This page remains in-construction: read with the knowlege that much of this is subject to revision and later addition.

Mkvíele is a semi-fusional, mixed but predominantly head-initial language with extensive nominal and verbal morphology, in addition to a quite complex, logographic writing system. If I had to compare it to any of our worlds’ languages, I would have to phrase it like this: phonologically, it is at times remniscent of Icelandic, in other ways of Finnish, yet some consonant clusters are remniscent of Georgian (though never quite as long, sadly) and its historical syllable structure (which peeks through in the particular way that modern syllables are structured) is quite similar to Japanese. It features systems akin to both the consonant gradation of Northern Sami and the consonant mutation of Irish, and it is after this latter language that its verbs are modeled. Nouns, on the other hand, are closer to something like Hungarian, though not featuring quite as many cases. I purposefully kept any resemblances to natural languages rather light, not wanting Mkvíele to become a relex and hoping to ensure it retained a particular aesthetic uniquely its own. All in all, I’m quite pleased with the result.

For a sample, here is a quick translation of the first line of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis:

Yeviré khivestéye yamá vana kháesrasa yekhiveliré Gregor Samsa-va matsrtáya layesíye yavarráyen ven na hatta.

[jevireː hiveɕtʰeːje jamaː vana haːesɾ̥asa jehivelireː kɾ̥ekor samsa mat͡sʰɾ̥taːja lajesiːje javar̥aːjen ven na hatːʰa]

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

1.1 | LORE

Mkvíele is spoken by around 8,015,400 people on the island of Vareuna—a nation of around 13,819,651, located amidst a chain of islands in the far south, of which it is the largest. These eight million speakers are mostly bilingual or multilingual, also speaking languages descended from Classical Mkvíele; others indigenous to Vareuna; or those of the nearby mainland, of the Lian language family. This linguistic diversity is reflected in the various dialects of Mkvíele which one may find across the nation.

For a period of around twenty-five hundred years, Mkvíele had no official status on the island—the official language being that of the ruling elite, foreigners from the mainland who spoke Lian languages and engaged little with the languages and cultures of the native inhabitants. However, a series of political shifts on the mainland saw Vareuna returned to the hands of a Mkvíerre (Mkvíele-speaking) aristocracy. These Mkvíerre spoke an archaic Mkvíele, a fossilized form of the language from just before Lian rule, and it was this classical tongue which saw a revival amongst the disparate communities of Vareuna. This form of Mkvíele had always served as a liturgical, literary, and scholarly language amongst the island’s inhabitants, but it had been many centuries since it had served as anyone’s native tongue.

For a period of forty years, various republican governments were formed and abandoned as the new aristocracy and the rising middle classes attempted to iron out a government which suited their ideals and customs, but all this was irrevocably altered by a popular revolution which ushered in the dictatorship of a man named Saléusara. Passing various language laws, he brought the percentage of speakers of Mkvíele up from the mid twenties to the fifties, at the cost of many indigenous languages which were stamped out in favor of Mkvíele. After forty-eight years of despotic rule, a second revolution ushered in the Fifth Republic and greater freedoms, both personally and linguistically, for the inhabitants of Vareuna.

Still, Mkvíele remains the most spoken language of the island, and it serves in an official capacity in government, the arts, and the sciences. It is also an important liturgical tongue, though religiosity is waning amongst the populace—many still go to temples or shrines for prayer or simply some peace and quiet, repeating mantras in the old tongue even if they profess no belief in spirits or supernatural forces.

The current government, the Sixth Republic, has passed laws making various indigenous languages co-official with Mkvíele, but they continue to decline, the effects of the past governments’ policies nigh irrevocable in most cases. Still, healthy communities exist across the islands of the nation, and some still hold out hope that—like Mkvíele itself—they may experience resurrections and revivals of their own.

1.2 | FEATURES OF THE LANGUAGE

We’ll touch more on this once we reach the sections on nouns and verbs, but understanding why Mkvíele’s grammar is the way it is requires some knowledge of its history. Broadly speaking, most features can be understood within the context of a century-spanning shift from the ancient language, an SOV, strictly head-final, agglutinative language to the classical, VSO, non-rigidly head-initial, fusional language and on to the modern, mostly SVO, head-initial, and analytic language. The form of Mkvíele we’ll be looking at sits in a strange midpoint, around that classical period, when the language still retained much of its agglutination but had, in some places, fused old endings together or dropped them entirely, yielding fusional or analytic structures.

This Classical Mkvíele, which we’ll just be calling Mkvíele, features bountiful conjugations, split ergativity, a reduced but still extensive case system, and a number of phonological alternations which contribute to the complexity of nominal and verbal morphology.

1.3 | CLOSING REMARKS

Mkvíele is, for the time being, the closest thing I have to a heartlang—for those who haven’t yet learned the Conlangers’ Grips, a heartlang is one’s personal language, a conlang closest to one’s heart. While it still attempts to remain broadly naturalistic, certain leniences are afforded to those features that I particularly enjoy: most obviously, the blend of a VSO word order with postpositions, something that is quite rare in the languages of our own world. I have tried to provide reasons for each structure’s existence, but it is for you to decide whether or not I am successful in persuading you to suspend at least a little disbelief. In any case, I hope you enjoy!

2.1 | CONSONANT INVENTORY

Characteristic to Mkvíele are its voiced fricative-approximants, as well as its inclusion of the dental fricative /θ/ and the voiceless liquids and nasals. The distinction in stops is less often based on voicedness and more on aspiration, but some dialects retain voiced “lenis” consonants and one wouldn’t be “wrong” in pronouncing them this way. The consonants in Mkvíele, while unique, aren’t overly complex.

Allophony is rampant in Mkvíele; coronal consonants are most vulnerable to this. Before front, high vowels, /t/ is pronounced /t͡ɕ/, and before back, high vowels, it is pronounced /t͡s/. Both of these occur regardless of aspiration. Similarly, /s n n̥/ are pronounced /ɕ ɲ ɲ̊/ before front, high vowels. This occurs even if the reduction rules “delete” that vowel.

2.2 | INITIAL CONSONANT MUTATION

Once upon a time, Mkvíele had a more robust animate-inanimate system in which inanimate nouns underwent particular kinds of initial consonant mutation, but time has worn away quite a bit from this language, and now initial mutations apply universally when one word is preceded by another, syntactically related word: a noun with a preposition, a noun and its verb, a verb and its particle, a verb and its converb, or a number of other circumstances which we’ll get into when they show up. Certain inflections also cause initial mutation, so it’s important to know how these work. There are two kinds of mutation: soft and nasal. Both only apply to stops.

You’ll notice with the asterisked example that the mutation of an initial stop can cause the following vowel not to reduce as it might in the citation form of the word. This can also occur with all of the unaspirated stops /p t k/. Thus, if a word like /piritʰe/—which would usually be pronounced [pɾ̥tʰe]—were to undergo initial mutation, it would be pronounced [viɾ̥tʰe].

2.3 | CONSONANT GRADATION

In certain circumstances, consonants undergo gradation whereby they change their realization, weakening or shortening. This usually occurs due to conjugation or declension adding some ending to the word. Here is a handy chart for these alternations:

Just like initial mutation, consonant gradation can cause situations to arise in which vowels that would usually reduce in the citation (default) form of words to remain voiced due to the change in their environment. Thus, if a word like /kansɯkʰɯ/—which would usually be realized as [kan̥skʰɯ]—were to undergo gradation, it would become [kan̥sɯjɯ].

Initial consonant mutation and consonant gradation can cooccur in a word, as well. If we take a look at our last example, if the word /kansɯkʰɯ/ were to undergo the soft mutation and consonant gradation, it would be pronounced [an̥sɯjɯ]. If we compare this to the usual realization, [kan̥skʰɯ], we can begin to realize how confusing this might be for learners. While most words have relatively similar realizations across the board, there are some (like this one) which can prove difficult.

2.4 | FLOATING SEGMENTS

A few suffixes have what is considered a “floating segment” which causes the gemination of any stop in the final syllable of the word they are attached to. For example, the suffix “-la” will cause gemination of any final stops, such as the one in /rite/. With this suffix, /rite/ becomes /ritːela/, undergoing a sort of reverse gradation (or fortition) which only affects non-geminate stops.

There exists at least one affix whose only segment is this floating segment, with which a word such as /rite/ might become /ritːe/. If a floating segment occurs alongside consonant gradation, the former applies before the latter, so /rite/ would become /ritːe/ with the floating segment, then gradate to /rite/ again, essentially canceling out. This can be a little confusing, as it might appear as though gradation is simply not occuring.

Overall, floating segments aren’t too common, but where they appear we’ll mark them with a /Q/. The aforementioned suffix would be represented (in isolation) as /Q-la/.

2.5 | VOWELS

Mkvíele has, all told, sixteen vowels. They can be neatly arranged into four columns based on frontedness and roundedness; each of these columns can be further divided on length and height. The first two qualities—frontedness and roundedness—are important for Mkvíele’s vowel harmony.

There isn’t much to be said regarding Mkvíele’s vowels if one is looking at the standard language, but some modern dialects—a subject we’ll surely discuss more later—have collapsed this system like so: front, rounded vowels have become their unrounded counterparts with the addition of a glide, /w/ (for example, /ø/ has become /we/), and the high unrounded and rounded back vowels have merged into /u/ which is almost always pronounced [ɯ̟]. Thus, their chart might look something like this:

This represents a relative minority among the speakers though, and the chart representing the standard language is much more pervasive.

2.6 | VOWEL HARMONY

As mentioned before, all vowels belong to one of four groups, each group containing two vowels (not accounting for length distinctions). This allows Mkvíele to have a nigh perfect vowel harmony system, in which all vowels in a word belong to the same group (or column). These groups are:

Vowel harmony is, sadly, not that simple. To explain, we should note that the first vowel in a word (specifically in its root, not accounting for affixes) is considered the trigger vowel. When looking at a particular vowel to determine how it should change to obey vowel harmony, that vowel is considered the target vowel.

In Mkvíele’s case, if the trigger vowel or the target vowel is high, then the target vowel agrees with the trigger vowel in frontedness, but if the trigger vowel and the target vowel are both low, then the target vowel only agrees with the trigger vowel in roundedness. This may be a little confusing, so let be show some examples:

If I were to add the suffix /na/ to a root like /ki/, then it would become /kine/, as the /i/ (the trigger vowel) is high. If the suffix was /ni/ and the root was /ka/, then this would be /kanɯ/, as the target vowel is high. If both the target and trigger are high, with an affix /nu/ and a root /ki/, then that would be /kini/.

However, if both the target and trigger vowel are low, then they only agree in roundedness, so with an affix /na/ and a root /ke/, the word is /kena/. If the affix were to be /o/, then the word would become /kena/ as well, as /o/ is rounded and /e/ is not.

Hopefully this is clear, as it plays a fairly major role in many of the language’s declensions and conjugations.

2.7 | VOWEL REDUCTION

A more difficult subject is Mkvíele’s vowel reduction rules. Whether or not these are historical sound changes only preserved in the writing system or current processes determining pronunciation is a bit of a debate, as this feature is universal amongst dialects, but here we’ll treat it as though it is the latter as it makes explaining certain inflections a bit easier (rather than treating certain realizations as different inflections patterns, we can simply point to these rules). In any case, here is how it works.

Only high vowels are ever reduced, being totally deleted or (in the case of vowels between two voiceless obstruents, devoiced), mostly between unvoiced obstruents (this category always includes /ɬ/, for future reference) . They can be reduced between a nasal and an unvoiced obstruent, between two unvoiced obstruents, between an unvoiced obstruent and a trill or labial approximant (/v ~ ʋ/), or between a trill or labial approximant and another trill or labial approximant. If any of these occur and a voiced trill or nasal is placed adjacent to an unvoiced obstruent, that trill or nasal becomes unvoiced. Similarly, the labial approximant is often realized as labialization on the preceding obstruent.

In addition, vowels never reduce preceding a geminated stop, so /sukːo/ would remain [sukːo], while /suko/ would become [su̥ko] or [sko]. All these rules are sure to be a little confusing, so here are some examples:

/kʰansɯkʰɯra/ → /kʰans_kʰ_ra/ → [kʰan̥skʰɾ̥a]

/akʰɯvɯrɯtʰɯːa/ → /akʰ_v_r_tʰɯːa/ → [akʰʷɾ̥t͡sʰɯːa]

/mikʰivi/ → /m_kʰ_vi/ → [m̥kʰʷi]

All words will be listed with both their “traditional” phonemic analyses in addition to their “reduced” forms, but understanding how these reductions occur is important for later inflections.

Again, I want to stress that if I were making an entirely accurate analysis of the language, I might describe this set of reduction / deletion rules as a historical sound change that complicates the modern inflection patterns of words, but this would make verb conjugation and noun declension much harder to describe and less accurate to how the speakers understand the language.

2.8 | SYLLABLE STRUCTURE

The maximum syllable complexity in Mkvíele, not taking into account the clusters caused by vowel reduction / deletion, is CV[NQ]. Most syllables you will find are CV or V, but either of these are allowed to end in the moraic nasal or the first half of a geminated consonant.

This moraic nasal, /N/, is most often realized as /n/ but which assimilates to [m] before labial consonants, [ɲ] before /j/, and [ŋ] before /k/ or /kʰ/. Word-finally, /N/ is often realized as [ɴ].

Gemination only affects stops. When these stops are realized as affricates, it is the stop part of the affricate (rather than the fricative) which is held. Thus, /tːu/ is realized something like [t.t͡su] rather than [t͡s.su].

The underlying structure of words according to the traditional analyses is honestly rather simple, but various rules such as harmony and vowel reduction / deletion complicate things quite a bit. Mkvíele’s primary writing system is a logography, but it makes use of a syllabary as well which works nicely with this CVN structure.

2.9 | PHONOTACTICS

There are not many phonotactic restrictions, except for the following: neither /r̥/ nor /ɬ/ can appear word-initially.

In addition, if inflection would cause a dangling /ː/ to get suffixed onto a verb ending in /m n/, this causes them to become /m̥ n̥/. Thus, if a suffix like /ːa/ were to be added to a word like /ven/, it would cause it to become /ven̥a/. This does not occur often, but it should be noted if one wants to decline nouns and conjugate verbs properly.

3.1 | WRITING SYSTEMS

This section is currently unfinished….

4.1 | NOUNS

Mkvíele is rather unique in that its most common word order is VSO yet it is, for the most part, postpositional. In truth, the language features a complicated disharmony: postpositions make up the majority of its adpositions, but prepositions are not uncommon, and ambipositions are significant in number. Similarly, the VSO word order is dominant only in declarative, independent clauses; in most other situations, the language features an SVO word order.

In its ancient form, the language was predominantly head-final with an SOV word order, but the centuries saw it gradually evolve into SVO and only recently VSO (relative to the stage of the language we are discussing). Thus, it has shifted from a non-rigidly head-final language to a rather mixed one (with a tendency towards head-initial structures). It seems that, at the end of its classical period, during which the language was codified and ceased to be spoken as a first language, it was somewhere in the centuries-long process of shifting to a more general head-initial structure.

All this should inform some of the structures you’re likely to see in Mkvíele’s nouns, and it is good to keep in mind as we go.

4.2 | NOUN TEMPLATE

Mkvíele was once much more agglutinative, having evolved into a fusional language over time. This has resulted in a sort of noun template, reduced from its old form but still applicable to contemporary morphology. Thus, each noun looks something like this:

The language used to have a more complex template, but various parts (such as number and case) have fused over time. Much like verbs, which we’ll touch on next, nouns have three different kinds of stems: plain, strong, and weak. These correspond to the default form of the noun, the geminated form, and the gradated form. For a word like ⟨kaseu⟩, these three stems are all identical, but for a word like ⟨mki⟩, all three are different: ⟨mki⟩, ⟨mikki⟩, and ⟨miyi⟩. Different cases require different stems, so remembering these will be important if one wants to properly decline nouns.

We’ll run through each of these, starting with case, in order.

4.3 | CASE

Mkvíele features eight cases, a reduction from the fifteen or so the old language had. Many of these have collapsed into one another, yielding the following: the nominative, accusative, oblique, genitive, locative, allative, comitative, and essive. Those that have been dropped include the innessive, elative, adessive, ablative, and instrumental—the roles of which have been largely incorporated into the remaining cases. We’ll describe the uses of each in order of their importance:

4.3.1 | NOMINATIVE

The nominative is the default, unmarked case which serves most often to mark the subjects of transitive and intransitive sentences. However, this is only the case in the simple and habitual aspects; in the perfective, the nominative serves as an absolutive case, marking the object of a transitive verb. If an intransitive verb in the perfective aspect is volitional, then the nominative is used to mark the subject, but if it is non-volitional, then it is used to mark the object.

4.3.2 | ACCUSATIVE

The accusative is used to mark the objects of transitive verbs in the simple and habitual aspects. The accusative is unique from the nominative in many situations, but there are some words or declensions in which the two are identical; in these cases, word order, context, or common sense are used to disambiguate meaning.

4.3.3 | OBLIQUE

The oblique serves as a dative and ergative case, marking both the indirect objects of sentences and the subjects of transitive verbs in the perfective aspect (or non-volitional intransitive verbs in the perfective). There exist some constructions, specifically having to do with status or experience, wherein the oblique marks the subject of the sentence while the nominative marks the object. This is often the case with passive verbs, as in ⟨ike enva sara⟩, or “I am first,” where the first-person pronoun is technically the indirect object and the word ⟨sara⟩, or “first,” is the subject. Here, “I” is in the oblique and “first” is in the nominative.

4.3.4 | GENITIVE

The genitive is used in one of the two ways one can mark possession in Mkvíele. The first is to put the possessor in the genitive and place it directly after the possessee. In this position, it can serve as the subject or object of a sentence. The second and more common method is to add a possessive suffix to the possessee and place it directly before the possessor. Thus, one can translate “the person’s food” as either ⟨appa íerren⟩ or ⟨appaye íerre⟩.

4.3.5 | LOCATIVE

The locative is used most often to indicate location at, in, or on the noun, though it has also taken on the uses of the old ablative and elative; it is now also used to describe motion out of or away from the noun.

4.3.6 | ALLATIVE

The allative, much like the locative, is a general locative case used to indicate motion towards the noun. For example, the word ⟨shi⟩ means “tree,” and in the allative this becomes ⟨shíeli⟩, or “to (the) tree.”

4.3.7 | COMITATIVE

The comitative is much like our “with,” indicating accompaniment, but unlike “with” it does not indicate the means by which one does something. For example, the comitative would be used in “I went with him,” but not “I hit him with my palm.” That usage has not been inherited by the old instrumental; instead, the essive took up that function.

4.3.8 | ESSIVE

The essive is used to indicate a temporary or perceived state, location, or time. It has also inherited the uses of the old instrumental, meaning it can indicate the means by or with which an action is accomplished. Which use the essive is serving is largely determined by context.

Nouns are fairly regular, often declining like so:

This class of declensions yields a number of indistinguishable forms. For example, the nominative plural and accusative singular of the word ⟨ka⟩ would both be ⟨káya⟩, and all that would distinguish the locative singular from this form would be the soft mutation, yielding ⟨kháya⟩ /haːja/.

For an example of a word that fits this pattern, we can look at ⟨appa⟩, or “food,” which declines like so:

Words that follow this pattern end in short vowels. Luckily, most words end in short vowels, so there are a great many which fit this pattern. It’s definitely the most handy, as you’re likely to use it quite a lot.

Perhaps the second most common declension pattern is the “long”-type declension which, rather obviously, is for words that end in long vowels. These follow this pattern:

For an example of this declension pattern, we can look at ⟨kaséu⟩, meaning “two,” which declines like so:

The last declension pattern is the nasal pattern, or the N-Type. These are broadly similar to the common pattern save in a few places. They decline like so:

For an example of a word that follows this pattern, we can look to the word, ⟨dareun⟩, meaning “light,” which declines like so:

This covers the three regular declensions that most nouns fit into. There are a number of irregular nouns, but we’ll have to cover them some other time. For now, we should turn to possessive suffixes.

4.4 | POSSESSIVE SUFFIXES

Another holdover from Mkvíele’s more agglutinative past is its possessive suffixes—these attach to the end of the possessee and take different forms for the person and number of the possessor. They’re rather regular, to be honest, appending onto the end of a word and replacing any final vowels present. If a long vowel on the end of a word is replaced a short vowel from the beginning of a possessive suffix, that short vowel becomes long.

However, Mkvíele does require possessive suffixes on certain possessed nouns, depending on their alienability and the definiteness of their possessor. Non-alienable nouns, such as body parts or family members, must take the impersonal possessive suffix if their possessor is not definite. For example, a sentence like “a person’s older brother” would be ⟨íerre tskore⟩, but if that “person” becomes definite, it is ⟨íerrele tskoyen⟩.

Alienability becomes a little more complicated when we take into account possessive suffix stacking. Specifically, a definite possessive suffix can get added onto the indefinite possessive suffix when the circumstances shift the possessee from inalienable to alienable. For (an admittedly gruesome) example, we might look at ⟨íe⟩, or “finger.” If it is my finger from my body, it is ⟨íen⟩, from ⟨íe + en⟩, but if it is someone else’s finger that I possess, then it is ⟨íeren⟩, from ⟨íe + re + en⟩. This is how one distinguishes from an inalienable possession of which the possessor is the originator (or proper owner) and once inalienable possessions that have been—well, alienated.

These suffixes can lead to a number of homonyms, as in ⟨dareunna⟩ which is both the plural, genitive form of ⟨dareun⟩ as well as the first-person, plural possessed form of the noun. Context should serve to disambiguate most of these scenarios.

As mentioned above, possessive suffixes comprise the second of the two ways one can construct possession in Mkvíele, the first being the genitive case. With possessive suffixes, the possessee is marked while the possessor is left unmarked, the latter following directly after the former.

Here is an example of this possessive construction in action:

Nkanseukkéua khén.

/ŋ̊ansɯkːʰɯːa heːn/

[ŋ̊an̥sɯkːʰɯːa heːn]

nkanseukkéua khén

etch\1SG.IND.PFV stone.1SG

I cut my stone.

Here, we see how malleable stems are. Alone and in their citation forms, these two words would be ⟨kanskeu⟩ and ⟨kan⟩, but various morphophonological processes have rendered them into quite different forms. With a few semantic changes, these words could show up like so, in another sentence:

Nkanseuyeusá khasan.

/ŋ̊ansɯjɯsaː hasan/

[ŋ̊an̥sɯjɯsaː hasan]

nkanseuyeusá kha-san

etch\2SG.IND.PFV stone-POSS.2SG

You cut your stone.

Here, a stem that would usually be pronounced /kʰan/ is reduced to /ha/, and another which would usually be /kʰansɯkʰɯ/ [kʰan̥skʰɯ] is being reduced to [ŋ̊ansɯjɯ]. As you can likely tell, a combination of initial consonant mutation, consonant gradation, and root-modifying suffixation can do a number on a stem.

4.5 | DEFINITENESS MARKING

Now that we have covered both cases and possessive suffixes, we can touch on the last part of the noun template: the determiner enclitic. Regardless of case or number, all nouns take one of two enclitics depending on their final consonant. Here is a small but nifty table:

The left column in this table represents the final consonant, if there is one. If a word ends in a nasal, then the definite marker assimilates its first consonant with it; otherwise, it is simply ⟨-le⟩. Furthermore, if a word ends in /l/ followed by a vowel, then the definiteness suffix dissimilates to /re/. Thus, something like /avɯrɯseli/ would become /avɯrɯselire/ when definite, pronounced [avɾ̥selire].

Another way to mark definiteness is by including the article ⟨le⟩ before the noun it modifies. This is a less common method but something you’ll see in some newer works—in some of the languages descended from Mkvíele, this has become the only way to mark definiteness.

4.6 | PRONOUNS

Pronouns serve as a subset of nouns, etymologically related to old, regular nouns which—with the stratification of society in the early feudal period—began to be used as pronouns. Older pronouns, more akin to those you may be familiar with, fell out of use, fossilized in nominal and verbal inflections but no longer appearing independently. Instead, one selects from a wide range of pronouns depending on social circumstances.

Rather than try to provide all these pronouns, we’ll stick to a few for the purpose of this introduction:

4.6.1 | FIRST-PERSON PRONOUNS

The first-person pronoun you’ll see most often is ⟨yáve⟩ /jaːve/. It is neutral in terms of gender and social status, and you’ll often hear it used in semi-formal and formal situations. A more colloquial form is simply ⟨yá⟩, though this can of course be confused for the negative particle and so is often avoided. To illustrate other first-person pronouns, you might see younger speakers use ⟨ata⟩, an informal first-person pronoun, and young women may use ⟨marreu⟩ /mar̥ɯ/ in formal situations.

4.6.2 | SECOND-PERSON PRONOUNS

The second-person pronoun you’ll see most often is ⟨anneu⟩ /anːɯ/, similarly neutral in gender and social status. Like ⟨yáve⟩ and ⟨yá⟩, you may also see the informal ⟨ana⟩. A formal pronoun used when talking to one’s inferior is ⟨kasen⟩, often used with servants or employees. A very formal alternative, used when talking to one’s superior, is ⟨avreu⟩, /avɯrɯ/, pronounced [avɾ̥ɯ]. This is reserved for use with those of high social or religious importance.

4.6.3 | THIRD-PERSON PRONOUNS

The third-person pronoun you’ll see most often is ⟨sóe⟩ /søː/. This is actually a shortened version of ⟨sotoe⟩ /sotʰø/, meaning “that,” as in “that person / thing.” The distal demonstrative has also been shortened to ⟨then⟩ /θen/, from ⟨thente⟩ /θentʰe/, and this can be used as a less formal third-person pronoun. Neither of these have any gender implications, unlike ⟨haséu⟩ which is casual and implies femininity, somewhat like “gal.” On the other end, one can use ⟨íye⟩ as a masculine counterpart to ⟨haséu⟩.

4.7 | DEMONSTRATIVES

This section will cover both demonstratives and demonstrative pronouns as they are quite important, often serving as the subjects and objects of questions and even as third-person pronouns. They’re also really one of the simpler parts of Mkvíele.

Demonstratives precede the nouns they modify—following the same rules as noun-like adjectives—and they come in four varieties: proximal, medial, distal, and indeterminate. The proximal demonstrative is equivalent to “this,” indicating location close to the speaker. The medial is like “that,” but in Mkvíele it indicates location closer to the addressee. The distal, “that (there),” is used when the thing is neither close to the speaker nor to the addressee. In order, these demonstratives are ⟨ana⟩, ⟨sono⟩, and ⟨thenna⟩. A question form, ⟨kunno⟩, is used much like “which,” though in Mkvíele it is reserved for situations where the noun modified by this demonstrative is indeterminate, for example: ⟨ó la kunno vannare anneun⟩ which means “which child is yours?”

Demonstrative pronouns come in those same four varieties—proximal, medial, distal, and indeterminate—but their endings change, becoming: ⟨ate⟩, ⟨sotoe⟩, ⟨thente⟩, and ⟨kuntoe⟩. These serve as nouns, as one would expect. If I wanted to ask, out of a group, who Anata was, I would say: ⟨ó la kuntoe Anata⟩, which means “which is Anata?” To which, one might reply: ⟨la thente Anata⟩, which means “that is Anata.”

4.8 | QUANTIFICATION

This is a complex question—quantification. Mkvíele (as with all languages) features two kinds of quantifiers: weak and strong. The former specifies a number, either exactly or vaguely, while the latter specifies a ratio compared to the total set. This may be a little confusing, so I’ll explain: weak quantifiers are words like “some,” “one,” five,” or “many” which don’t compare the quantity being quantified to the quantity of any larger set. Strong quantifiers are those that do so, such as “most” or “all.” The strong quantifier, “most,” specifies some ratio of the larger set of all possible referents. This distinction is important as strong quantifiers are disallowed in certain situations.

Quantifiers can be further broken down into noun-like or verb-like categories. This is important as it determines which quantifiers are allowed to serve as the predicates of a clause: in Mkvíele, only weak, verb-like quantifiers can serve as existential predicates. Thus, ⟨íerri líere⟩ is a perfectly grammatical sentence, meaning “there are five dogs,” but ⟨íén líere⟩, literally “five dogs,” is only a phrase, not a grammatical sentence.

This is as good a place as any to point out that marking plurality on a noun is not mandatory if the plurality can be inferred from context, hence why the above example isn’t ⟨íerri líeréye⟩. Furthermore, you’re only likely to see plurality marked on nouns which are unquantified but whose plurality is contextually important. For example, I don’t need to say ⟨íerri líeréye⟩ because the plurality of the “dogs” can be inferred from the context, but if I want to specify that multiple dogs came to my house, then I’d say:

Lanattáya líeréye magráyen.

/lanattʰaːja liːereːje makɯraːjen/

[lanattʰaːja liːereːje makɾ̥aːjen]

la-nattáya líer-éye magr-áy-en

to-go\3PL.PFV dog-PL house-ACC-POSS.1SG

Dogs came to my house.

This just about covers nominal quantifiers in Mkvíele. Honestly, they’re not too complex, hopefully a relief from some of the other aspects of the language.

5.1 | VERBS

As a V1 language, Mkvíele has many of the features one would expect: a tendency towards ergativity, a lack of a “have” verb, auxiliary verbs that precede the main verb of the clause, and particles that precede the verb. These tendencies do not always hold though, as you have certainly seen already with the nouns; there are many cases in which Mkvíele bucks the trend. Similarly, while many of the language’s inflections are solidly fusional, there remain a number which are more agglutinative. We’ll discuss these topics and many more in this chapter on Mkvíele’s verbs.

5.2 | CONJUGATION PATTERNS

Conjugation is an interesting topic in Mkvíele as, in this regard, the language sometimes approaches analyticity—most verbs have two forms of conjugation, a synthetic form and an analytic, and these determine both the structure of the sentence as well as which postverbal arguments are mandatory and which can (or must) be dropped.

In addition, suppletion is rampant amongst the most common verbs, introducing much of the irregularity one will find in the language. Altogether, verbs carry a significant load of the complexity of Mkvíele and will likely prove the most difficult aspect of the language to pick up.

As mentioned before, Mkvíele is a split-ergative language with morphological ergativity but not syntactic ergativity; that is, the dominant morphological alignment is ergative, but the order of words in a sentence is most often accusative. The split in ergativity centers around aspect for transitive verbs and volition for intransitive ones. For transitive and ditransitive verbs, the perfective aspect is patterned ergative-absolutive while the simple and habitual are patterned nominative-accusative. For intransitive verbs, non-volitional actions are patterned ergative-absolutive, while volitional actions are nominative-accusative. In this latter category (intransitives), whether or not an action is considered volitional is not lexical but semantic, so the meaning of a verb can be slightly changed in this way by the marking of its arguments.

Furthermore, the language distinguishes two degrees of formality—plain and polite; three aspects—simple, perfective, and habitual; and four moods—indicative, optative, conditional, and imperative. Furthermore, its subject marking distinguishes between four persons—first, second, third, and impersonal—and three numbers—singular, dual, and plural.

Altogether, this leads to the synthetic class of conjugations for a given verb being quite complex:

This may initially look quite intimidating, but for the most part—aside from irregularities caused by suppletion and some other unique situations—verbs are rather regular. For example, the plain, indicative forms of verbs almost always conjugate like so:

Thus, if you see a word like ⟨kanskeu⟩ /kʰansɯkʰɯ/, you can be fairly certain that the first-person, singular form is ⟨kanseukkeun⟩ /kʰansɯkːʰɯn/. which would be pronounced [kʰan̥sɯkːʰɯn]. Similarly, the fourth person form is ⟨kanskva⟩ /kʰansɯkʰɯva/, pronounced [kʰan̥skʰʷa].

This is a complicated just a touch by the fact that each of the first three persons uses a different stem. This is another core part of the verb system; every conjugation is attached to one of three types: the plain stem, the strong stem, or the weak stem. These equate to the plain, geminated, and gradated form of the verb which, for verbs ending in anything other than a stop-vowel sequence, will all be the same. Furthermore, some conjugations cause initial mutations which one must keep in mind, though these obviously only affect those verbs that begin with particular consonants and vowels.

To make this description of synthetic conjugations, a bit more manageable, we’ll be breaking it down into chunks based on formality, aspect, and mood.

5.3 | SYNTHETIC CONJUGATIONS

Synthetic conjugations mandate that the pronoun for the subject is not included in the sentence. Thus, ⟨iten⟩ /itʰen/ is a grammatical sentence, but *⟨iten en⟩ /itʰen en/ is not, as it includes the first-person, singular pronoun. The opposite is the case for analytic conjugations—they require the pronoun—but we’ll talk discuss these in more detail, later.

From here on out, I’m going to refer to each of the stems like so: the plain stem will be ‘PS,’ the strong stem ‘SS,’ and the weak stem ‘WS.’

5.3.1 | SIMPLE ASPECT

The simple aspect is your standard, default form, going unmarked, in contrast to the other two. It is often used to talk about present events, while the perfective can sometimes be used as a sort of past tense, though this distinction isn’t entirely accurate, as the simple aspect can just as easily be used to talk about the past. As stated above, most verbs conjugate for this selection of forms like so:

Here, “mut.” stands for “mutation,” or the initial consonant mutation that occurs for each form. In this case, only the impersonal form of the verb undergoes initial mutation: a verb such as ⟨kanskeu⟩ /kʰansɯkʰɯ/ would become ⟨khanskva⟩ in this form, pronounced [han̥skʰʷa]. These mutations arose due to old preverbal particles that have since been dropped, though the mutations they triggered remain.

Similarly, a verb like ⟨skeu⟩ /sɯkʰɯ/, in the impersonal form, would be ⟨skva⟩ /sɯkʰɯva/, pronounced as [skʰʷa]. In the first-person dual, that same verb would become ⟨seukkeum⟩ /sɯkːʰɯm/, pronounced [sɯkːʰɯm]. And in the second-person, plural, it would be ⟨seuyeusá⟩ /sɯjɯsaː/, pronounced [sɯjɯsaː]. I give all these examples to illustrate how different the stems can be for an individual verb; most won’t be quite as divergent.

Here’s an example of this aspect in action:

Skva íéle ana.

/sɯkʰɯva iːeːle ana/

[skʰʷa iːeːle ana]

skva íé-le ana

cut\4.IND finger-DEF 4.GEN

One cuts one’s finger.

5.3.2 | PERFECTIVE ASPECT

The perfective is used to talk about events as a whole—most often those that have been completed (which allows the perfective to serve as a sort of past tense), though it can also be used to talk about events that have yet to be completed.

In contrast to some of the other forms, the perfective aspect has only a few forms, shown with the following table:

Unlike the simple aspect, the perfective aspect triggers a nasal mutation in all its forms, so a verb like ⟨kve⟩ /kʰive/, pronounced [kʰʷe], in the first-person, perfective would be ⟨nkivéye⟩ /ŋ̊iveːje/. In situations like this where vowel harmony would cause two of the same vowel to appear adjacent to one another (either long or short), a reparative /j/ is usually inserted. If two of the same short vowel fall adjacent to one another, they become one long vowel, but if a short vowel falls after a long vowel of the same quality, that /j/ gets inserted, so something like */ŋ̊iveːe/ becomes /ŋ̊iveːje/.

Here’s an example of this aspect in action:

Natseuá ateva líereve appale.

/nat͡sʰɯːa atʰeva liːereve apːʰale/

[nat͡sʰɯːa atʰeva liːereve apːʰale]

natseuá ate-va líere-ve appa-le

eat\3SG.PFV DEM-ERG dog-ERG food-DEF

That dog ate the food.

As you might have noticed, the perfective aspect is patterned ergative-absolutive for transitive verbs; for intransitive, it depends on volition. In addition, demonstratives and articles inflect for the case of the words they modify, hence why the demonstrative ⟨atte⟩ /atːʰe/ becomes ⟨ateva⟩ preceding the ergative form of ⟨líere⟩.

5.3.3 | HABITUAL ASPECT

The habitual aspect is, perhaps, the easiest to describe: it is used for actions completed habitually. An example might be, “I often went to the market,” though in Mkvíele it is often also used for occupation, for example: “I write,” as in writing is the speaker’s occupation, hobby, or whatnot. It can also be used for actions that are probably going to continue from the time of reference; in this sense, it often refers to actions that are going to be completed in the future.

The habitual aspect is formed with the following conjugations:

A verb such as ⟨íyerre⟩ /iːjer̥e/ would become ⟨íyerrenen⟩ /iːjer̥enen/ in the first-person, plural form of the habitual aspect. As with the simple aspect, the impersonal form features a soft initial mutation, meaning a verb like ⟨kve⟩ /kʰive/ would become ⟨khiveven⟩ /hiveven/.

Arsán mbaréuále.

/arɯsan marɯːaːle/

[arsan marɯːaːle]

arsán mbaréuá-le

eat\2PL.HAB seed.PL-DEF

You (all) (often) eat the seeds.

Much like the simple aspect, the habitual aspect is patterned nominative-accusative. Now that we’ve looked at the indicative mood, we should move on to the optative.

5.3.4 | OPTATIVE MOOD

Rather than running through each aspect within the optative mood, we’ll simply explain the optative as a whole. This mood indicates that the speaker desires the action: it can apply to wishes or hopes or anything of that sort. One might translate it as “may,” as in “may you live well.” Similarly, it can be used for a more polite command or request—a less direct form of imperative. Its plain forms are conjugated like so:

In many places, the optative is indistinguishable from the indicative; for example, ⟨daná⟩ /tanaː/ is both the indicative and optative form of the plain, first-person, plural, perfective conjugation of the verb ⟨la⟩ (a victim of suppletion, hence the irregular perfective stem). Where this occurs, the optative is often disambiguated via the post-verbal particle, ⟨rá⟩ /raː/, which we’ll touch on more later. For now, know that this particle has a prominent function as a subjunctive marker, though it is understood by the speakers as a more multi-purpose way of indicating subjectivity.

Now, we can take a look at the much simpler conditional and imperative moods, finishing off the plain forms of conjugation.

5.3.5 | CONDITIONAL MOOD

The conditional is most often used to indicate… well, conditional sentences. The verbs in both the dependent and independent clauses take the conditional mood. This mood can also be used for actions that would occur if an optionally specified condition were to be met, as in “I would go to the market.” Along this same line, the conditional is often used to imply a desire on the speaker’s part, as in “I would give my greetings” or “we would have the wine.” In any case, this is how you form the plain conjugations of the conditional mood:

⟨Iteneleri svonholoe⟩ /itʰeneleri svon̥olø/ translates to “we would drink the wine,” and serves as a decent example of one of the common uses of the conditional mood.

To finish off our discussion of the plain verb forms, we’ll take a look at the final and simplest mood: the imperative.

5.3.6 | IMPERATIVE MOOD

The imperative features the fewest number of verb forms—only applying to the first, second, fourth persons. In the second, it serves as the imperative one may be more familiar with: indicating commands. But in the first person, it is more of a hortative, indicating a desire for the addressee to make or allow the action to occur. The line between the second and fourth person is a little subtler: the latter is often used when one is commanding an addressee with whom one is not familiar; thus, the fourth-person imperative is often used with warning signs, laws, or proclamations.

When we get to the analytic imperative forms, you’ll notice that the second-person pronoun can be omitted, as it is implied, but that may leave you wondering why you’d ever use the synthetic, second-person imperative: in short, you often don’t. At this stage of the language, it is falling out of use, but it still sees infrequent use if one wants to add emphasis to their command.

As an example, you could come across a sign saying ⟨ya euvála né⟩ or simply ⟨ya euvála⟩, meaning “do not enter,” where the verb ⟨vá⟩ (with the prepended preverb ⟨i-⟩) has taken its fourth-person, imperative form (an irregular conjugation). Here, the sentence addresses a nonspecific audience and thus takes this impersonal form. One could also write this in the second-person imperative and it would be no less grammatical, but you’re more likely to see the fourth-person form when the sentence is addressing a non-specific audience.

5.3.7 | POLITE FORMS

Polite forms of all the aforementioned conjugations can be achieved through infixation of ⟨veureu⟩ /vɯrɯ/ just after the stem—a holdout from the language’s more explicitly agglutinative days. Often, this infix undergoes phonological changes, reducing it to something like [vrɯ] or even [ʷɾ̥]. An example of this can be seen in the polite form of the indicative, first-person singular conjugation of ⟨atseu⟩: ⟨atsvreun⟩ /at͡sʰvɯrɯn/, which is pronounced [at͡sʰʷɾ̥ɯn].

In addition, instead of taking their usual stems, all polite conjugations take the plain stem. Thus, the polite form of the first-person, dual, optative, habitual conjugation of the verb ⟨ite⟩ /itʰe/ is ⟨itevrimí⟩ /itʰevirimiː/, pronounced [itʰevɾ̥imiː].

Furthermore, the initial /v/ in all impersonal (fourth-person) forms is dropped, so the polite, impersonal, imperative form of ⟨atseu⟩ is ⟨atsvrala⟩ rather than *⟨atsvrvala⟩.

5.4 | ANALYTIC CONJUGATIONS

In contrast to the myriad forms of the synthetic conjugations, these are much simpler: reduced to a single suffix for each category.

5.4.1 | SIMPLE ASPECT

The citation form of the verb—its default or dictionary form—is its plain indicative form. Thus, one can take the cited form of a verb like ⟨saleu⟩ /salɯ/ and add a pronoun after it to create a perfectly grammatical sentence: ⟨saleu yáve⟩ or “I am speaking.”

I did not touch on this before, but Mkvíele does not make the distinction between this simple aspect and any progressive or continuous aspect, meaning ⟨saleu yáve⟩ can be translated as “I speak” or “I am speaking,” though the latter is preferable as it doesn’t have the habitual or occupational connotations of the former. To be explicit, while we often read these connotations into plain, present tense conjugations, they do not exist in Mkvíele; that is what the habitual aspect is for.

5.4.2 | PERFECTIVE ASPECT

The perfective aspect is formed via the suffixation of /ːa/ and a nasal initial mutation, though this suffix can interact with the stem in strange ways. Firstly, if the verb ends in a consonant, the /ː/ is dropped. Furthermore, if the word ends in a vowel and vowel harmony would cause the /a/ to assimilate with that final vowel, a /j/ is inserted between them. Otherwise, the whole suffix /ːa/ is added. Thus, a verb like ⟨ride⟩ becomes ⟨ridé⟩, but a verb like ⟨skeu⟩ becomes ⟨skéua⟩.

5.4.3 | HABITUAL ASPECT

The habitual aspect is rather simple: one adds the suffix /ni/. This plays rather nicely with the stem, unlike some other suffixes, yielding verbs like ⟨rideni⟩ and ⟨skeuneu⟩ from ⟨ride⟩ and ⟨skeu⟩.

5.4.4 | OPTATIVE MOOD

The optative mood is complex as it is often indistinguishable from other verb forms; for example, the indicative perfective is indistinguishable from the optative simple and the optative perfective.

The three aspects of the optative can be conjugated like so:

5.4.5 | CONDITIONAL & IMPERATIVE MOODS

The conditional mood is achieved via the suffixation of /ru/, while the imperative is formed via the suffix /la/. These are rather plain, to be honest. Their table might look something like this:

If either of these forms would be added to a verb with an /r/ or /l/ as the onset of the last syllable, then they become /r̥/ and /ɬ/ respectively. Thus, the imperative form of ⟨ile⟩, which means “to breathe,” is ⟨ille⟩ /iɬe/ rather than *⟨ilele⟩.

The form of the verb ⟨vá⟩ shown above, ⟨vála⟩, is indistinguishable from its synthetic, fourth-person imperative conjugation. Whether or not the pronoun is mandatory or prohibited depends on how the verb is being used in the sentence, though sometimes the addition is entirely arbitrary. For an example, I’ll draw on an example I showed earlier:

Ya euvála né.

/ja ɯvaːla neː/

[ja ɯvaːla neː]

ya eu-vá-la né

NEG in-go-4.IMP EMPH

Do not enter.

Ya euvála né néte.

/ja ɯvaːla neː neːtʰe/

[ja ɯvaːla neː neːtʰe]

ya eu-vá-la né nete

NEG in-go-4.IMP EMPH 4SG.NOM

Do not enter.

These sentences are essentially equivalent, though the latter may be interpreted as a bit more emphatic.

If the subject of a verb in the analytic imperative is the addressee, the second-person, then the pronoun can be omitted. We touched on this earlier, but this means that you can say something like “(you) go!” in two ways: ⟨vála⟩ or ⟨vásala⟩. The only difference here is that the latter is likely to be interpreted as more emphatic than the former.

5.5 | PARTICIPLES

Mkvíele features a number of participle forms—and that number is two. These are the patientive and agentive participles. Both can serve as adjectives or nouns, but the former indicates the recipient of the verb; the latter, the one who does it. Here is a nifty chart for the regular participle forms:

A verb ⟨skeu⟩, which means “to cut,” becomes ⟨skeura⟩ in the patientive participle; this can be used in a phrase like ⟨le íerre skeura⟩. This tends to be interpreted as “the person being cut” or “the cut person,” depending on the conjugation to which the participle suffix is applied. In the agentive, this becomes ⟨le íerre skeuraná⟩, which might mean “the cutting person,” as in “the person who cuts.”

Both the patientive and agentive participles can be used with verbs in any aspects, moods, persons, and numbers. However, only agentive participles can take objects other than the noun they directly modify. Syntax can get a little complicated because of this, so we’ll have to discuss how this is usually ironed out. Objects of participles occur directly after the participle and take the oblique case. For example:

Ya ivé sá íerrele attsaná apavele.

/ja iveː saː iːer̥ele at͡sːʰanaː apavele/

[ja iveː saː iːer̥ele at͡sːʰanaː apavele]

ya ivé sá íerre-le attsaná apa-ve-le

NEG die\3SG.IND EMPH person-DEF eatfood-OBL-DEF

The man who eats food is not dying.

Often, participles will be used as nouns. To reuse an example, we could drop ⟨íerre⟩ from ⟨íerrele skeuraná⟩, “the man who cuts,” to get ⟨skeuranála⟩, or “the cutter.” This can be declined as a noun and can serve in any position a noun can. Using participles in this way is a common nominalization strategy you’re likely to see in everyday language and more formal situations in equal measure.

Furthermore, participles are frequently used to begin relative clauses. An agentive participle assumes the modified noun is the subject and takes a VO word order, where any object of the participle comes right after, while a patientive participle assumes that the modified noun is the direct object, while the subject comes directly after the participle. Thus, you can have a sentence like so:

Ya motsúo sá íerrele líréyené annéua.

/ja motʰuːo saː iːer̥ele liːreːjeneː anːɯːa/

[ja mot͡sʰuːo saː iːer̥ele liːreːjeneː anːɯːa]

ya mots-úo sá íerre-le lír-éy-ené ann-éua

NEG know-1SG.PFV EMPH person-DEF love-PFV-AGPT you-ACC

I didn’t know the person who loved you.

With a rather simple flip of the participle, we can change the sentence to:

Ya motsúo sá íerrele líréyire anneu.

/ja motʰuːo saː iːer̥ele liːreːjeneː anːɯ/

[ja mot͡sʰuːo saː iːer̥ele liːreːjeneː anːɯ]

ya mots-úo sá íerre-le lír-éy-ené anneu

NEG know-1SG.PFV EMPH person-DEF love-PFV-AGPT you

I didn’t know the person who you loved.

Now that we’ve talked about participles, we can take a look at their cousins, converbs, which in contrast to the adjective-like participles serve instead to modify verbs.

5.6 | CONVERBS

I’ll admit, converbs have a special place in my heart: they’re just so interesting. Mkvíele evolved converbs out of nominalized verbs in particular cases, yielding a variety with particular functions; they include the simultaneous, anterior, posterior, purposive, and causal converbs.

These are fairly transparently derived from the locative, ablative, elative, instrumental, and oblique cases respectively, though all but the first and last have disappeared from noun morphology. It should also be noted that they each may serve more than one purpose. For example, the anterior converb circumstantially serves as the concessive, and the purposive converb can also serve to indicate manner. Furthermore, Mkvíele used to have many more converbs with overlapping uses, but the language at its current stage retains only those shown below. You may run into some of these archaic converbs fossilized in certain phrases, but we’ll cover those as they appear.

Because of their origin, converbs require certain syntax and morphology in the sentences featuring them: all clauses with converbs become SVO, and their main verb is conjugated analytically, meaning a pronoun is mandatory (if the subject itself is not present). If ‘C’ is the converb, ‘S₁’ the subject of the main verb, and ‘S₂’ the subject of the converb—then, when S₁ is the same as S₂, the word order is SCVO. Otherwise, when S₁ and S₂ are different, the word order can either be S₂CVS₁O or S₂CS₁VO.

An exception to these rules is found when the converb and the main verb share the same subject and the converb is intransitive. In this case, the word order remains SV, but the main verb can be conjugated synthetically and the converb can come directly after it. This would be represented as an SVCO order. It is fairly common, especially colloquially.

We’ll touch more on these syntax rules when we reach some examples.

Below is a handy chart for forming each converb. These endings are applied either to the stem of the verb—if its subject, mood, and aspect are the same as the main verb—or to its conjugated form, if they are not.

As you can see, the patientive participle and the simultaneous converb are very similar. Here’s a rather nonsensical tongue twister for you:

Riddené ridre riddiré ride.

/ritːeneː ritire ritːireː rite/

[ritːeneː ritɾe ritːireː rite]

ridd-ené rid-ire ridd-iré ride

hold-AGPT hold-PTPT hold\3SG-SCVB hold

A held holder holds while holding.

I seriously doubt you’ll run into something like this in the wild, but it can’t hurt to be aware of the overlap in forms.

As you can see, the word order here is SVO, with the converb appearing between the subject and the verb. With some slight modifications to this example, introducing a different subject for the main verb, we get the following:

Riddené ridre riddiré yáve ride.

/ritːeneː ritire ritːireː jaːve rite/

[ritːeneː ritɾe ritːireː jaːve rite]

ridd-ené rid-ire ridd-iré yáve ride

hold-AGPT.NOM hold-PTPT hold\3SG-SCVB 1SG.NOM hold

A held holder holds while I hold.

Riddené ridre riddiré ride anneu.

/ritːeneː ritire ritːireː rite anːɯ/

[ritːeneː ritɾe ritːireː rite anːɯ]

ridd-ené rid-ire ridd-iré ride anneu

hold-AGPT.NOM hold-PTPT hold\3SG-SCVB hold 2SG.NOM

A held holder holds while you hold.

These examples show off both the SV and VS word orders that one can use when the converb’s subject and the main verb’s subject are different. You’re likelier to see the latter, as it is the assumed default order, but the former doesn’t have any particular semantic baggage.

Before we go on, I should touch on the uses of each converb:

The simultaneous converb is the first of two general converbs, serving more contextual purposes than the other specialized converbs. The simultaneous, as you would rightly assume, is used most often to indicate simultaneity but it can also indicate simply that the converb is contextually subordinated to the main action. For an example, we can look to something like:

Ya saleusala sá attseurá .

/ja salɯsala saː atːʰɯraː/

[ja salɯsala saː at͡sːʰɯraː]

ya saleu-sala sá atts-eurá

NEG speak-2SG.IMP EMPH eat-SCVB

Do not speak while eating. / Don’t speak and eat.

The use of the converb here simply indicates that “eat” is subordinated to “speak,” so while it can be interpreted as a relationship of simultaneity, it doesn’t have to be. This example also shows off that unique word order we talked about earlier, where an intransitive converb can appear after the main verb (which can be conjugated synthetically) when they share the same subject. Again, this is very common, so expect to see it used quite often.

The simultaneous converb can also indicate manner. To reuse much of the last example, we might see:

Ya saleusala sá tskrá.

/ja salɯsala saː tʰɯkʰɯra/

[ja salɯsala saː t͡sʰkʰɾ̥aː]

ya saleu-sala sá tskr-á

NEG speak-2SG.IMP EMPH diminish-ICVB

Do not speak (increasingly) quietly. / Don’t diminishingly speak.

Here, the converb indicates the manner in which the main verb is done. Indicating manner can also be done with the purposive converb, something we’ll get to shortly.

The anterior converb is used for actions that precede the modified verb; the nuance of the semantics can vary depending on context. It is most often used when the action of the main verb leads logically into the converb.

Ille sanétheu.

/iɬe saneːθɯ/

[iɬe saneːθɯ]

il-le sanétheu

breathe-IMP stop-ACVB

Stop and (then) breathe.

The posterior converb operates much like the anterior but in reverse: the main verb occurs before the converb. It might be translated to “before” or, in some circumstances, “until.” To reuse our previous example:

Ille sanáveu.

/iɬe sanaːvɯ/

[iɬe sanaːvɯ]

il-le san-áveu

breathe-IMP stop-PCVB

Breathe before / until stopping.

Now that we’ve touched on each of the temporal converbs, we can discuss the two atemporal converbs: the purposive and the causal. We’ll also rope in a bit of a discussion on the marking of converbs’ objects, just to finish off this section.

In short, the purposive converb marks the motive behind the main verb; the causal, on the other hand, marks the conditions or circumstances that cause it. In case this is confusing, the difference here is often volitional: the former is volitional while the latter is not.

Riddelle bharvale vála magraleure.

/ritːeɬe varɯvale vaːla makɯralɯre/

[ritːeɬe varvale vaːla makɾ̥alɯre]

ridd-elle bhar-va-le vá-la magra-leu-re

get-PURP seed-OBL-DEF go-IMP house-ALL-DEF

Go to the house (in order) to get the seed.

This example is nice and simple; none of its arguments overlap in case and it all lays itself out nicely for you. We should look at a more complex example where this is not the case.

Lavanalla vareuyenne máya svonnoe barsavale.

/lavanaɬa varɯjenːe maːja suvonːø parɯsavale/

[lavanaɬa varɯjenːe maːja sʷonːø parsavale]

la-van-alla vareu-yen-ne m-áya svon-noe barsa-va-le

to-be-PURP tribe.ABS-1SG.POSS-DEF give-1SG.PFV wine.ABS-DEF farmer-OBL-DEF

I gave the farmer the wine in order to join his tribe.

As you can see, the converb’s arguments precede the main verb. If the converb has no arguments, its placement is much more variable, essentially free, though one expects it to come just after the main verb.

5.7 | PREVERBS

Preverbs enjoy frequent use in Mkvíele—one of the more productive relics of the language’s (even) more agglutinative days. These tend to indicate motion or change, and they are often combined with verb stems to create more specialized meanings. For example, the verb ⟨vá⟩ means “to go,” but with the preverb ⟨i⟩ /i/, it becomes ⟨euvá⟩, or “to enter.” You’ve seen this earlier actually; we used it in the example ⟨ya euvála né⟩, which means “do not enter.” Similarly, you’ve already seen the verb ⟨van⟩, or “to be (a member of),” with the preverb ⟨la⟩, which together become ⟨lavan⟩, meaning “to join (a group).” As you can see, there are a great many uses for preverbs; they’re an indispensable part of Mkvíele, and we should discuss those you’re most likely to see. These are, much like converbs, fairly transparently derived from postpositions, so they should be somewhat familiar:

These do essentially what you’d expect them to, indicating motion or location, though as you’ve seen with ⟨lavan⟩ this can be to some degree metaphorical. All preverbs undergo vowel harmony (if applicable), just like any other modifications to stems.

There are too many unique, often grammaticalized uses of preverbs to give a full overview, but to generalize for a moment, they often elevate an adpositional phrase or indirect object to the position of the direct object (as with ⟨euvá⟩). If this isn’t the case, they may be altering some stative verb (like ⟨van⟩), changing it into an active verb. Here is an example of the former use:

Yevríe magren anneuva.

/jeviriːe makɯren anːɯva/

[jevɾiːe makɾ̥en anːɯva]

ye-vr-íe magr-en anneu-va

from-write-1SG.PFV house-1SG.POSS 2SG-OBL

I wrote to you from my house.

As you can see, this use of the preverb elevates what would have been an adpositional phrase, “from my house,” to the direct object. Thus, preverbs can serve as applicatives, elevating intransitive verbs to transitive ones.

We’ll cover other valency modifiers at some point, but for now know that this is a common way to elevate locative or oblique roles in the sentence.

5.8 | PARTICLES

There are a few kinds of particles that come right before or after a verb and modify its meaning or add a bit of nuance. Broadly speaking, they fall under two banners: those which add or specify some information and those which alter the type of sentence.

In the first camp, you have particles like the clausal determiner, ⟨le⟩; the affirmative, ⟨re⟩; the two emphatics, ⟨sá⟩ and ⟨né⟩; and the explanation marker, ⟨an⟩, among others. In the latter, you have the interrogative use of ⟨an⟩; the more common interrogative, ⟨ó⟩; the uncertainty marker, ⟨óno⟩; the negative marker, ⟨yá⟩; and a few others. I’ll provide a table of the most common verb-related particles and their uses below, starting with the first group and leading into the second.

5.9 | ADJECTIVES

Adjectives are a little complicated. They come in two varieties, noun-like and verb-like, but as most of them are in the latter camp we’ll be discussing them in this chapter rather than the preceding one. We’ll need to get this first variety of adjectives out of the way before we can get to the real meat and potatoes of adjectives in Mkvíele.

5.9.1 | NOUN-LIKE ADJECTIVES

These noun-like adjectives are much less numerous than the verb-like variety, but still many commonly used adjectives are from this category. In short, they inflect for nothing, only taking the ⟨-na⟩ ending and coming before the noun they modify. These tend to be older, more generalized adjectives like ⟨úo⟩, “bad,” which one may use in a phrase like ⟨úono íerrele⟩, or “the bad person.” They cannot serve as predicates, but they can be inflected like nouns and serve in other roles in a sentence, such as ⟨la aran íerre úóyo⟩, “some people are bad.”

5.9.2 | VERB-LIKE ADJECTIVES

These are much more numerous and honestly much simpler. They do not take any inflection, nor do they agree with the noun they modify; instead, they simply come after it. They can also serve as the main verb of a clause. Their converb forms must share the subject with the verb they modify, but otherwise they can function as other converbs usually do.

5.10 | MODALITY

Mkvíele features a set of words which function like particles (and are often considered part of this class) but which differ from the rest in that they indicate certain modalities or likelihood. They are broken down by the type of modality and probability, the former into three categories—ability, obligation, desirability, permissibility, and advisability—and the latter into five degrees—impossible, unlikely, ambiguous, likely, and certain. These particles can be combined for various purposes and always precede the verb they modify, appearing after any other particles (such as the negative).

I should probably give some examples of these particles in use. One problem, at least with the former, is that they don’t always translate well (or as accurately as one would like) into English, but we’ll endeavor to get as close as we can. Here are some examples:

Mo vanan.

/mo vanan/

[mo vanan]

mo vana-n

ABL strong-1SG

I can be strong.

Yavá yasrá vanan sá.

/javaː jasɯraː vanan saː/

[javaː jasɾ̥aː vanan saː]

yavá yasrá vana-n sá

NEG.ABL NEG.LKLY strong-1SG EMPH

I cannot and / or am unlikely to be strong.

Yasrá yavá vanan sá.

/jasɯraː javaː vanan saː/

[jasɾ̥aː javaː vanan saː]

yasrá yavá vana-n sá

NEG.LKLY NEG.ABL strong-1SG EMPH

It is unlikely that I cannot be strong.

As these last two examples show, the full meaning of these particles depends on their order: probability particles apply to everything that comes after them, including other modality particles, but the same doesn’t go for the non-probabilistic modality particles whose relationship to succeeding modality particles is ambiguous.

You’ll notice that we included the emphatic particle after the verb when the preceding modality particles were negative: this isn’t strictly necessary (though neither is it for the plain negative), and you’re less likely to see it than you are with the plain negative. That is, most of the time the plain negative is used, it’ll be accompanied by an emphatic particle, but only sometimes are the negative modalities accompanied by emphatic particles.

6.1 | ADPOSITIONS

Mkvíele is—I think it is uncontroversial to say—an unstable language. The old language featured a great many postpositions, many of which are in some stage or another of the process of shifting to prepositions. Thus, Mkvíele features four kinds of adpositions, in ascending order of frequency: circumpositions, ambipositions, prepositions, and postpositions, with this last category making up the vast majority of adpositions present in the language.

This will likely not be a long chapter, though there are some usages of certain adpositions that warrant discussion. We’ll run through each category of adposition in order.

6.2 | CIRCUMPOSITIONS

Mkvíele features only three circumpositions, but they’re important to know as they’re not infrequently used. All three circumpositions require their nouns to be in the accusative case. The three circumpositions are:

6.2.1 | EM … MI — WITH

The circumposition ⟨em … mi⟩ is roughly equivalent to our “with,” indicating accompaniment (in other words, it is a comitative). Unlike “with,” this is not used to indicate instrument or manner (that is reserved for the essive case). This circumposition isn’t very common as its associated case is used more frequently, but you will see it here and there. For example, you might hear ⟨vá haséu em yáve mi⟩ which means “she goes with me.” Here, ⟨vá⟩ is “to go,” ⟨haséu⟩ is “she,” and ⟨yáve⟩ is “me.” As you can see, the noun that the modified noun is accompanying comes before the adpositional phrase.

6.2.2 | EM … SO — LIKE / SIMILAR TO

The circumposition ⟨em … so⟩ might be translated as “like” or “similar to,” comparing one noun to another. For example, ⟨ite bharsale em vea so⟩ means “the farmer drinks like a fool,” where ⟨vea⟩ is “fool” and ⟨bharsale⟩ is “the farmer.” As you can probably tell, the thing being compared to the modified noun is placed before the adpositional phrase.

6.2.3 | YASEM … SO — UNLIKE / IN CONTRAST TO

The circumposition ⟨yasem … so⟩ is just the opposite of ⟨em … so⟩. To reuse our example from before, ⟨ite bharsale yasem vea so⟩ means “the farmer drinks unlike a fool.” Admittedly, this doesn’t make as much sense, but it does its job well enough. It can, circumstantially, also be used to indicate contrast. For example, the example above might be interpreted as “the farmer drinks instead of a fool,” though it’d make more sense to see ⟨ite bharsale yasem veale so⟩, or “the farmer drinks instead of the fool.”

6.2 | AMBIPOSITIONS

These adpositions, which may appear on either side of the modified noun, make up a not insignificant sliver of all Mkvíele’s adpositions: they are mostly those adpositions which are in the middle phase between being strictly postpositional and being strictly prepositional. In most modern descendents of Mkvíele, the vast majority of adpositions have gone through this transitionary ambipositional phase, and now they mostly (or solely) have prepositions. We won’t cover all the ambipositions of Mkvíele as there are too many, but here are a handful:

6.3.1 | YE — FROM / OUT OF / SINCE / BECAUSE / ACCORDING TO

The ambiposition, ⟨ye⟩, has a variety of uses depending on context. It is often used to indicate origin or motion out of something, both literally and metaphorically. This allows it to be used much like our “since.” In addition, it can be used at the end of a phrase to mark cause, much in the same way one would use the causal converb. And lastly, it is often used to indicate the origin of information, much like our “according to.”

We might see the first use in something like ⟨le magren ye attáya⟩ which means “I went out of the house,” or in ⟨rin ye Mtsvrála⟩, which means “I am from Mtsvrála.” This overlaps a little with the genitive case; for example, the last sentence could also be rendered as ⟨rin Mtsvrálan⟩.

For an example of the temporal use, we can reuse an old example, ⟨íye ivéya ye le yá lanattáya né⟩, which means “since he died, I’ve not returned.” This temporal usage overlaps with the anterior converb, for example we might see: ⟨íye ivéthi le yá lanattáya né yáve⟩, which means the same thing.

Now, we can look at the last two uses of this adposition. These are strictly postpositional, unlike the previous three. A good example of the “cause” use of ⟨ye⟩ can be seen in ⟨iteléye aran svanatséua ye ivrin annéua⟩ which means “I am writing to you because I drank some wine.” As for the use of ⟨ye⟩ to indicate the origin of some information, we might use the example, ⟨tskóyoen ye iteren⟩, which means “according to my older brother, I am drunk.”

6.3.2 | THU — AT / ON / ABOUT / PERTAINING TO

The ambiposition ⟨thu⟩ is most often used to indicate location or point in time, though it can also be used to indicate the subject of one’s conversation or some information. For the first use, we might look at the example: ⟨in thu shiníele⟩, which means “I am at the tree.” For a temporal use, ⟨kvéye thu ivríye annéua⟩, which means “I wrote to you at night.”

As for the final use, specifically for indicating the subject of some information—be it a dialogue or written piece or anything really—we can reuse that last example, yielding: ⟨kvéye thu ivríye annéua thu tháyale íye líre annéua⟩ which means “at night, I wrote to you about how much I love you.”

6.4 | PREPOSITIONS

This section is currently incomplete….

6.5 | POSTPOSITIONS

Postpositions make a majority of Mkvíele’s adpositions.

This section is currently incomplete….