forms.

• esar 'to be': sedo, sede, se, seton, setoš, setu

Irrealis

The irrealis is formed from the present using the infix -iš-

The irrealis derives from the use of the auxiliary iscien 'perhaps, maybe'. The full form survives today as išen.

Nominal Morphology

Number

Ciran expresses two numbers: singular, and plural. These operate as expected.

Gender

Ciran is inflected for two genders: masculine (óme) and feminine (žene).

• Masculine nouns end in -o, -u, -a, or a consonant, take masculine adjectives, and use the ír pronoun.
• Feminine nouns end in -a, -i, or a consonant, take feminine adjectives, and use the íre pronounc.

As is evident from the list above, nouns in -a or a consonant are ambiguous. In practice, these can usually be disambiguated by the genitive singular.

For the most part, gender is an arbitrary classification of nouns based on declensional forms, and there is little significance attached to the gender of a word: trees (ama, f.) are not seen as "more feminine" than hills (tul, m.) simply due to the grammatical gender of the words.

Occupational titles

In Old Ciran, many occupational titles had gender-specific versions which were used in accordance with the biological gender of the referent.

In most cases, the root word is masculine and a feminine form is derived from it by removing any final vowel and replacing it with -a: maréžo 'shepherd', maréža 'shepherdess'.

In modern speech, these gender-specific forms have fallen out of use, and it is now considered correct to use the root word for all referents, regardless of sex.

The exception to this is with noble titles, which retain separate forms for different genders: éran 'king', tira 'queen'; saž 'prince', zivresa 'princess'.

Animals

In general, there are three nouns that can refer to an animal: one for males, one for females, and a category term. If the category term is not available, the masculine term is used instead.

Case

Nouns are inflected for four cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative. For many nouns, the nominative and accusative singular are identical; additionally, there has been much leveling in the plural forms.

Principal parts

In order to fully disambiguate a noun, both the nominative singular and the genitive singular are required, due to ambiguities in the nominative. These two forms are refered to as the principal parts, and are listed in the dictionary definition of every noun.

Thus a dictionary entry might look like the following:

mona, -i (n.) - word

Nominative case

Accusative case

The accusative case is almost entirely identical to the nominative case. The exception is in instances where a final vowel was lost due to sound change.

The Araval accusative was formed with final -m. This sound was lost, likely due to nasalization, but guarded final vowels from also being lost due to sound change.

Genitive case

The genitive case shows significant leveling across all forms, especially in the feminine where all forms are identical.

Historically, the genitive in Araval was formed with -i. This caused significant vowel change in the transition to Old Ciran, which was simplified as that language evolved into modern Ciran.

Dative case

The dative has a very similar form to the nominative, but with the added -n ending. This ending caused some fronting in the vowels of the feminine, which combined with leveling and analogy, produced the present forms.

Adjectival morphology

For the most part, adjectives are declined like nouns with the same ending.

Each adjective has separate forms for each of the two genders. Depending on the set of endings used, an adjective may belong to one of four declensions:

• I: consonant, *-a
• II: -e, -i
• III: -u, -ü
• IV: -o, -ö

The forms are summarized below:

Articles

The definite article is no 'the'. Historically, the article derives from the Araval demonstrative nox, an intensive used to emphasize the proximal relationship of the noun to the speaker.

While many forms are orthographically nearly identical, the spread of phonetic forms is even narrower, and in rapid speech, only one or two distinct forms may surface.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

The personal prounouns are:

Demonstrative pronouns

Ciran has only one set of demonstrative pronouns, lacking the distinction between near and far referents.

The demonstrative clitics -sa and -si can be attached to the noun to disambiguate between two groups.

Interrogative pronouns

šedül 'why' and šema 'how' are invariant.

Derivational morphology

Nominalizers

• -až-: pejorative

cenu 'dog' → cenažu 'cur'

• -ea: action, process

govar 'speak' → govea 'a speech'
promen 'walk' → promea 'a walk'

• -ašo: concrete manifestation, product

carin 'red' → carinašo 'the color red'
mažen 'eat' → magašo 'food'
rumana 'cow' → rumažo 'beef'

• -ido: member, follower, inhabitant

Ciran → Ciranido
Sele → Selido

• -ežin: collective group

cest 'category' → cestežin 'the Categories (taxonomy)'
voža 'bird' → vožin 'flock'

• -eša: abstraction, quality

carin 'red' → carineša 'redness'
cozo 'friend' → coša 'friendship'
mnesir 'know' → mneša 'knowledge'

• -on-: augmentative

doma 'house' → domona 'mansion'

• -eo: associated place

aš 'god' → ašeo 'temple'
mare 'sheep' → mareo 'sheepfold'

• o-: laudative

• -uca: the smallest part, fundamental unit

cazin 'chain' → cazinuca 'link (of chain)'
re 'thing, matter' → ruca 'atom'

• -ol-: diminutive

cenu 'dog' → cenolu 'puppy'

• -iš tool, instrument (forms feminines)

žüir 'play' → žüiš 'toy'

• container, holder, sheath

Adjectivizers

• -e

This is the most basic of adjectivizers and also the broadest. Almost any noun can be turned into an adjective by replacing the final vowel with -e (or -é in the case of feminine nouns ending in a consonant).

mezin 'city' → mezine 'urban'

The use of the verb

This section deals primarily with canonical, unmarked verb usage. Transformations are handled separately.

Tense usage

There are four separate conceptual times of action: the far past, the past, the present, and the future. These correspond to the past anterior, the past, the present, and the future tenses.

Amona óta e frosna üla vrežna štažreše.
Long ago a great, tall tree stood in the old forest.

E medinan cuman ftonren.
We rode into the city yesterday.

Mažra žue züma mate!
Mother is cooking tomato soup!

Cir žemai cai zevašran privete.
My husband's ship will arrive tomorrow.

Reflexives

When the object and subject of the verb are the same, the verb is considered reflexive.

In the first and second persons, reflexivity is signalled simply by using the corresponding pronoun (but see below for a special case of first person reflexives).

In the third person singular, the special reflexive pronoun zo is used. Zo declines like eo and refers back to the subject for its antecedent. Compare:

Iro lavre
He washed him (someone else).

Zo lavre
He washed himself.

Ciran often uses reflexives for passive constructions:

Ciran-medina zelen zo naše.
Ciran-city is located (lit: finds itself) on the sea.

Mato avon za corfu.
Tomatoes are sold (lit: sell themselves) here.

The use of the noun

Nominative

The nominative is used primarily for the subject of a sentence.

Cavaložo medinan vec žemau zivrese privre.
The horseman arrived in the city with the princess's husband.

It is also used for predicate nominatives and to express equivalence.

Lüm lüra e.
My pet is a cat.

Accusative

The accusative is chiefly used for the direct object of a sentence.

Ženula ton morašne rea poza.
The waitress brought three beers for us.

It is also the usual case for use with prepositions.

Cavaložo medinan vec žemau zivrese privre.
The horseman arrived in the city with the princess's husband.

Genitive

The genitive is primarily used to express possession. It follows the possessed object.

Cavaložo medinan vec žemau zivrese privre.
The horseman arrived in the city with the princess's husband.

It is also used to express composition or partitive meanings.

Su volao loni, volao pozi.
I don't want any milk. I want some beer.

With prepositions, the genitive conveys movement away.

A medine lužen.
We're going away from the city.

Dative

The dative is primarily used to mark the indirect object.

Maža dere lédo Cašan.
Mother gave Cašan her gift.

With prepositions, the genitive convey movement towards.

A medinan lužen.
We're going away towards the city.

Expressions of time and simple location often use the dative alone with no preposition.

Corfeon štaden.
We are standing in the plaza.

Cir žemai cai zevašran privete.
My husband's ship will arrive tomorrow.

The noun phrase

Order of constituents

The canonical order of constituents is as follows:

determiner + (adjectives) + noun + adjectives + genitive + prep. phrases

In general adjectives follow the noun. However, there is a tendency to place single adjectives that are closely tied to the noun in front.

Agreement

Adjectives which modify nouns must agree with the noun in number, gender, and case.

Cirežo žun dere pomo carino coran pišnin érani mužri.
The young sailor gave the red apples to the wise king's beautiful daughter.

Comparatives and superlatives

The comparative particles gan 'more', lan 'less', and ašé 'equal' are used to form both comparative and superlative expressions.

carin 'red'
gan carin 'more red'
no gan carin 'the most red'
lan carin 'less red'
no lan carin 'the least red'
ažé carin 'as red'

Comparatives use tel to introduce the basis of comparison, which is placed in the nominative. The adjective agrees with the subject.

Žé pomo-si tel žé pomo-sa e gan carin.
These apples are redder than those apples.

Superlatives use the genitive to introduce the category.

Articles

Indefinite article

Ciran does not use indefinite articles. An undetermined noun is understood as indefinite: éran '(a) king'.

In the plural, the partitive can be used to express that only a part or some of an object is unders consideration.

Definite article

The definite article is no 'the'. Its pragmatic meaning is that the particular referent should be obvious to the listener.

No is avoided in prepositional phrases, locative expressions, and genitives. If a particular referent is repeated, no need only be used once.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

There are eight personal pronouns and two reflexive pronouns.

Subject pronouns

Normally subject pronouns are not needed as the verb conjugation conveys the person and number of the subject.

When the subject forms are used, they add emphasis.

Ir dožne na óma!
It was him who killed the man!

The third person subject pronouns may be used to disambiguate without added emphasis.

Saža ec vrožo lužetu a aline ži zori car ir moratete pozi.
My sister and my brother are going to the party tonight, but he will be bringing the beers.

Object pronouns

Object pronouns precede the verb. They are placed closest to the verb, after any adverbs.

Datives precede accusatives when both are present.

'He', 'she', and 'it'

When referring to a person or object, only ir or ira may be used. Normally, the pronoun matches the grammatical gender of the noun it replaces.

Že cer smavu e, iro ženito.
This bread is tasty. I enjoy it (lit: him).

If the grammatical gender of a noun does not match the natural gender of the referent, the pronoun may be changed to match the referent's natural gender.

Noa saž žuna ec cenu iri osnu meš eždeon.
The young (f.) prince (f.) and his (not her) dog walked down the road.

Eo is used exclusively to refer to clauses and other grammatical constructions without grammatical gender.

Reflexive pronouns

The reflexive zo and za are used in third-person expressions where the object has the same antecedent as the subject.

In the plural, za conveys the idea that each individual acted upon his or her own self. If the intended meaning is that hte individuals in a group acted upon each other, the special phrase lican is added. Compare:

Za lavru.
They washed themselves.

Lican za lavru.
They washed each other.

Impersonal pronouns

Eo is also used as an impersonal pronoun. When used in this way, it is translated as 'one', 'someone', or 'people'.

Ir šrande tel eo mnese.
People think he's smart.

Correlatives

In Cirani grammar, the indefinite and interrogative pronouns are grouped together as the 'pointers', which we may call correlatives. They can be arranged in a table as follows:

The adjective and person forms decline regularly. The rest are invariant.

Relative pronouns

The demonstrative pronouns also serve as the relative pronouns.

Ca dožno že omo. Ir e no omo aro dožno.
I killed that man. He is the man that I killed.

Sentences

Word order

The basic word order is SVO, or Subject-Verb-Object:

Vrožo cai mažne mato.
My brother ate a tomato.

Accusatives normally precede datives:

Vrožo cai dere mato Cašan.
My brother gave a tomato to Caša.

When the direct or indirect object is a pronoun, it is placed before the verb. The same ordering of accusatives and datives applies:

Vrožo cai irom iran dere.
My brother gave it to her.

Adverbs and prepositional phrases are normally placed immediately before the verb. If there are any pronomial objects, the adverb or prepositional phrase is placed before them:

Vrožo cai linda a medinan lužre.
My brother quickly went to the city.

Sample texts

The North Wind and the Sun

This is a standard translation text used for demonstrating a lanuage.

No dral erio ec noa lor

No dral erio ec noa lor še vriu zole toi tel gogovu don lužežo ano brole žašen vurižin prive. Došo ano faš mušalar žaše lužežon tel vóže vriu zole ótron e tel mene ovu.

Cen dral erio ano pode tel aše zolna ude– car lužežo vriu težna brole žaše tel dral erio vriu zolna ude. Nefan eon ecluže.

Cen lor vurižna sile– ec donna lužežo mušale žaše. No dral erio lor vriu zole iron tel osna duve.

The North Wind and the Sun

The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which of them was stronger, when a traveller came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveller take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other.

Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew, the more closely did the traveller fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt.

Then the Sun shone out warmly, and immediately the traveller took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.