Category: Writing

We’ve gotten away with neglecting pronouns in our budding conlangs of Isian and Ardari so far, but now the time has come to fill the gap. Now, we’ll give both of them a nice set of pronouns to use, checking off all the boxes from the last theory post.

Isian

Isian will have a fair amount of complexity in its pronominal system, and it will contain more than one irregularity. In that sense, we’re making it much like the languages common in the West.

If you’ll recall, Isian doesn’t use case on its nouns, much like English. But we will have personal pronouns that change depending on their role in a sentence. Specifically, Isian has, for most of them, a subject, object, and possessive form. Here’s the full list:

Pronouns	Subject	Object	Possessive
1st Singular	em	men	mi
1st Plural	mit	mida	mich
2nd Person	so	tas	ti
3rd M. Sing.	i	im	ey
3rd F. Sing.	sha	shim	shi
3rd M. Pl.	is	sim	si
3rd F. Pl.	shas	sham	shay

In the third person, there are separate pronouns for masculine and feminine; unlike English, the plural also changes for gender. (Masculine is the default in “formal” Isian, but we’ll see a way to change that in a moment.)

We can use the subject and object pronouns in sentences anywhere a noun would go: sha fusas men “she kissed me”; em hame tas “I love you”. The possessive pronouns, however, function more like articles, and they always go at the beginning of a noun phrase: mi doyan “my brother”; ey wa talar “their big house”.

We also have a “generic” third-person pronoun, which doesn’t change for case. In the singular, it’s ed, while the plural form is des. This can be used like the English generic “you” or “one”: ed las an yoweni “you can’t enter”. In informal speech, we can also use these as genderless personal pronouns, more like English singular “they”: ed an daliga e talar “they don’t live in the house”.

Finally, we have the reflexive or intensive pronoun lan. This covers the functions of all of English’s “-self” pronouns all by, well, itself: e sam sipes lan “the man cut himself”; e esher hishis lan “the girls washed themselves”; em ocata lan “I asked myself”.

Beyond the personal pronouns, we have a couple more classes. We’ll start with Isian’s demonstratives, which come in distinct singular and plural forms. For near things, we have the singular ne and plural nes. Far things are denoted by to and tos. These four words are close in meaning and scope to English “this”, “these”, “that”, and “those”, respectively, and they can be used in much the same way, either as independent pronouns or like adjectives: nes “these”, nes jedi “these boys”.

Next are the interrogatives, or question words. Isian has two of these. For people, we use con, while things take cal. All the other possible questions (where, when, etc.) can be made from compounds or phrases based on one of these, which we’ll see in a later post, when we look at forming questions.

More relevant to today’s subject are the indefinite pronouns, which are derived from the question words. We have four pairs of these, each of them created by means of a prefix:

• je- “some”: jecon “someone”, jecal “something”.
• es- “any”: escon “anyone”, escal “anything”.
• licha- “every”: lichacon “everybody”, lichacal “everything”.
• ano- “none”: anocon “nobody” or “no one”; anocal “nothing”.

Finally, “standard” Isian (assuming a culture that has such a thing) doesn’t normally allow pronoun omission, or pro-drop. We’ve been using it so far, but that’s because we didn’t have any pronouns up to this point. Our hypothetical speakers of Isian would find it a little informal, though.

Ardari

Ardari has quite a few more pronouns than Isian, but the idea is still the same. First, let’s take a look at the personal pronouns:

Pronouns	Subject	Object	Possessive
1st Singular	my	myne	mynin
1st Excl. Plural	nyr	nyran	nyri
1st Incl. Plural	sinyr	sinran	sinri
2nd Informal	sy	syne	synin
2nd Form. Sing.	tro	trone	tronin
2nd Form. Pl.	trowar	trone	tronin
3rd Masc. Sing.	a	anön	ani
3rd Masc. Pl.	ajo	ajon	oj
3rd Fem. Sing.	ti	tise	tini
3rd Fem. Pl.	tir	ti	tisin
3rd Neuter Sing.	ys	yse	ysin
3rd Neuter Pl.	ysar	ysar	ysoj
Impersonal	mantö	manetö	manintö

That looks like a lot, but it’s really not too much. It’s the different distinctions that Ardari makes that can be hard to understand. The cases are largely the same as they were in the simpler conlang. It’s the left-hand column where the complexity lies.

For the first person, the singular should be obvious. But we have two plurals, labeled “exclusive” and “inclusive”. Which one to use is determined by whether you want to include the listener in the action. If you do, you use the inclusive; otherwise, you need the exclusive.

The second person again has a distinction unfamiliar to speakers of English, but this one shows up in plenty of other languages. The informal is used, surprisingly enough, in informal situations, such as among friends, and it works for singular and plural. The formal is for people you don’t know as well, when you need to show deference, or similar situations. It does change for the plural, but only if it’s the subject.

The third person shouldn’t be that hard to figure out. Remember that Ardari has masculine, feminine, and neuter. Here, we can use the neuter for the case of the unknown or of mixed gender; it doesn’t carry the same connotations of inhumanity as English “it”.

The impersonal form can be used for generic instances and cases where you’re not sure which person is right; it’s transparently derived from man “one”, with the definite article attached.

Reflexive pronouns can be made by adding the regular suffix -das to any object pronoun: mynedas “myself”; anöndas “himself”. Attach it to a subject pronoun, and you get an intensive meaning: mydas “I myself”.

And then we have a special, irregular pronoun lataj. This one roughly means “each other”, and it’s used anywhere you’d need a “reciprocal” meaning: ysar lataj salmedi “they love each other”.

Finally, to add flavor and that hint of verisimilitude, Ardari has vocative forms of a few pronouns. These are: second-person formal troda and plural trodavar; third-person masculine anaj and aja; third-person feminine tija (singular and plural); and third-person neuter singular ys.

Of course, few of these are really needed in Ardari, because the language employs pro-drop liberally, thanks to the concord marking on verbs. If you can get away without a subject or even object pronoun, our hypothetical Ardari speakers would, except in the most formal situations.

For demonstratives, we have a threefold division. The table below shows the “determiner” form; separate pronouns can be made by adding the suffix -man. (Literally, zaman translates to “this one”, and so on for the rest.)

	Near	Middle	Far
Masc. Sing.	za	pro	gyon
Fem. Sing.	zi	pri	gyen
Neut. Sing.	zall	prall	alyör
Plural	zej	prej	ejn

“Near” is those things near or known only by the speaker, or something specifically referred to recently in conversation, so that both speaker and hearer know it. “Middle” is used for things closer to the listener, or something that is well-known to both parties but absent. The “Far” demonstratives are used for those things that are far away from both speaker and listener, are not known to the listener at all, or are speculative in some way.

A few examples of these, since there are so many, and they don’t fit the same pattern as English:

• ablonyje zallman “listen to this”; uses the “near” form because the speaker knows it, but the listener doesn’t.

• sinyr prallman virdondall “we’ll sell that one”; takes the middle form, indicating something nearby and known to both parties.

• mynin tyeri ejnman majtasa “my daughter wants some of those”; the far form connotes something that neither the speaker nor the listener has.

After all that, the interrogatives are easy. In fact, they’re all derived from a single word, qom “what”. From this, we get qomban “who”, qomren “where”, qomlajch “when”, and qoman “which (one)”. These inflect like any other neuter noun, but they can’t take an article suffix.

Indefinite pronouns can be formed from these just like in Isian. (Call it linguistic borrowing or author laziness, the effect is the same.) We have four possibilities here: ta “some”, za- “every”, du- “no”, and manö- “any”. Making whatever you need is as simple as slapping these in front of an interrogative: taqomban “someone”, zaqom “everything”, and so on.

Pausing the game

After this post, the series is going on temporary hiatus. You’ll see why tomorrow, but I’ll be back with more conlanging action on December 4. In the meantime, have fun playing with Isian, Ardari, or your own language.

When I come back, we’ll work on prepositional phrases, relative clauses, and whatever else I can think of. Then, for the start of the new year, you’ll get to see the first significant writing in both languages.

Pronouns are, at the most basic level, words that stand in for other words. Think of “he” or “them” in English. Those words don’t really mean anything by themselves. They usually have to be said with reference to some other thing, like “a man” or “a bunch of kids”. A few of them, like “someone”, don’t, that’s true, but most pronouns do tend to refer to another noun.

Also, the definition of “pronoun” covers more ground than you might think. And the way this ground is divided up varies from one language to another. Sure, it’s obvious that the examples above are pronouns, but so are words like “these” and “who”. However, some languages don’t have an equivalent to “these”, because they don’t need a plural form of “this”. The word for “who” might be different, too, based on various factors. So let’s take a look at all the kinds of pronouns we can find in a language, all those that might fit in a conlang.

Getting personal

The most well-known class of pronouns has to be the personal ones, exemplified by words like English “he”, “she”, and “us”. Despite the name, these don’t necessarily refer to people (“it” normally doesn’t, for example), but they match up fairly well with the person distinction on verbs, where the first person is the speaker, the second is the listener, and the third is everybody else.

That’s the ideal situation, anyway. In practice, even the three-way person distinction can be a bit nebulous. Some languages have two sets of third-person pronouns, one each for those things close by (proximate) and far away (obviative); the latter is sometimes called “fourth person”. We’re off to a good start, aren’t we?

For many languages, pronouns are distinguished in most or all of the ways that nouns are, whether by number, gender, case, or whatever else. In quite a few, they actually have finer distinctions than ordinary nouns. English is one of these, as its pronouns can be marked for case (“we” versus “us”) and gender and even animacy (masculine “he”, feminine “she”, inanimate neuter “it”, and—informally—animate neuter “they”).

Personal pronouns also often show contrasts in ways that are relatively rare for common nouns. Honorific or formal pronouns are common, mostly in the second person. Spanish Usted is an example, as are the many possibilities in Japanese. Animacy is another case of this, as you can see in the English example above. And the first person can come in inclusive and exclusive forms, depending on whether “we” is supposed to include the listener.

Beyond the basic three (or four) persons, we have a few other odds and ends. Impersonal pronouns exist in many languages; the English form is “one”, which isn’t much used in modern speech. Generic pronouns, like the “you” that has largely supplanted impersonal “one”, are a close relative. You can have reflexive pronouns, like the “-self” group, which refer to…well, themselves. Emphatic pronouns, in English, take the same forms as reflexives, but they’re meant to emphasize a specific noun, rather than simply refer to it: “I will go myself.” Possessive pronouns are another important class. Languages with case might treat them as genitive forms of personal pronouns, but they could also be independent. And finally, a reciprocal pronoun (English “each other”) pops up in many places, specifically to deal with a single situation.

Demonstration

The demonstratives are another group of pronouns. This is the group that includes English “this” and “that”, used to refer to a specific, known instance of something. English has a pair of these, a bit like the proximate/obviative split mentioned earlier. “This” is for nearby things, while “that” is used to refer to something at a distance. We can add a third degree into this—as in Spanish, for example—either between “this” and “that” or beyond both of them, like “yonder”, which is non-standard in most dialects, but not mine. Four or even five contrasting degrees of distance aren’t unheard of, either, and a few languages have none at all.

Questions and others

Interrogative pronouns, like English “who” and “what”, are used to form questions. (We’ll see exactly how that’s done in a later post.) We use these when referring to a noun we don’t know, as when we ask, “What is it?” This class isn’t limited to people and things, either. Many languages have specific pronouns to ask about time (“when”), place (“where”), and reasons (“why”), among others.

It’s also common to derive a few other pronouns from the interrogatives. Relative pronouns, for those languages that have them, often come from the question words: “the man who hired me”. Relative clauses are worth a whole post by themselves, though, so we’ll hold off further discussion about them.

The indefinite pronouns, on the other hand, we’ll talk about right now. They’re a big group of words that tend to be derived in some fashion. Some languages, like English, make them out of interrogatives, as in “somewhere” or “anyhow”. Others, like English (funny how that works out), create them from generic nouns like “thing” or “one”: “someone”, “nothing”, “everyday”, “anybody”. And then a few of them have special cases, as in Spanish algo “something”, which is a morpheme to itself.

The making of

In form, pronouns can take just about any shape. They can be separate words that function as nouns in their own right, as they are in many languages. They can appear as verbal suffixes, as is the case in polysynthetic tongues. Or they could be a mix of these.

One interesting notion we can discuss here is the idea of pro-drop, omitting pronouns that would be redundant due to verbal conjugations or other factors. We don’t have it in English—pronouns are always required—but it’s one of the first grammatical aspects students learn about Spanish, and many other languages allow it. Japanese might be considered an extreme example of pro-drop, as context allows—and decorum sometimes requires—a speaker to omit subject pronouns, object pronouns, and any other extraneous bits.

As far as the specific sounds used to create a pronoun, there are a couple of trends. Quite a few languages, for example, have a first-person pronoun with a front nasal sound like /m/, and many of those then go on to have a second-person pronoun with a central consonant like /t/ or /s/. Most European languages show this pattern (Spanish me/te; English me/thee; German mich/dich), enough to make you think it’s an Indo-European thing. But then you have Finnish, a Uralic language, with minä/sinä. And then WALS gives the example of Nanai, a language of eastern Siberia: mi/si. Clearly, there’s some process at work here. That is also made clear by a contrary trend, where the first person shows /n/, the second /m/. This one is more widespread in America, with occasional occurrences elsewhere in the world, in unrelated languages.

For your information

When making a conlang, pronouns can be a hassle to get right. Their very definition lends itself very well to a mechanical approach, especially in agglutinating languages, where you can just attach the right markers to some generic base. It’s harder to make a full set like English, where just about every personal pronoun on the chart has a different history.

The personal pronouns are probably the easiest, though it’s not exactly hard to go overboard. Indefinites, relatives, and all the rest aren’t as necessary at the start, if only because the things you’d most likely say in the early stages won’t need them. But they shouldn’t be too far behind, because they’re no less useful.

Remember that pronouns often follow a paradigm, but there are plenty of irregularities. In natural languages, that’s from borrowing, sound change, and all the other natural factors of linguistic evolution. But there are languages out there with very regular pronoun systems, too.

Future reference

The next post in this series will have all the pronouns you could ever want for Isian and Ardari. Since this post covered most of the theory, there won’t be that much left to do, so we’ll get words, words, and more words. After that, we’ll move to the things that we call prepositional phrases, which aren’t always what they seem.

(Editor’s note: If you’re wondering about the odd posting time, well, there’s a simple explanation. I wrote this on September 14, but I noticed when I went to schedule it that it would appear on October 16. That’s my birthday, and 5:38 PM is what I’ve been told was my time of birth. So, when this goes up, I’ll be 32. I couldn’t resist the extra touch.)

For Ardari, adjectives look like nouns at first glance. They take all the usual inflections for case and number, with the additional wrinkle that they agree with their head nouns in gender. Because of this, the “dictionary” form of an adjective will always be the neuter form: dyet “good”, òlk “loud”, jysall “sad”, chel “young”.

We can add these adjectives into a noun phrase by placing them before the head noun: dyeta rhasa “good dog”; òlko blèdo “loud animals”; jysalla konatö “the sad man”; chelisèn nälisèntös “of the young women”. As you can see from the last two examples, adjectives modifying nouns don’t need articles.

In contrast to English (and Isian, for that matter), Ardari adjectives work just fine alone, without the need for a head noun. In this case, they inflect as if they were neuter nouns: dyetardös “the good ones”.

Predicate adjectives

We can go the other way, too, and make adjectives into verbs, although this only works with certain words. Three of our four examples work: dèblatö òlkda “the river is loud”; sèdardös jysalldiru “the children are not sad”; pwatö chelda “the boy is young”. (Note that these verbified adjectives act like inactive verbs, using patient concord markings for their subjects.)

For dyet and words like it, we use a different, more general, approach. This involves the copula verb èll-, and it’s just like making a normal sentence. The adjective agrees with the subject noun in gender, but it’s always in the nominative case: rhasatö èlla dyeta “the dog is good”.

In fact, any adjective can be used in this copula construction. It implies a more “permanent” state than directly using the adjective directly. So, instead of dèblatö òlkda, we might say dèblatö èlla òlka, which has the same meaning, but carries the connotation that this particular river is always loud.

Comparatives

Ardari doesn’t have special adjective versions for comparatives and superlatives, like English does. Instead, it has a general word am that can appear before an adjective. It does double duty, acting like both “more” and “most”, with the actual meaning depending on context.

In a simple noun phrase, it’s usually a superlative: am dyeto rhasodys “the best dogs”. The exception is when it’s being made into a comparative phrase, which we’ll meet in a future post.

When used on a bare adjective, am always means “most”: am dyetardös “the best”.

On a predicate, am implies the superlative unless it’s clear from context that it’s a comparison. As an example, we might have uswall tyèktö èlla grov “the blue house is big” followed by ajzhtö èlla am grov “the white house is bigger”. If we just said ajzhtö èlla am grov alone, the meaning would instead be “the white house is the biggest”.

Phonetic alteration

That just about does it for Ardari adjectives, except for one thing. Some of these words change slightly. In the neuter form, they have a regular, non-palatalized consonant. In the other genders, these can become palatalized.

One example of this is mil “happy”. In the neuter, it stays how it’s written: mil sèd “a happy child”. Otherwise, it changes: milya pwa “a happy boy*; milyi gli “a happy girl”.

This change can happen with many consonants in Ardari. The stops alternate with their palatalized versions (p becomes py, etc.), while l and n become ly and ny, respectively.

Ardari word list

Like with Isian, here’s a huge list of Ardari words. Verbs are always listed as stems (you can tell by the hyphen at the end), and adjectives are shown in neuter form.

There are three adjectives in the list that show the palatalizing change. These are shown with a following (y), as in mil(y) for “happy”.

Two specific words need to be pointed out. First, “not” is listed as -(r)u, which shows the two possible forms of the negative verbal suffix, -u after consonants and -ru after vowels. Second, the word for “friend” changes based on gender: neuter ast, masculine asta, feminine asti. This is shown as ast(a/i).

English	Ardari
air	impän
all	laz
angry	nyol
animal	blèda
any	by
arm	kyem
back	sur
bad	gall
beautiful	sli
bed	mäs
big	grov
bird	pèdi
bitter	nykh
black	zar
blood	chonga
blue	uswall
boat	druni
body	apsa
bone	oqa
book	byzri
bottom	tòn
boy	pwa
bread	nami
bright	wich
brother	emöna
car	kolyi
cat	avbi
chest	ghall
child	sèd
city	präzda
closed	nòp
cloth	chill
cloud	nawra
cold	glaz
color	kyos
correct	rik
cup	kykad
daughter	tyeri
day	jan
daytime	tulyana
dim	nyn
dog	rhasa
door	kopa
dress	lesri
drink	ach
dry	khèv
ear	mèka
earth	dyevi
egg	oghi
every	ining
eye	agya
face	sòl
false	ill
father	aba
few	ikön
field	tevri
finger	inda
fire	aghli
flower	afli
food	fès
foot	allga
forest	tyëtoma
friend	ast(a/i)
front	chej
fruit	zulyi
girl	gli
glass	träll
gold	owènyi
good	dyet
grass	sèrki
green	rhiz
hair	zhaj
hand	kyur
happy	mil(y)
hard	khòrd
hat	sèla
head	chäf
heart	rocha
hill	dyumi
hot	fed(y)
house	tyèk
ice	sill
island	symli
king	kujda
knife	yagha
lake	oltya
leaf	däsi
left	fong
leg	khära
light	blis
long	tur
loud	òlk
man	kona
many	majos
meat	arba
milk	mechi
moon	duli
mother	emi
mountain	antövi
mouth	mim
name	all
narrow	will
net	pèrta
new	vän
nice	tèch
night	goz
nose	khun
not	-(r)u
old	pòd
open	owar
paper	rhesta
peace	ichuri
pen	pyela
person	ban
plant	pämi
poor	nydor
pot	gyazi
queen	kujvi
rain	luza
red	jor
rich	agris
right	leng
river	dèbla
rock	qada
rough	dyaraz
sad	jysall
scent	ymin
sea	oska
sharp	krit
shirt	tèwar
shoe	saz
short (tall)	nyan
short (long)	nèr
silent	däch
sister	tamöni
skin	prall
sky	weli
small	nèr
smooth	chus
snow	qäsa
soft	èz
son	era
sound	onda
sour	rukh
star	pala
sun	chi
sweet	ojet(y)
sword	èngla
table	kombas
tail	pija
tall	vol
thick	gwad
thin	tip
to allow	rhoten-
to ask	mykhes-
to be	èll-
to begin	sòto-
to blow	fu-
to build	moll-
to burn	secha-
to buy	dyem-
to catch	kòp-
to come	ton-
to cook	lòsty-
to cry	ajn-
to cut	okön-
to dance	tatyer-
to die	lo-
to do	agh-
to drink	kabus-
to eat	tum-
to end	jop-
to enter	idyn-
to feel	luch-
to give	anyer-
to go	chin-
to guard	chud-
to have	per-
to hear	ablon-
to hit	king-
to hold	yfily-
to hunt	kwar-
to kiss	alym-
to know	trod-
to laugh	jejs-
to learn	prèll-
to like	lyeb-
to live	derva-
to live in	daran-
to look at	tojs-
to look for	tèlas-
to love	salm-
to make	grät-
to plant	mäp-
to play	rej-
to pray	nyes-
to read	proz-
to receive	bèrill-
to run	okhyn-
to say	is-
to see	ivit-
to sell	vird-
to sing	ajang-
to sit	bun-
to sleep	rhèch-
to smell	aws-
to speak	sim-
to stand	minla-
to taste	aty-
to teach	sydon-
to think	bejë-
to throw	ghur-
to touch	tejv-
to walk	brin-
to want	majtas-
to wash	oznèr-
to wear	ilya-
to write	farn-
tongue	lèta
tooth	käga
top	khaj
tree	buri
true	chäll
ugly	qöbar
war	idyaza
warm	fynin
water	obla
wet	bol
white	ajzh
wide	wok
wind	fawa
wise	trodyn
woman	näli
wood	dräza
word	non
world	omari
wrong	nej
year	avèch
yellow	mingall
young	chel