Moten, Part III: Counting

As I indicated in the last post about Moten, in this post I intend to talk in detail about numbers and how to count in the Moten language. I will also talk about counters, a subgroup of common nouns that interact with numbers in a very specific way. I will show how the expressions of date and time are formed, and will finish with a short discussion about the degrees of comparison. Hopefully, this post won't be anywhere as long as the previous one.

Once thing I want to make clear upfront: when I explain the reasons behind some of the constructions I describe, those reasons are to be taken in the context of the internal, i.e. fictional, background of the language. Giving the external reasons would be very boring (they all boil down to: "I thought that was neat" and "it just made sense compared to the rest of the language") and I think that giving some more glimpses into the fiction I built around the Moten language will interest some people.

Let's start with describing the cardinal and ordinal numbers.

Cardinal Numbers

Cardinal numbers are numbers that indicate quantity, or the size of a group. In Moten, as in English, they are the most basic numbers, with other sets being derived from them.

Cardinal numbers in Moten use a decimal system, i.e. one counts in units, tens, hundreds and thousands, as in English. Forming the tens, however, is much easier and regular than in English, French, or any other European language for that matter. In writing, since the Moten system fits them perfectly, I simply use the Arabic numerals to write numbers down.

A Moten cardinal number is a single compound word possibly formed of many elements. In the next paragraphs, I will describe how to build such words, starting with the digits, and carrying on in order of complexity.

The numbers from 1 to 9 are shown here:

digit	Moten
1	su
2	eg
3	ima
4	tol
5	vel(d)
6	|sim
7	nege
8	uzab
9	e|nek

10 is geni. The other tens are simply formed by prefixing a digit to geni (sometimes with small morphophonemic changes):

ten	Moten
10	geni
20	egeni
30	imageni
40	tolgeni
50	velgeni
60	|simgeni
70	negegeni
80	uzageni
90	e|negeni

To form the numbers from 11 to 99, you simply add the digit after the ten. However, two rules have to be followed:

• The -ni ending of the tens must be removed.
• If the digit starts with a vowel, it is dropped.

Here are the numbers from 11 to 19 as an example (all other numbers until 99 follow exactly the same rules):

number	Moten
11	gesu
12	geg
13	gema
14	getol
15	gevel(d)
16	ge|sim
17	genege
18	gezab
19	ge|nek

100 is japu. Multiples of 100 are formed like the multiples of 10, by prefixing a digit to it, sometimes with small morphophonemic changes:

hundred	Moten
100	japu
200	egapu
300	imajapu
400	to|lapu
500	veldapu
600	|simapu
700	negejapu
800	uzabapu
900	e|nekapu

Forming the numbers from 101 to 999 is as simple as suffixing the numbers from 1 to 99 to the hundreds. The only possible change here is that if the suffixed number starts with a vowel, the -u of the hundred is dropped. Here are a few examples:

number	Moten
101	japusu
102	japeg
213	egapugema
324	imajapegetol
435	to|lapimagevel(d)
546	veldaputolge|sim
657	|simapuvelgenege
768	negejapu|simgezab
879	uzabapunegege|nek
980	e|nekapuzageni
999	e|nekape|nege|nek

1,000 is sen, and it is the highest single-root number in Moten. Multiples of 1000 are formed by prefixing a number from 1 to 999 in front of it. This normally doesn't result in any morphophonemic change, except when the prefixed number ends with 2, 5 or 8:

number	Moten
2,000	egzen
5,000	vel|zen
8,000	uzazen

Of course, numbers from 1,001 to 999,999 are formed by suffixing the numbers from 1 to 999 to the multiples of 1,000. Here again morphophonemic changes are minimal, with only two cases:

• If the suffixed number starts with j (i.e. basically any number from 100 to 199), the sequence *nj becomes |n.
• If the suffixed number starts with n (basically 7 and its derivatives), the sequence *nn coalesces into a single n.

Here are a few examples:

number	Moten
2,007	egzenege
46,120	tolge|simse|napegeni
345,719	imajaputolgevel|zenegejapuge|nek

Powers of 1,000 are simply formed by reduplicating sen. So 1,000,000 is sensen, and 1,000,000,000 is sensensen (higher powers are possible, but rarely used). Those behave like sen itself when it comes to prefixing and suffixing other numbers.

As you can see, cardinal numbers can become very long. But no matter their length, all cardinal numbers are common nouns. They inflect for case and definition (not for number though, they always take singular case affixes) and they can be used on their own or as adjectives. However, when used as adjectives, some cardinal numbers have a peculiar behaviour, in that they typically appear before rather than after the noun they complete. This only concerns short numbers (typically from one to three syllables, although that's not a hard-and-fast rule) and it is always optional (although it's exceedingly rare to see su and eg after a noun). That's why I wrote in the previous post:

And as an exception to the rule that Moten is head-final, adjectives normally appear after the head of the noun phrase.

Short numbers are the exception to that exception. Here are a few examples to illustrate this:

su ka|se: one man.

bazlo imajapu: three hundred towns.

badi japuseju: the 101 dogs (japusu badesi would also be possible here).

tolgeg apa ufsan: 42 great stars (apa: star. If the number was placed after the head noun, this would become: apa ufan tolgeg).

This last example (and the alternative to the third example) illustrates that noun phrases containing a number higher than one are plural in meaning, and must be declined as such if the last nominal of the phrase allows it.

You might have noticed that I never mentioned 0, i.e. "zero", "nought". That's because the Moten language doesn't have a native word specifically for that concept. In general contexts, you can simply use memun: none (or memut: nothing or memik: nobody, depending on context). In more formal, scientific or mathematical contexts, the borrowing zelo can be used. It is considered a common noun, not a numeral, and for this reason it can be declined in the plural.

Ordinal Numbers

While cardinal numbers refer to a quantity, ordinal numbers refer to a rank, to a position in a series.

In English, as in about every other language with ordinal numbers, ranking in a series is absolute: it always goes from the first item in the series to the last one, and always in that order (in English, one can count backwards from the last element by adding the "-to-last" suffix to an ordinal number, but this is uncommon, and the resulting forms are not considered proper ordinal numbers). In Moten, there are only three ordinal numbers with such an absolute meaning. Those are |zaja: first, kuna: last (which is considered an ordinal number in Moten) and difoja: middle rank (it basically refers to the item in the middle of the list, half-way between the first and the last item). All the other ordinal numbers in Moten are relative, i.e. they don't presuppose a certain manner of going through a series. So to indicate a rank, an ordinal number alone (besides the three nouns I already introduced) is not enough. You also need to indicate:

• The origin of the ranking, which can be the first item, the last item, or any item in between (and needn't be named in a numerical way).
• The ranking direction, i.e. whether you are going backwards (towards the first item of the series) or forwards (towards the last item of the series) from the origin.

So a rank in Moten is normally indicated by the combination of three parts: an origin, a ranking direction, and a relative ordinal number indicating how far from the origin we are in the series. Of those, the origin and the ranking direction can actually be omitted, when they are clear by context, or simply when the speaker just does not want to specify them. For now though, let's describe each of those parts in order.

The origin can be one of three things:

• Any of the three absolute ordinal numbers |zaja, kuna and difoja.
• A cardinal number, indicating an origin based on an absolute scale from first to last.
• A common noun, which due to semantics or due to context refers to a specific item in a series (it's difficult to give an example here, as about anything can be used as long as context makes it clear that there is a series of ordered items involved).

While the origin is always a nominal, when part of an ordinal number it always appears as a bare stem, with no declension at all.

The ranking direction is indicated by one of two small, invariable particles. Those are |zaj, which indicates backwards counting (towards the first item), and kun, which indicates forwards counting (towards the last item). Those are never added when the origin is |zaja or kuna, since for those the ranking direction is fixed and obvious.

The relative ordinal numbers are an open-ended class of numbers derived from the cardinal numbers by adding the suffix -ano. Since adding that suffix can result in non-obvious derivations, I am showing all the possibilities in the following table:

number	Moten
1a	sano*
2a	egano
3a	imano
4a	tolano
5a	veldano
6a	|simano
7a	negano
8a	uzano
9a	e|nekano
10a	ge|nano
100a	japano
1,000a	senano

* This form is not usually used on its own (when used, it simply refers to the same item as the origin), but it is added here to show how numbers ending in -su form their ordinal equivalents.

All numbers end with one of those above, so when you know this table you can derive any ordinal number from any cardinal number. This table also shows that relative ordinal numbers, when written in digits, are indicated by adding a to the digits.

The origin, ranking direction and relative ordinal number are put together in this order. In writing they are separated by spaces, and for purposes of declension they are considered separate, i.e. only the last item takes declension marks and/or functional prefixes (ordinal numbers can decline for number as well as for case and definition). For syntactic purposes though, they are considered a single unit, a single common noun that can also be used as adjective. Here are a few examples of valid ordinal expressions:

|zajea: the first one.

kuna eganeo: the next-to-last one (literally: "the second one from the last").

difoja |zaj veldaneo: the fifth one before the middle one.

sen kun ge|naneo: the 1009^th (literally: "the 10th one after 1000. This makes sense because the origin is included in the count: it is considered the first item on the relative scale. There is no "zeroth" rank).

kun eganeo: the next one (literally: "the second one after some unspecified origin").

linan badi |zaj imano: a bird, 3 ranks before a dog (the context should make clear which dog we are talking about, and why animals are being ranked).

|zika difoja negano: a mountain, 7 ranks before or after the middle one (this example shows that even when the origin is indicated, the ranking direction needn't be).

Ka|se umpi |zaja moeganedon juba|si ito: the man comes to the second house (this example illustrates how ordinal numbers are declined).

As you can see, Moten ordinal numbers can be translated in many ways, and often correspond to expressions that are not considered ordinal numbers in English.

Other Numbers

Besides cardinal and ordinal numbers, languages usually have ways to express other types of numeral expressions. The most common ones are:

• Partitive numbers: basically fractions (in English, those are "half", "third", "quarter", and are often identical to ordinal numbers).
• Multiplicative numbers: those indicate repetition ("once", "twice", "three times", etc.).
• Collective numbers: those describe groups or entities composed of several parts ("single", "double", "triple", as well as terms like "pair", "quadruplet", "score", etc.).
• Distributive numbers: those describe dividing and assigning portions ("in pairs", "by the dozen", "one by one", "three each").

As the examples show, those can be expressed using single words (like English "once") or expressions ("three times"). In any case, it's interesting to know how to express them. However, I will deal with fractions later in this post, and with collective numbers in a future post. For now, let's focus on the multiplicative and distributive numbers.

In the Moten language, multiplicative numbers are easily formed: the genitive case has a temporal sense of frequency, so using it with cardinal numbers gives them a multiplicative meaning. They can appear either with or without the functional prefix di-. So "once" is (di)zvuj, "twice" is (di)vegi, "three times" is (d)imvaj, etc.

Distributive numbers are also easy to form: just use the instrumental prefix ko- with a cardinal number. So kosu means "one by one", koeg means "two by two", kojma means "three each", etc.

Counters

Enough about numbers. Let's now focus on a special type of common nouns I like to call "counters".

Counters are common nouns, a priori indistinguishable from other common nouns. They don't have any specific shape or feature that can allow one to recognise them compared to other nouns. They behave exactly like any other noun, except when they are counted. When this happens, instead of the cardinal number becoming an adjective, the number and the noun are merged into a single compound noun, with the number at the beginning and the counter at the end. The resulting compound nouns, when declined, can only take singular affixes, and they cannot take the definite infix, even when they are definite in meaning (if an adjective completes such a noun and is declined, it is declined in the plural and/or takes the definite infix as needed by the meaning of the phrase). Moreover, compounding numbers and nouns together may result in some morphophonemic changes, as usually happens in Moten.

It's impossible to make an exhaustive list of counters, but I'll give here examples of the most common ones:

• fokez: person. A few examples: sufokez: (the) one person, egvokez: (the) two people, velvokez: (the) five people (I will not show "(the)" any more, but all the following examples can be definite as well as indefinite).
• sponda: small animal (basically any animal smaller than a human being). A few examples: velzbonda: five small animals, e|neksponda: nine small animals, japususponda: one hundred and one small animals.
• kit: large animal (basically any animal larger than a human being). A few examples: egit: two large animals, uzagit: eight large animals, getolkit: fourteen large animals.
• gom: day (more exactly: "the period from sunrise to sunset"). A few examples: egom: two days, |simgom: six days, e|nekom: nine days.
• dod: evening, night (strictly: "the period from sunset to sunrise"). A few examples: toldod: four nights, uzadod: eight nights, e|nektod: nine nights.
• jos: part, piece. A few examples: egos: two parts, to|los: four parts, ge|nos: ten parts.
• zi|sun: degree, (game) point. A few examples: velzi|sun: five degrees, uzazi|sun: eight degrees, japuzi|sun: hundred points.
• lugen: word. A few examples: tolugen: four words, negelugen: seven words, senlugen: one thousand words.
• pav: digit. A few examples: supav: one digit, velbav: five digits, uzabav: eight digits.

Also considered a counter, although it is semantically slightly different, is tul: part, piece, fraction. By itself, it's basically a synonym of jos. However, when counted, it forms the fractions (if you want to count parts, jos is the only way). For instance, egdul means "half", toltul means "quarter", and uzadul means "eighth". Those compounds can be counted as well (like any common noun. They are still restricted to declining in the indefinite singular though): eg imatul: (the) two thirds.

This last construction is actually not restricted to tul. Any number-counter compound can be used as a common noun itself and can be counted as well: ima egvokez: (the) three groups of two people.

Counters as Classifiers

If you've studied East Asian languages like Chinese or Japanese, you've probably heard of classifiers, little words that show a conceptual classification of the referent of a noun, and which are used mostly when counting. For instance, in Japanese, numbers cannot quantify nouns by themselves. They must first be combined with a small word before they can complete nouns. For instance, if you want to count cars, you need to add 台 (dai, a classifier for mechanical devices) to the number (so "two cars" is 車二台: kuruma nidai i.e. "car two-classifier").

Well, as it happens, in the Moten language you can optionally use counters in a similar construction. Basically, when you count a non-counter noun, instead of using a plain cardinal number, you can use a compound number-counter as an adjective (the restrictions on declining such a compound are still valid in this use). The only condition is that the counter used must be semantically related to the referent of the noun (and even then, the speaker can play with semantics for reasons of metaphor, joke, insult, etc.). For instance, when counting men, you can use the fokez counter, and say ka|se egvokez rather than eg ka|se for "(the) two men".

While it is an optional construction, it's actually quite commonly used with short numbers, especially to count animate nouns, i.e. nouns referring to people or animals. It's also typically how fractions are used with nouns, as long as the fractions are not themselves completed by a numeral (if they are, the thing counted is put in the genitive case, and the fraction itself becomes the head of the noun phrase). For instance, "half a town" is bazlo egdul, while "two thirds of a town" is bazluvoj eg imatul.

Expressions of Date and Time

Before I start this section, I want to add a small disclaimer: expressing dates is strongly culturally based. Not every culture uses the same calendar, and even those that do do not necessarily give the same names to its constituents. Even time expressions vary widely between languages. As for Moten, you have to remember that it is the native language of an amnesiac, with no recollection of his life before he was found in the countryside of Belgium. As a result of his particular situation (a boy with no recollection of his past except his language), C.G. remembers words he feels are related to the expression of time and dates, but without a clear idea of what they exactly mean. However, he can remember neither words for naming the days of the week (not even a word for "week"), nor words for naming the months of the year (he does remember a word whose meaning seems similar to that of "month", so we decided to use it as such). Nonetheless, C.G. still remembers very well how all those terms are used grammatically. So what we did was collect all the words he could remember that were related to expressions of time, and shoehorn them in the Gregorian calendar (and in the 24-hour system). We also created neologisms for day names and month names. The result is a system he feels is syntactically correct, even if the Moten speakers may actually be using a very different kind of calendar, wherever those people might be.

The shortest units of time are daj: hour, pele: minute and funa: second. They are counters, and can be used to indicate durations:

egdaj: two hours.

velbele: five minutes.

tolpele opa uzavuna: four minutes and eight seconds (opa is a conjunction meaning "and").

They can also be used to indicate the time of day. Time is always indicated using the 24-hour system, and the origin is at midnight (basically, one indicates the time of the day by telling how much time passed since midnight). Hours and minutes are added in that order, and Moten doesn't use expressions like "quarter to" or "half past":

|simdaj: six o'clock (in the morning).

ge|simdaj: four o'clock (in the afternoon).

ge|simdaj (opa) velbele: five past four in the afternoon (opa is optional in this construction).

ge|simdaj (opa) imagenipele: half past four in the afternoon.

ge|simdaj (opa) tolgevelbele: a quarter to five in the afternoon.

In such a system, one needs to be able to express "zero hour", to be able to tell the time between midnight and one o'clock. In Moten, you use the special expression medaj: midnight:

medaj genipele: ten past midnight.

It is a simple compound of the indefinite prefix me-: no, and daj (I'll show in a future post how counters can form compounds with more than just the cardinal numbers). This word, like the number-counter compounds, can only be declined in the indefinite singular. Note however that while daj, pele and funa can be used to indicate both time of day and durations, medaj can only be used to indicate time of day. For durations, the only possible way to indicate "zero hours" is daj memun: no hour.

Time of day is commonly abbreviated using digits. Naturally, when writing in the Moten language it's usually done as well. The way to do it is quite simple, and reminiscent of French: write down the number of hours, followed by d for daj, followed by the number of minutes. If you want to add a number of seconds as well, add p after the minutes, followed by the number of seconds. This is all written without spaces:

15d20: 3:20PM.

0d5p15: 12:05:15AM.

Note that the minutes don't take a leading 0 when written in digits (and are normally totally omitted when they are equal to 0). The same is true of the seconds.

The next expression of time is siza: day. While it is grammatically a counter, siza, unlike gom, cannot (normally) be used to indicate durations. Rather, siza refers to a calendar day, seen as an indivisible unit, and is used only to indicate dates.

As I mentioned before, C.G. cannot remember any native Moten name for the days of the week. Rather than borrowing them from French, we decided to create compounds based on siza to name them. The resulting neologisms are shown in the following list:

• kelsiza: Monday (kel: moon).
• a|siza: Tuesday (at: fire).
• vonesiza: Wednesday (vone: cold water).
• ibosiza: Thursday (ibo: air).
• seno|ziza: Friday (senod: earth).
• apasiza: Saturday (apa: star).
• emesiza: Sunday (eme: sun).

As for the word "week", we also created a neologism for it: negesizdan (in a future post I'll explain how this one was formed).

Unlike their English equivalents, they are considered common nouns and can take the definite infix (except when used in a date expression, see below).

I already mentioned that siza is a counter, but added that it cannot be used to indicate durations. So what are its combinations with numbers used for? Simply put, they indicate the day of the month. Rather than being numbered using cardinal or ordinal numbers, in Moten the days of the month are numbered using a number-siza compound. For example:

susiza: the 1^st of the month.

egziza: the 2^nd of the month.

vel|ziza: the 5^th of the month.

genisiza: the 10^th of the month.

imagesusiza: the 31^st of the month.

To translate the concept of "month", we reused the term mune, whose actual meaning C.G. can't remember exactly (he is convinced that this word is used to cut the year in shorter periods of time, so it felt OK to do so). Mune is a counter, and unlike siza can be used for dates as well as for durations. When naming the twelve months of the year, C.G. and I went a bit overboard with our creativity. Not only we allowed the first twelve number compounds with mune to be used as names for the months (from sumune for January to gegmune for December), we also created a second set of month names, using more picturesque compounds that don't all end in mune. Those are:

• ada|zaj: January (literally "year's beginning", with ada: year and |zaj: beginning).
• kelemune: February ("winter month", kele: winter).
• zoba|saj: March ("spring's beginning", zobat: spring).
• ibomune: April ("air month").
• zobatmune: May ("spring month").
• emelogzaj: June ("summer's beginning", with emelog: summer, itself a compound of eme: sun and log: season).
• ememune: July ("sun month").
• atmune: August ("fire month").
• o|nigzaj: September ("autumn's beginning", o|nig: autumn).
• senodmune: October ("earth month").
• vonemune: November ("water month").
• adakun: December ("year's end", kun: end).

Yes, I realise that they're not very inventive. Moreover, they are strongly Northern hemisphere-centric. But then again, C.G. and I were only 15 when we invented them. Grammatically speaking, they are common nouns just like the weekdays, and behave the same way (they can take the definite infix when necessary, except when used as part of a date expression).

The two sets of months names, while nominally interchangeable, are not totally so in actual usage (that's to say, in the way C.G. and I speak the Moten language). Basically, we tend to reserve the use of the numbered months for dates, while the other set is used in other contexts. The exceptions are the months January, March, July and December, for which we almost always use the words ada|zaj, zoba|saj, ememune and adakun, even in dates. Don't ask me why that is, it just evolved naturally from our usage patterns.

Finally, the word for "year", as you saw above, is ada. Like mune, it's a counter, and can be used for dates as well as durations. To name a year, just take its number in the Gregorian calendar, and add ada to it:

sujada: the year 1.

sene|nekapunegege|simada: the year 1976.

egzenge|nada: the year 2010.

Naturally, those compounds can get very long, so it's common to write the year in digits, followed by ada without a space: 1ada, 1976ada, 2010ada.

Now that we have all the elements of a date, actually naming one is easy: just coordinate all those elements together, with an optional opa between any two elements. Element order is similar to what is done with hours: the biggest unit always comes first. In this case, it means the normal order is year, month, day. Abbreviating dates is also similar to what is done with hours: write down the number of years (normally always 4 digits) followed by a, then the number of the month (with no leading 0) followed by m, then the number of the day (without leading 0 either). When the number of the day is used alone, without any indication of month, an s is added to the digits. Here are a few examples:

1976a3m25, sene|nekapunegege|simada (opa) zoba|saj (opa) egevel|ziza: the 25^th of March 1976.

9m11, e|nekmune (opa) gesusiza: the 11^th of September.

14s, getolsiza: the 14^th.

Dates and times of day can be put together simply through coordination. When such an expression is abbreviated, an s is put between the day number and the hour:

1m24s3d10, ada|zaj (opa) egetolsiza (opa) imadaj (opa) genipele: the 24^th of January at 3:10AM.

The weekday name can also be added to the date. However, this results in a small change in the way the date is formed: the day number is replaced by a cardinal number (i.e. siza is removed), and the weekday name must follow it directly. It's not allowed to use opa between the day number and the day name:

1m24 emesiza, ada|zaj (opa) egetol emesiza: Sunday the 24^th of January.

This example also illustrates how the month names and weekday names don't take the definite infix when they are used in a date, despite being semantically definite in that case.

Degrees of Comparison

After such a long post on numbers and related categories, it's time to call it a day. I want to finish by talking about the degrees of comparison, as this will conclude most of what you need to know about nominals.

The degrees of comparison relate mostly to adjectives, where they modify the intensity by which the quality described by the adjective applies to the completed noun. However, even in English the degrees of comparison can apply to nouns as well, where they have a quantitative rather than qualitative meaning. For instance, you can use "more" with both adjectives ("more interesting") and nouns ("more food", "more apples"). In the Moten language, this is a general truth: since adjectives and nouns are not separate categories of words, the same degrees of comparison can apply to any noun that semantically allows it, whether it's used as head of a phrase or as adjective. Whether their meaning is quantitative rather than qualitative is then only a function of how the noun is used in the sentence.

In English, the degrees of comparison are formed mostly with adverbs (although short adjectives use suffixes like "-er" and "-est" for some forms). In Moten, they are formed exclusively through prefixes and circumfixes. The various affixes and their meanings are:

• Intensifier/excessive:
• Prefix pen-: very (much), much, many, a lot (of), too, too much, too many.
• Prefix len-: not very (much), (a) little, (a) few, too little, too few, not enough.
• Comparative:
• Prefix pe-: more, ...-er.
• Prefix ne-: as, as much, as many.
• Prefix le-: less, fewer.
• Superlative:
• Circumfix pe- -no: (the) most, (the) ...-est.
• Circumfix le- -no: (the) least, (the) fewest.

Naturally, those affixes trigger specific morphophonemic rules:

• The e of the prefixes pe-, ne- and le- behaves exactly like the definite infix -e-.
• The n of the suffix -no behaves like the accusative suffix -n, although the presence of a following vowel means that u needn't be inserted as often as with -n.
• The n of the prefixes pen- and len- also behaves like the n of the suffix -no, but of course only when preceding rather than when following a consonant.

When added to nominals, those affixes bind tighter than the functional prefixes, but less tight than the case affixes. In other words, the order in which affixes are added to a nominal stem is: (functional prefix) (degree of comparison prefix) stem (with possible infix) (case suffix) (degree of comparison suffix). Here are a few examples to illustrate the use of those affixes:

Koba umpi pepludegun ige: you have a smaller house (pleg: smallness, agem: to have. Notice how the subject is marked with the functional prefix ko-, indicating the subject didn't actively choose to own a smaller house).

Kolenvone zunla luden izu|lebi ige: (I) clean this place up with a little water (Actually, as it stands, it could also mean: "a little water cleans this place up". This sentence will make more sense once I've written the next post on Moten. For now, just know that izu|lebi: "to become clean" is an intransitive verb, and that using the auxiliary agem rather than atom makes intransitive verbs transitive).

fokez peodejuno: the youngest person.

You might have noticed that I call the pen- and len- prefixes both intensifier and excessive. Indeed, depending on context, penodun can both mean "very young" or "too young". It might seem strange not to make such a distinction, but it's not unknown (Modern Greek doesn't make that distinction either).

In English, you can modify the comparative of equality with multiplicative numbers ("twice as tall") or fractions ("half as bad"). The possibility exists in Moten too, except that only multiplicative numbers can be used, and only the comparatives of superiority and inferiority can be modified by them (never use a multiplicative number with a comparative of equality in Moten, it's just incorrect). Since the multiplicative numbers are simply the cardinal numbers in the genitive case, they can modify nominals without a problem, and are placed in front of them:

imvaj pebontu: three times as slow (literally "three times slower", with bontu: slow).

vegi lelinsan: half as many birds (literally "twice fewer birds").

In English, it's possible to intensify or limit further the meaning of the degrees of comparison. For instance, one can say "a little more water", "much less time", "very very big" or "very big indeed", and in a more limited fashion "the very best". The Moten language allows equivalent constructions: the prefixes pen- and len- can be added to nominals that already feature degree of comparison affixes. However, this is restricted to the intensifier and the comparative. You can't form expressions like "the very best" in Moten (at least not this way). Here are a few examples:

lenpevone: a little more water.

penpenodun: very very young (or: "very young indeed").

When you use the degrees of comparison, you usually want to indicate what you are comparing something to (for instance, you want to say "he is taller than his father", "she's the prettiest of them all"). Unfortunately, to form such complements in Moten you need to know about grammatical structures that I haven't introduced yet. Since those structures can't be explained in a few lines, and would only confuse you right now, I won't explain how to form the complements of comparison yet. I'll come back to them in a future post.

What's Next

OK, I guess I have to apologise again: this post's ended up as long, if not longer, than the previous one. On the bright side, this concludes our trip through the morphology and syntax of nominals. Next time, I'll finally show you everything you need to know about the Moten verbs, and I will spend some time explaining the syntax of independent clauses. I won't promise that the next post will be shorter than this one. However, at the end of it you should be able to form simple sentences, so reading it shouldn't be in vain.

Once again, if you have any remark, comment or question, don't hesitate to use the comments to express yourselves. Your input is more than welcome.

Moten, Part II: Nouns and Pronouns

In this post, I finally start focussing on the nitty-gritty of the Moten grammar. This post describes nouns and pronouns (as well as adjectives incidentally), the syntax of the noun phrase, as well as the morphology and semantics of the various declensions.

Nominal Classes

Although I simply speak about nouns, I should more precisely speak about nominals, as nouns in Moten don't fill in the same syntactic space as nouns in for instance English.

Nominals refer to everything that has a noun-like behaviour. In Moten, there are three types of nominals: common nouns, pronouns and proper nouns.

Common nouns are the most populous category of nominals, and contain everything we usually refer to as nouns, and even more (including adjectives, which are actually a specific usage of common nouns). They do not distinguish gender nor any other noun classes, and mass nouns do not behave syntactically differently from count nouns. There is a subclass of common nouns called counters, but those differ from other common nouns only in the way they interact with numbers, and I will talk about them in detail in the next post about Moten. Common nouns inflect for number, case and definition.

Pronouns are nominals whose referents change with context and/or the person talking. They are often used to replace other nominals or complete them. Pronouns in Moten are actually much more similar to common nouns than pronouns in most Indo-European languages. They can freely take nominal complements and adjectives, and be used as adjectives themselves (in which case they correspond to determiners in other languages). Their main difference with common nouns is that they don't inflect for definition (even when they are semantically definite), and only few of them inflect for number. They do inflect for case though.

Proper nouns are nominals with a very specific referent, which they give a name to. Like pronouns, they are actually close to common nouns syntactically, and they freely take nominal complements and adjectives. However, due to their specific meaning they are not often used as adjectives (although it is not forbidden). Like pronouns, they don't inflect for definition (although they are always semantically definite). They inflect for case, and can inflect for number if that is semantically meaningful. In writing, they often, but not always, start with a capital letter.

As I've written above, adjectives are not a separate category of words in the Moten language. In fact, any common noun (if it semantically makes sense), most pronouns and some proper nouns can be used as adjectives. This is done simply through apposition and word order. Basically, when in a noun phrase two or more nominals are juxtaposed, the first one is the head of the phrase, and any other nominal following is an adjective completing the head. For instance, using ufan: great, greatness and bazlo: town, city, one can make bazlo ufan: great town, or ufan bazlo: urban greatness.

Finally, numerals are not considered a separate category of words either. They are just common nouns that can be declined for case and definition. Ordinal numbers also inflect for number. However, cardinal numbers do not, and always use the singular case markings even if they are semantically plural. This is true of any common noun with a lexically plural meaning though, not only of the numerals.

For now I will focus on common nouns and pronouns. Proper nouns will receive treatment in a future post.

Declension

Since common nouns have the most complete declension, I will focus on them in this section. In the various sections on pronouns, I will indicate how their inflexions differ from those of nouns.

As indicated in the previous section, nouns inflect for number, case and definition. Moreover, there are no gender nor inflection classes of any kind, so all nouns inflect the same, and do so regularly. Nouns distinguish two numbers (singular and plural), three cases (nominative, accusative and genitive) and two definitions (indefinite and definite). Number and case are marked together, while definition is indicated by a separate affix.

Indefinite nouns are unmarked, while definite nouns are marked with an infix -e-, placed in front of the last vowel of the noun.

Example: linan: a bird, linean: the bird.

Case and number are marked by the combination of an infix (placed in front of the last vowel of the noun, and after the definite infix if it's present) and a suffix. The different affix combinations are:

	nominative	accusative	genitive
singular	no affix	-d- + -n	-v- + -i
plural	-s-	-|z- + -n	-f- + -i

Adding those affixes may create inadmissible clusters. Those are resolved using a set of very strict morphophonemic rules, which follow here (those rules take place once all necessary affixes have been added, including the definite infix if needed):

• -e- only causes changes when followed by e, i or u:
• -e- disappears before another e.
• The sequence -e- + i becomes ej. The new j may react to a following consonant, merging with l and n to form |l and |n respectively, and disappearing otherwise.
• The sequence -e- + u becomes eju.
• -s- only reacts when following a consonant:
• -s- disappears after s, z, |s or |z.
• The sequence t + -s- becomes |s, the sequence d + -s- becomes |z.
• The sequence |l + -s- becomes ls, the sequence |n + -s- becomes ns.
• -s- becomes z after a phonemically voiced consonant (i.e. not after the nasals, laterals and approximant, which are phonemically voice-neutral).
• In any other case of disallowed cluster, or if those changes would still result in an inadmissible cluster, instead of those changes an u is inserted before -s-.
• -d- only reacts when following a consonant:
• t and d disappear before -d-.
• The sequences s + -d-, z + -d-, |s + -d- and |z + -d- become zd.
• The sequence |l + -d- becomes ld, the sequence |n + -d- becomes nd.
• -d- becomes t after a phonemically voiceless consonant.
• In any other case of disallowed cluster, or if those changes would still result in an inadmissible cluster, instead of those changes an u is inserted before -d-.
• -|z- only reacts when following a consonant:
• s, z, |s and |z disappear before -|z-.
• The sequence t + -|z- becomes |s, the sequence d + -|z- becomes |z.
• The sequence |l + -|z- becomes lz, the sequence |n + -|z- becomes nz.
• -|z- becomes s after a phonemically voiceless consonant, z after a phonemically voiced or voice-neutral consonant.
• In any other case of disallowed cluster, or if those changes would still result in an inadmissible cluster, instead of those changes an u is inserted before -|z-.
• -v- only reacts when following a consonant:
• f and v disappear before -v-.
• The sequences s + -v-, z + -v-, |s + -v- and |z + -v- become zv.
• The sequence |l + -v- becomes lv, the sequence |n + -v- becomes nv.
• A phonemically voiceless consonant becomes voiced before -v-.
• In any other case of disallowed cluster, or if those changes would still result in an inadmissible cluster, instead of those changes an u is inserted before -v-.
• -f- only reacts when following a consonant:
• f and v disappear before -f-.
• The sequences s + -f-, z + -f-, |s + -f- and |z + -f- become sf.
• The sequence |l + -f- becomes lf, the sequence |n + -f- becomes nf.
• A phonemically voiced consonant becomes voiceless before -f-.
• In any other case of disallowed cluster, or if those changes would still result in an inadmissible cluster, instead of those changes an u is inserted before -f-.
• -n only reacts when following a consonant:
• -n disappears after n or |n.
• The sequence j + -n becomes |n, if it's directly after a vowel.
• In any other case, an u is inserted before -n.
• -i reacts after both vowels and consonants:
• -i disappears after i, j, |l or |n.
• -i becomes j after any other vowel.
• The sequence l + -i becomes |l, and the sequence n + -i becomes |n, if they are directly after a vowel.

To illustrate the effects of those morphophonemic rules, here are the complete declension tables of a few common nouns:

linan: bird

indefinite	nominative	accusative	genitive
singular	linan	lindan	linva|n
plural	linsan	linzan	linfa|n

definite	nominative	accusative	genitive
singular	linean	linedan	lineva|n
plural	linesan	line|zan	linefa|n

bazlo: town, city

indefinite	nominative	accusative	genitive
singular	bazlo	bazludon	bazluvoj
plural	bazluso	bazlu|zon	bazlufoj

definite	nominative	accusative	genitive
singular	bazleo	bazledon	bazlevoj
plural	bazleso	bazle|zon	bazlefoj

ge|sem: father

indefinite	nominative	accusative	genitive
singular	ge|sem	gezdemun	gezvemi
plural	ge|sem	ge|zemun	gesfemi

definite	nominative	accusative	genitive
singular	ge|sem	ge|sedemun	ge|sevemi
plural	ge|sesem	ge|se|zemun	ge|sefemi

ku|lu: language

indefinite	nominative	accusative	genitive
singular	ku|lu	kuldun	kulvuj
plural	kulsu	kulzun	kulfuj

definite	nominative	accusative	genitive
singular	ku|leju	ku|ledun	ku|levuj
plural	ku|lesu	ku|le|zun	ku|lefuj

umpi: house

indefinite	nominative	accusative	genitive
singular	umpi	umptin	umbvi
plural	umpsi	umpsin	umpfi

definite	nominative	accusative	genitive
singular	umpej	umpedin	umpevi
plural	umpesi	umpe|zin	umpefi

vel(d): five

	nominative	accusative	genitive
indefinite	vel	vudeldun	veldi
definite	vel	vedeldun	veveldi

As you can see, although there is a single declension paradigm, the various morphophonemic rules result in very different surface forms depending on the noun.

Case Meanings

Despite their simple names, the meaning of the case distinctions in Moten is more complicated than it seems, and needs a thorough discussion to understand it fully.

The main principle behind case semantics is that all three cases are polysemic: they have three different meanings, that can always be classified under the categories core, spatial and temporal. The naming scheme of the cases used here derives from their core meanings.

The nominative case's core use is as the subject of a verb. However, it is restricted in that sense: the nominative case is always used to indicate the subject of an intransitive verb. However, when the verb is transitive, a subject in the nominative case indicates that it is actively participating in the action, rather than simply experiencing it or suffering under it. For instance, with the verb izunlaj: to be, to stay, and the noun ka|se: man, the following sentence:

Ka|se umpej izunluda|n ito.

means "the man is staying home" (literally: "the man is staying at the house"), no matter whether the subject is actively, voluntarily staying, or forced to stay because of home arrest. However, with the verb ipe|laj: to see, to watch, to look at, the sentence:

Ka|se umpedin ipe|laj ito.

can only mean "the man looks at the house". Since the nominative case can only be used with an actively involved subject, the sentence cannot mean *"the man sees the house" (I will show further in this post how to handle such sentences).

The nominative case is also the case of direct address, when calling out to someone or something. In other words, it also has a vocative meaning.

When used in the spatial or temporal senses, the nominative case is essive, i.e. it indicates the place where (or time when) an action takes place. This use is exemplified in the first sentence above, where umpej (umpi in the definite nominative singular case) is translated as "home", i.e. literally "at the house".

The accusative case's core use is as direct object of a verb, as exemplified by umpedin (umpi in the definite accusative singular case) in the second sentence above. The accusative case is used to indicate the direct object of any transitive verb, but interestingly it is even used with the copula atom: to be. In the Moten language "to be" is considered to be a transitive verb, and the language makes no distinction between equative and transitive sentences:

Ka|se gezdemun ipe|laj ito: the man looks at a father.

Ka|se gezdemun ito: the man is a father.

As you can see, the transitive and equative sentences are identical in structure. It is even true of the meaning of the nominative subject: in the equative sentence above the man is considered to be actively participating in the act of being a father, i.e. it's a role the man took on willingly (I will discuss the use of atom as a copula further in a future blog post. For now, just remember that it can only be used for equative, definitional predicates. For qualitative predicates, i.e. predicate adjectives, another construction must be used).

In the spatial sense, the accusative case is lative, i.e. it indicates the place where you go to or towards. Here is an example, using the intransitive verb juba|si: to come:

Ka|se umpedin juba|si ito: the man comes to the house (or "the man comes home").

In the temporal sense, the accusative case has a durative meaning, i.e. it indicates how long an action is taking place, rather than simply indicating when it is taking place. The difference is exemplified in the next two sentences, using dod: evening, night:

Ka|se umpej deod izunluda|n ito: the man is staying home at night (literally: "the man is staying at the house in the night").

Ka|se umpej dedodun izunluda|n ito: the man is staying home during the night (or: "the man is staying home the whole night").

The genitive case's core us is to allow a noun to complete another noun. It's even the only way a noun phrase can become complement of a noun (other types of noun phrases can only be used predicatively, i.e. as complements of verbs). The meaning of the genitive case can be possession, but also origin, quality, ownership and quite a few other meanings. It is similar in meaning to the English preposition "of". Here is an example:

Ka|sevej umpej: the house of the man, the man's house.

Notice how both the completing and the completed nouns take the definite inflection. Any combination can be used, if the semantics allow it:

Kazvej umpej: the house of a man, a man's house.

Ka|sevej umpi: a house of the man.

Kazvej umpi: a house of a man.

In the spatial sense, the genitive case is delative, i.e. it indicates the origin, the place where you come from. In that sense, the genitive case can be used to complete a noun as well as to complete a verb. For instance:

Ka|se umpevi juba|si ito: the man comes from the house (or "the man comes from home").

In the temporal sense, the genitive case has a frequentative meaning, i.e. it indicates the number of times an action is repeated, or that an action is repeated every so often. Using our temporal example again:

Ka|se umpej devodi izunluda|n ito: the man is staying home every night (or: "the man is staying home at nights").

The polysemy of cases means that sentences can be somewhat ambiguous. Although this is sometimes done on purpose, Moten has ways to reduce ambiguity. This will be shown in the next section.

Functional Prefixes

Besides case declensions, the Moten language has a series of functional prefixes used on nouns to indicate their function in the sentence. The reason why those are not considered case affixes is because they are different in shape (prefixes rather than infix + suffix), some are actually used besides cases to specify their meanings, and they are not restricted to nouns. As I'll show in a future blog post, those prefixes can also be used on verbs to create subclauses. But for now, let's focus on their use with nouns.

There are two classes of functional prefixes. The first one is composed of the prefixes mo- and di-. They are optional prefixes, rather abstract in meaning, and used with declined nouns to disambiguate the meaning of their case. Simply speaking, the prefix mo- indicates that the case used on the inflected noun is used with its spatial meaning, while the prefix di- indicates that the case has its temporal meaning. As any other affix, those trigger some morphophonemic rules:

• The o of the prefix mo- only causes changes when followed by o, u or i:
• It disappears before another o or before u.
• The sequence mo- + i becomes moj. The new j may react to a following consonant, disappearing before |l, |n and j, and merging with l and n to form |l and |n respectively.
• The i of the prefix di- only causes changes when followed by a vowel, n or l:
• It disappears before another i.
• di- becomes dj- before any other vowel.
• The sequence di- + l becomes di|l if it's followed by a vowel. In the same way, the sequence di- + n becomes di|n if it's followed by a vowel.

Note that when they are used with a noun in the genitive case, this noun cannot be used to complete another noun any more. Use of those prefixes makes the noun phrase predicative. Here are a few examples, done by rewriting the sentences above to use the prefixes as needed:

Ka|se mumpej izunluda|n ito: the man is staying home (mumpej = mo- + umpej).

Ka|se mumpedin juba|si ito: the man comes to the house (mumpedin = mo- + umpedin).

Ka|se mumpej dideod izunluda|n ito: the man is staying home at night (dideod = di- + deod).

Ka|se mumpej didedodun izunluda|n ito: the man is staying home during the night (didedodun = di- + dedodun).

Ka|se mumpevi juba|si ito: the man comes from the house (mumpevi = mo- + umpevi).

Ka|se mumpej didevodi izunluda|n ito: the man is staying home every night (didevodi = di- + devodi).

The second class of prefixes behaves somewhat differently. Those prefixes have relatively concrete meanings, cannot be used with case declensions (those prefixes can only complete nouns in the nominative case) and cannot be omitted. Basically, they form a sort of oblique case paradigm, although they are not restricted to completing nouns. Those prefixes are:

• |la-: benefactive. This prefix indicates who benefits from the action, and often corresponds in English to the preposition "for" or the expression "for the sake of". It is also used to indicate the recipient of an action (for instance to whom something is given).
• go-: originative. This prefix is used to indicate the non-spatial origin of something. It is different from both the genitive case in its core use (which indicates possession and other attributive relationships) and in its spatial use (where it strictly shows the spatial origin of a movement). the originative is typically used to indicate whom the subject received something from.
• ko-: instrumental. This prefix is used to indicate the instrument or means by which the subject accomplished an action. It can mark companionship (although there is an alternative construction for this, which is more commonly used) and is also used to indicate the material an object is made from, or the manner by which an action is accomplished. Finally, it is also used to mark the experiencing, non-voluntary subject of a transitive verb. It corresponds variously to the English prepositions "with", "by" or "from", or to adverbs of manner.
• te-: final. This prefix is used to mark the goal of the action (in English, this is mostly rendered by "for").
• |zu-: causative. This prefix marks the cause or reason for the action (equivalent to English "because of").

As any other affix, they trigger specific morphophonemic rules:

• The prefixes go- and ko- cause exactly the same changes as the prefix mo-.
• The prefix |zu- also causes the same changes as the prefix mo-. However, the u of this prefix also disappears before a and e.
• The e of the prefix te- behaves exactly like the definite infix -e-.
• The a of the prefix |la- only causes changes when followed by a, e, u or i:
• It disappears before another a or before e.
• The sequence |la- + u becomes |laju.
• The sequence |la- + i becomes |laj. The new j may react to a following consonant, disappearing before |l, |n and j, and merging with l and n to form |l and |n respectively.

Here are a few example sentences using those prefixes:

Ka|se |le|leon zande|n joplej ito: the man gives the woman a ring (|le|leon = |la- + e|lon + -e-, with e|lon: woman).

E|leon goka|se zande|n joplej ito: the woman receives a ring from the man.

As you can see, both sentences use the verb joplej, despite the different translations. A future post will deal with joplej and its counterpart ja|zi|n, and how they can be used to mean "to give", "to take", "to receive" and "to transfer", depending on the participants in the clause.

Ka|se umpedin kosezgeo juba|si etok: the man came home fast (kosezgeo: "with speed". Notice how the noun is definite in this construction).

Koka|se umpedin ipe|laj ito: the man sees the house.

This sentence shows how an experiencing, non-voluntary subject is indicated using a noun phrase with ko-.

Ka|se te|lea |negi etok: the man did it for the sake of peace (te|lea = te- + |la + -e-: "for peace").

The verb is |negi, a transitive verb meaning "to do, to act, to accomplish". This sentence also illustrates the fact that in the Moten language, like in Japanese, one can omit anything not relevant to the discussion or clear by context. Here, the object of the verb is omitted, whereas it cannot be in English (hence the added "it" in the translation).

|Ze|leon, ka|se umpedin juba|si etok: because of the woman, the man came home (|ze|leon = |zu- + e|lon + -e-).

Note that in English, the expression "because of" often has a pejorative meaning, especially if the complement is a person. That is not the case in Moten, where |zu- is completely neutral. For that reason, in the sentence above |ze|leon could just as well mean "thanks to the woman".

As you can see, all those prefixes, along with the various cases, allow one to express a wide range of noun phrase functions already. I'll show in a future post how to express even more functions, using mostly nominal expressions.

Personal Pronouns

After focussing so much on common nouns, it's now time to look at pronouns instead. As I wrote above, their main difference with common nouns is that they never inflect for definition (even when they are semantically definite) and sometimes don't inflect for number either (even when they are semantically plural). Apart from those differences, pronouns can be used wherever nouns are used, and can take exactly the same case inflections and functional prefixes. For our overview, let's start with the personal pronouns.

Moten's personal pronouns are relatively boring. The first person singular pronoun is ga: I, me, while the second person singular pronoun is ba: you (sg), thou. They have plural versions: telga: we, us and telba: you (pl), you all (those are actually transparent compounds with tel: other). There is no third person pronoun in Moten. However, there is a reflexive pronoun, vike: self, used to refer to the subject of the current clause. This reflexive pronoun is used as is even if the subject of the clause is the first or second person, and unlike the other personal pronouns it can inflect in the plural, and does so when the subject is semantically plural. Here are a few examples of the pronouns in use:

Ga umpedin ipe|laj ito: I look at the house.

Koba umpedin ipe|laj ito: you see the house.

Ka|se telgdan ipe|laj ito: the man watches us.

Telba |lavikse isej ito: you (all) talk to yourselves (isej: to say, to talk).

Unlike English, the Moten language is pro-drop, i.e. participants are omitted when it is clear (by context or through other means) who is doing what, or when the speaker just doesn't want to specify everything. In this matter Moten is similar to the Japanese language, and because of this personal pronouns are not as much used in Moten as in English. For instance, the sentence:

Umpedin ipe|laj ito.

is perfectly valid and can mean anything from "I look at the house" to "they see the house", depending on context and possibly non-verbal cues given by the speaker.

There are no possessive adjectives in Moten. Instead, one simply uses the genitive case of the personal pronouns (including the reflexive pronoun):

Gvaj badej: my dog (badej = badi + -e-, with badi meaning "dog").

Gvaj badi: a dog of mine.

Ba vigvej umpej izunluda|n ito: you are staying at your (own) house (or simply: "you are staying home").

Vikfej mumpej izunluda|n ito: (we, you, they) are staying home (the fact that the reflexive pronoun is in the genitive plural indicates that the subject is plural, but it doesn't indicate which person it is).

Because Moten is strongly pro-drop, the next-to-last sentence feels relatively emphatic, and would be equivalent to saying something like: "YOU are staying at YOUR OWN house!" in English (with tone emphasis indicated using capitalisation). Even in the last sentence it would feel natural to omit vikfej, unless the speaker is being precise on purpose (for instance to indicate that each referent is staying at their own house, rather than someone else's).

Like common nouns, the personal pronouns can be used as noun phrase heads, but also attributively, as adjectives. When used in this way, they allow one to form expressions similar to the English "We the People":

Ka|se telga e|lon |latelba isej ito: we men talk to you women (if you don't understand how this sentence is structured, don't worry. Further in this post I explain exactly how noun phrases are formed).

To finish with, while tel is simply a common noun meaning "other", it is also commonly used in the definite form as a reciprocal pronoun equivalent to "each other":

Telba |latel isej ito: you talk to each other (literally: "you (all) talk to the other").

Teve|l mumpej izunluda|n ito: (we, you, they) are staying at each other's house (literally: "is staying at the other's house").

Kotelga te|zelun ipe|laj ito.: we see each other (literally: "we see the others". Here, tel is in the plural, which means that each subgroup that sees the other is formed of more than one individual).

Demonstrative Pronouns

The Moten language has three demonstrative pronouns. They can inflect for number, and are person-oriented rather than distance-oriented:

• len: this (near the speaker).
• lam: that (near the listener).
• los: that over there (away from both the speaker and the listener).

Given that Moten lacks a third person pronoun, the pronoun los is used instead (including its genitive as a third person possessive adjective). The demonstrative pronouns can be used anaphorically and cataphorically (i.e. to refer to something already mentioned or to something that has not been mentioned yet), but can never refer to the subject of the current clause (you have to use the reflexive pronoun for that). And just like common nouns and the personal pronouns, the demonstrative pronouns can be used as noun phrase heads, but also attributively as adjectives. Here are a few examples:

Ka|se |le|leon luden ja|zi|n etok: the man gave this to the woman (typically, this would be used with the speaker having the object they are talking about in their hand).

Koga lu|zamun ipe|laj ito: I see those (next to you).

Ka|se umpi los izunluda|n ito: the man is staying at that house over there.

Ka|se luvosi umpedin ipe|laj ito: the man looks at his (i.e. someone else's) house.

Spatial and Temporal Pronouns

The spatial and temporal pronouns are two series of pronouns that share the same orientation as the demonstrative pronouns. However, unlike the demonstrative pronouns, they can never be used anaphorically or cataphorically. Instead, they refer to more or less general areas of space or time. They are difficult to define very clearly, as they have no equivalents in English or French. Rather, they are often used in ways where English would use adverbs of time or place (using the temporal or spatial meaning of the noun cases).

There are three spatial pronouns, corresponding to the demonstrative pronouns, and similarly person-oriented. They are:

• e: this place (near the speaker), "here".
• a: that place (near the listener), "there".
• o: that place over there (away from both the speaker and the listener), "over there".

Similarly, there are three temporal pronouns:

• et: this time (near the speaker), "now".
• at: that time (near the listener), "then".
• ot: that time then (away from both the speaker and the listener), "at time time, formerly, in the future, once upon a time".

As indicated by their translations, at and ot can refer to the past as well as to the future.

A few examples might help you to understand how they are used:

Ot ga badin egek: I used to have a dog (literally: "at that time then, I had a dog", with agem: to have).

Datun mumpedin juba|si etok: Meanwhile, you came home (literally: "during that time, came home").

Ka|se vej juba|si ito: The man comes from here.

Ka|se fej juba|si ito: The man comes from around here.

As you can see in this last example, those pronouns can inflect in the plural as well as in the singular. However, their plural forms have an approximate rather than numerically plural meaning.

Like the demonstrative pronouns, they can also be used attributively as adjectives, although that use is relatively infrequent. When used this way, they have the sense of demonstrative adjectives with a strictly spatial or temporal sense.

Interrogative Pronouns

The Moten language has three interrogative pronouns. Two are used to ask questions of identity, and differ only because one is animate and the other one inanimate. The animate interrogative pronoun is mik: who, while the inanimate interrogative pronoun is mut: what. The third interrogative pronoun is used to ask for a choice, and can be used for both inanimate and animate referrents. It is: mun: which one. Here are a few examples of their use:

Umpedin mik juba|si etok?: Who came home? (literally: "home came who?")

Ba mudikun ito?: Who are you? (literally: "you are who?")

Ka|se zande|n |lamik joplej etok?: Who did the man give the ring to? (literally: "the man gave the ring to whom?")

Ka|se |le|leon mudutun joplej etok?: What did the man give to the woman? (literally: "the man gave what to the woman?")

Ka|se |le|leon mudun joplej etok?: Which one did the man give to the woman? (literally: "the man gave which one to the woman?")

Ka|se temut |negi etok?: What did the man do it for? (literally: "the man did it for whose sake?")

Ka|se umpedin |zumut juba|si etok?: Why did the man come home? (literally: "the man came home because of what?")

Ka|se momut izunluda|n ito?: where is the man staying? (literally: "the man is staying at what?")

As you can see in those examples, the interrogative pronouns are not fronted as in English. Instead, they normally appear directly in front of the verb (as we'll see in a future post, the position directly in front of the verb is the focus of the sentence, i.e. where the speaker gives new information, or asks for it). They inflect only in the singular, never in the plural, even when their referent is plural (so mun can mean "which ones" as well as "which one"). What you can also see from those examples is that what in English is rendered using various interrogative pronouns and adverbs is always rendered by inflected forms of the interrogative pronouns in Moten. This is a general truth: the Moten language has only three interrogative words, and all the other question words are formed using them.

As any other pronoun, the interrogative pronouns can be used attributively as adjectives. In that usage, mun can be translated simply as "which", while mik and mut both translate as "what kind of". The only difference between those last two is that mik can only complete animate nouns, while mut can only be used with inanimate referrents. Animateness isn't a strict category in Moten though, although using mut with persons is only ever done when one wants to be insulting. Here are a few examples:

Ka|se umpi mun izunluda|n ito?: Which house is the man staying at?

Len badi mudikun ito?: What kind of dog is this?

Lam zanej mudutun ito?: What kind of ring is that?

As I wrote before, pronouns can take adjectives, just like common nouns. This is also true of the interrogative pronouns. In particular, it is quite common to use tel with them, in the sense of "else":

mik tel?: who else?

mut tel?: what else?

mut motel?: where else?

Indefinite Pronouns

The indefinite pronouns are pronouns that refer to one or more unspecified beings or objects. In Moten, they are regularly and systematically formed by adding prefixes on the interrogative pronouns. There are five prefixes, which are presented below:

• ta-: existential. It corresponds mostly to "some" in English (however, see below the discussion about se-).
• nu-: universal. It corresponds to "every", "each" or "all".
• me-: negative. It corresponds to "no". As in English, negative indefinite pronouns make the whole clause negative in meaning.
• |le-: elective. It corresponds sometimes to the suffix "-ever", sometimes to "any". Unlike "any" though, it does not have a negative meaning when in a negative clause.
• se-: unknown. While the elective prefix |le- indicates that the referent is irrelevant, and the existential prefix ta- indicates that the referent exists but doesn't define it any further, this one indicates that the referent exists, but is unknown to the speaker. In English, indefinite pronouns using "some" somewhat cover the semantic space taken by this prefix.

Using those prefixes and the interrogative pronouns, you end up with fifteen indefinite pronouns. They are used much like the interrogative pronouns themselves: pronouns derived from mik refer to persons, those derived from mut refer to things, while those derived from mun can refer to both persons and things, and indicate choice within a set. Also, they only inflect in the singular, and their inflected forms can be used to translate indefinite adverbs like "somewhere", "nowhere" and "anyhow". Here is the list of pronouns and their translations:

• Based on mik:
• tamik: someone, somebody (but I'm not telling whom).
• numik: everyone, everybody, all.
• memik: no one, nobody.
• |lemik: anyone, anybody, whoever.
• semik: someone, somebody (but I don't know whom).
• Based on mut:
• tamut: something (but I'm not telling what).
• numut: everything, all.
• memut: nothing.
• |lemut: anything, whatever, whatsoever.
• semut: something (but I don't know what).
• Based on mun:
• tamun: one, some (of them, but I'm not telling which one(s)).
• numun: each one (of them), all (of them).
• memun: none (of them).
• |lemun: any one (of them), whichever.
• semun: one, some (of them, but I don't know which one(s)).

Here are a few examples:

Semik umpej izunluda|n ito: someone is staying at the house (but I don't know who it is).

Koga memdutun ipe|laj ito: I see nothing.

Ka|se numdun ige: the man has all of them.

Ka|se umpedin kotamut juba|si etok: the man came home somehow (but I'm not telling how).

The indefinite pronouns can also be used as adjectives, with the same restrictions and meaning as the interrogative pronouns. And like the interrogative pronouns, the indefinite pronouns can take adjectives, in particular tel in the sense of "else". Here are a few sentences for illustration:

Ka|se tamik umpej izunluda|n ito: some (kind of) man is staying at the house.

Ka|se semut modve|l juba|si ito: the man comes from somewhere else.

Structure of the Noun Phrase

I think I've introduced enough new concepts and vocabulary for now, so I will conclude this post by explaining in more detail how noun phrases are formed in the Moten language. This will probably clarify some of the examples I used before.

Forgetting inflection for the moment, the structure of the noun phrase can be described simply as: (sub-noun phrase(s)) head (adjective(s)), i.e. zero or more sub-noun phrases, a mandatory head, and zero or more adjectives. Sub-noun phrases are just like any other noun phrase, except that they must be in the genitive case (no other function can be used attributively). The head is any nominal: common noun, pronoun or proper noun. As for the adjectives, as I explained at the beginning of the post, they are not a separate category, and nearly any nominal can be used as an adjective. And as an exception to the rule that Moten is head-final, adjectives normally appear after the head of the noun phrase. Here are a few examples of non-inflected noun phrases, in order of complexity:

Ga: me.

Ka|se: man.

Badi odun: young dog (odun: youth).

*Ga ukol: old me (ukol: old age).

Bvaj umpi: house of yours.

Bazluvoj ga: me from a town.

Kazvej mjan bontu: slow cat of a man (mjan: cat, bontu: slowness).

Telgvaj bazlo ufan ukol: old and great town of ours.

Kazvej elvo|n badi sezgo odun: young and quick dog of a man and a woman.

These examples, and especially their translations, are a bit stilted, since they are all non-inflected and thus indefinite (the example marked with * is even ungrammatical as it stands, as will become clear in the next paragraph. To be grammatical, it would have to be ga ukeol). However, they all illustrate well how noun phrases work in Moten.

Now comes maybe the most difficult thing to grasp when it comes to the structure of the noun phrase in Moten: each noun phrase has a number (singular or plural), a definition (definite or indefinite) and a function in the sentence. Those characteristics are indicated by the definite infix, the casual affixes and/or the functional prefixes. The difficulty about this is that those affixes are added to only one word in the noun phrase, and that word needn't be the head of the noun phrase. Rather, they are put on the last nominal of the noun phrase, and all the other nominals in front of it are left in their bare form, including the head of the phrase itself. Moreover, the affixes are added to the last nominal according to its nature. So if the last nominal in the phrase is an indefinite pronoun used as adjective, it will only be inflected in the indefinite singular, even if the phrase has a plural meaning. Conversely, if the last nominal is a common noun completing a personal pronoun, it will take the definite infix, because the noun phrase is definite due to its head being semantically definite (the adjective may even have to be declined in the plural if the personal pronoun is plural). The fact that personal pronouns themselves can't take the definite article (and normally take singular case affixes even when they are semantically plural) doesn't matter here, since the personal pronoun is not the inflected nominal in the phrase.

Here are a few examples of inflected noun phrases in sentences, to illustrate the point made in the previous paragraph (the noun phrases are emphasised for clarity):

Ka|se vigvej umpi mukeol izunluda|n ito: the man is staying at his own old house.

E|lon |laba zande|n joplej ito: I give a ring to you woman.

Koka|se mjan bontu ukedolun ipe|laj ito: the man sees the old and slow cat.

What's Next

OK, I believe this post has been long and dense enough for now. I do think it was necessary though, as nominal grammar is the cornerstone of Moten grammar, and what I've been describing here will reappear in other places, including in verbal grammar.

However, although I'm stopping here for now, it doesn't mean we're done with nominals. On the contrary, there is still plenty to say. So the next post will still be about nominals. It will focus on numbers, counters (a subclass of common nouns with a peculiar behaviour around numbers and a few other words) and the expression of time. I may also talk about the degrees of comparison.

I hope you have enjoyed the last post of the year. If you have a question, remark, or see a mistake in this post (very possible, I'm bad at editing myself), don't hesitate to leave a comment, and I'll get back to you as quickly as possible.

Moten, Part I: Background and Phonology

Today I realised one thing: my blog is subtitled "Arts and Crafts of Words and Tongues", but I've got only two posts tagged "language", and absolutely no post about conlanging, despite it being my second most favourite hobby! (everybody will agree that my most favourite hobby is procrastinating). So I've decided to fill this hole by writing a series of articles about my conlangs, starting with a few grammars (which will be spanned over a few articles). Doing so I'm actually killing two birds with one stone: not only I generate a bit of contents for a blog that desperately needs it, but I also create more exposure to my invented languages, for which until now information has only been available on the archives of the Conlang Mailing List, or in French.

To inaugurate this series, I've decided to publish the grammar of the Moten language, starting with a background introduction and its phonology (and related fields, like phonotactics, morphophonemics and the writing system). Moten is one of my first languages, and to this day still the most developed one (it has even got a lexicon!), so it's the best place to start. So without further ado, here is the first part of the Moten grammar!

Background Information (External)

Moten is one of the "First Five", i.e. the last five languages I had invented before joining the Conlang Mailing List, and the first ones that were not shamefully bad and forgettable. Of them, it is the most developed one, and still my favourite. According to my notes, I originally created this language because I wanted to create something that looked as if it had a lot of irregularities, but was actually very regular (the seemingly irregular surface forms actually being the result of completely regular morphophonemic mechanisms). Also, I had just learned some Basque grammar, and wanted to emulate some of its features (mainly the periphrastic conjugations and the fact that only the last word of noun phrases gets declined). Finally, I had discovered infixes, and wanted to see whether I was able to develop a conlang using them. Whether I managed to reach those goals is arguable. In any case, the result was a language not quite like anything I had created so far, and something I still think has got lots of character.

Background Information (Internal)

Languages don't always need a fictional background. Some are invented "just 'cause". Actually, that's how Moten started. But in time, a kind of weird fictional history crept in, without me trying to consciously create it. It just appeared in bits and pieces as I was designing the language, and eventually became too strong for me to ignore. It's this internal history I'm presenting here:

On the 25^th of March 1984, a boy was found wandering in the Walloon countryside by a couple of Belgian farmers. He was naked, looked hungry, and despite being visibly frightened, he was so exhausted he didn't resist when the farmers took him and brought him to the nearest hospital. There, he was found to be about eight years old, and, despite the ordeal he seemed to have gone through, to be relatively healthy. Still, he was kept in observation as he had the symptoms of a profound shock: he refused to speak, was afraid of everyone and everything, and suffered from panic attacks and nightmares.

His picture was broadcasted, but without success. After two months, nobody had yet contacted the police. During this time, the boy slowly recovered, until he started to speak again. That's when the second mystery began: the boy didn't speak French, and nobody seemed to recognise his language. Interpreters were brought in, but all in vain. People started wondering whether he was a feral child. However, a speech therapist who was working in the hospital and had taken a liking for the boy quickly recognised that he didn't suffer the usual impairments of feral children: he walked upright, didn't display any sign of animal behaviour, ate normally, and his language ability sounded well developed, although his language was still unknown. Also, the boy showed signs of picking up French words without even being encouraged to, another clue that his language capacity wasn't limited.

With the help of a child psychiatrist, the speech therapist started testing the boy's intelligence using non-verbal tests. The results were surprising: the boy scored very high on those tests, showing a superior intelligence! Also, he began to learn French at an accelerated rate, although at first he had difficulties with some of the sounds. The speech therapist helped him, and he started getting attached to her. After a year and a half, he left the hospital, and the speech therapist got custody of him. She ended up fully adopting him a year later. In this time, he had learned to speak French with only a slight foreign accent, and went to school like all children his age (he had to learn writing and reading first, but got up to speed very fast). Despite him being able to communicate, his past remained a mystery: he had no recollection whatsoever of his life prior to being found, and that amnesia resisted all treatments. But that didn't matter, as he was starting to get a normal life.

However, he was still known as "the child that had been found in the fields", and his celebrity was in the way of his social development. To try and provide him with a normal childhood, his adopted mother decided to leave Belgium. She changed their names, found a job in France, and settled there in anonymity. As it would happen, she settled in a town close to where I lived, and one day, I met the boy.

Although I had no idea about his past, our encounter was still a shock: we were nearly exactly alike, as alike as identical twins could be! That was not all: our birthdays were identical! (in his case, the day he was found was used as his birthday) Those coincidences created a near-instant bond, and we became the best of friends. In time, I learned all about him (at least what he remembered, which was still nothing prior to him being found in the Belgian fields), and started getting interested in the language he spoke prior to learning French (yes, even in this fictional history, I'm still a language geek!). That's how I discovered that not only he still had a perfect recollection of his language, but also a very good idea of how to describe it grammatically, far better than what you would expect for a guy who presumably lost any contact with other speakers of that language when he was eight.

It took me a while, but I eventually convinced him to write down as much as he could about his language, arguing that the only link he had to his mysterious past was something too precious to let it disappear. C.G. (that's his nickname, what this means exactly will be revealed in a future post) was reticent at first, but eventually relented, and the result was the first description of the Moten tongue this world has ever seen. I also started to learn the language, and together we started speaking it, creating new compounds and loaning words from other languages for concepts (especially place names) that didn't seem to have already existing equivalents in Moten.

General Language Information

Now that this is out of the way, let's focus on the Moten language itself. Moten is, as far as anyone knows, a language isolate with a very non-Indo-European grammar (but a very simple phonology for generic European speakers). It is strictly head final (especially verb final), although attributes normally follow the noun. It is generally SOV and pro-drop, although not to the same extent as Japanese. Apart from two auxiliaries, verbal conjugation in Moten is strictly periphrastic. Word formation is mostly done by compounding, although Moten has a few derivational suffixes. Nouns inflect for case, number and definition. Fully inflected nominal and verbal forms can receive further nominal inflections to change their meaning or their role in the clause (a phenomenon usually called by its French name: surdéclinaison). Inflection uses a combination of suffixes and infixes, and sometimes also prefixes. When those combine with nouns, various phonological phenomena can happen, but those are always regular. Moten is a very regular language, with irregularities few and far between.

Phonology

Moten has a relatively simple phonemic inventory with little to no allophony. It has 5 vowels and 18 consonants.

Moten's vowel inventory is simply the 5 main cardinal vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/, like the Spanish and Modern Greek languages. As in those languages, the two mid vowels /e/ and /o/ in Moten are truly mid, i.e. they are slightly lower than the ideal versions described by their IPA characters. They would be more correctly transcribed as /e̞/ and /o̞/ (or as /ɛ̝/ and /ɔ̝/), but the versions without diacritics are used for simplicity. Moten also lacks diphthongs (two consecutive vowels always have a syllable break between them) as well as long vowels (except in a few interjections, but it is common for those to break the phonology of a language). Vowels are only very slightly nasalised when followed by a nasal consonant, and nasalisation isn't phonemic anyway.

Moten's consonant inventory is about as boring as its vowel inventory. It is relatively symmetrical, and features sounds common in most Western European languages. The following table shows the full inventory (using the IPA):

	bilabial	labiod.	dental	alveolar	palatal	velar
plosive	p b		t d			k g
fricative		f v		s z
affricate				ts dz
nasal	m			n	ɲ
lateral				l	ʎ
approx.					j

When two phonemes appear in the same cell, the first one is voiceless and the second one voiced. Phonemes appearing alone in a cell are considered voice-neutral, but are normally realised as voiced. Moten's consonant inventory lacks any rhotic consonant (loanwords with rhotic consonants normally replace them with /l/). Also, while most coronal consonants are alveolar, /t/ and /d/ are realised as dental. As I wrote above, phonemes in Moten usually have a single perceivable realisation. The only exceptions are /n/ and /l/, which are usually realised as [ŋ] and [ɫ] when followed by a velar consonant (but this is a rare occurrence). /l/ is otherwise always clear in any position (unlike in English where it darkens in codas).

Writing System

Due to its peculiar history, it is unknown whether the Moten language has a native script (if it has one, eight-year-old C.G. hadn't learnt it yet, or forgot it as part of his amnesia). So when C.G. and I started talking about writing a grammar of the language, the question of a written transcription came early. Eventually, C.G. created an alphabet for it, based on the Roman alphabet. The simple phonemic inventory allowed him to create a phonemic transcription where one letter is exactly one phoneme (the system is truly phonemic: morphophonemic sound changes are always reflected in writing) without having to divert much from the standard Roman alphabet as used in French or English.

The Moten alphabet has 23 letters, corresponding exactly to the 23 phonemes of its inventory. Of those, 19 are taken straight from the Roman alphabet, while 4 were invented specially for Moten. However, even those can be approximated in typography by digraphs using the pipe | followed by another letter. This is the convention used here.

The following table lists all the letters of the Moten alphabet in alphabetic order, in capital and small form, followed by the phoneme they transcribe in IPA, the name of the letter (used when spelling), and an example Moten word starting with the letter.

Moten letter	phoneme	name	example
A, a	/a/	a	at: fire
B, b	/b/	ba	bazlo: town
D, d	/d/	da	di|la: mother
E, e	/e/	e	elej: sleep
F, f	/f/	efa	fuli: gold
G, g	/g/	ga	ge|sem: father
I, i	/i/	i	ibo: air
J, j	/j/	eja	jem: brook, river
K, k	/k/	ka	ku|lu: language
L, l	/l/	ela	linan: bird
|L, |l	/ʎ/	e|lo	|la: peace
M, m	/m/	ema	mosu: paw
N, n	/n/	ena	nudel: respect
|N, |n	/ɲ/	e|no	|nuba: letter, character
O, o	/o/	o	oskana|not: ceremony
P, p	/p/	pa	pe|la: to see, to watch
S, s	/s/	esa	sigoj: name
|S, |s	/ts/	e|so	|suko: brother
T, t	/t/	ta	tina: room
U, u	/u/	u	umpi: house
V, v	/v/	eva	vone: (cold) water
Z, z	/z/	eza	zanej: (finger) ring
|Z, |z	/dz/	e|zo	|zika: mountain

As you can see, Moten lacks the letters c, h, q, r, w, x and y. Those are not used in loanwords either. Rather, loanwords are adapted to fit the phonology (and in some measure the phonotactics) of Moten.

Phonotactics

Moten has a relatively strict syllable structure (not as strict as for instance Japanese, but stricter than English). Syllables, no matter their position in the word, have the following shape: (C)(C)V(C), i.e. an optional onset of one or two consonants, a single vowel, and an optional coda with no more than one consonant. In particular, sequences of two vowels are always separated by a syllable break. Agreeing with this syllable structure, up to three consonants can appear between vowels. Syllabification is then done with a preference for the onset of the second syllable, although clusters of two consonants are separated equally between the syllables.

Vowel sequences are quite limited in Moten, despite the fact that a syllable break is always present between two vowels. Basically, only a, e and o can freely follow each other. I and u are never allowed next to another vowel.

Consonant clusters have other limitations besides number of consonants allowed. The main rule is that consonants in clusters always agree in voicing (the nasals, laterals and approximant are considered voice-neutral for this purpose, and thus can appear next to voiceless consonants as well as voiced ones). The second rule is that two identical consonants never appear next to each other (even across a syllable boundary). The third rule limits the occurrence of the consonants |l, |n, |s and |z. Those behave sometimes as a single consonant, sometimes as if they were clusters of two consonants. So they can appear in syllable codas, except when they are followed by a consonant, onset of the following syllable. When they appear in an onset, no other consonant is allowed in that onset. Note that this rule is not always followed in loanwords. Since they were all adopted at a time when C.G. could speak other languages (like French and English) with freer phonotatctics, some loanwords allow those consonants to appear in situations where they are disallowed in native words. An example is the word Doj|slan: Germany, which was loaned from German Deutschland. It is syllabified as Doj.|slan, which shows a |sl onset that is normally disallowed in Moten. If the word had been borrowed following all the phonotactic rules, it would have been *Doj|sulan, but C.G. and I just don't use this form. Notice however how the ending of the word was simplified to fit Moten's strict syllable structure. Moten's phonotactic rules are still in place. It's just that in borrowings, those four letters behave like single consonants whatever their position. The last rule forbids the *ts and *dz sequences, even across syllable boundaries. As I'll show below in the section about morphophonemics, those are always simplified to |s and |z respectively. In a similar fashion, the sequences *lj and *nj never appear in Moten. More surprisingly, neither do the sequences *jl and *jn.

Besides those rules, consonant clusters (whether in onsets or across syllables) are quite free. Plosive + plosive or fricative sequences are considered normal even in syllable onsets, and both s and z can be followed by another consonant (including plosives). Other continuants don't allow such freedom, and actually continuant + continuant sequences are quite limited in onsets (they are very free across syllables). Mostly only those starting with s or z are allowed. In the same way, all consonants can appear in coda (even absolute codas at the end of words), including plosives. Continuants are preferred in that situation though.

Morphophonemics

Moten is relatively free in allowing word compounding, and inflects using a combination of prefixes, infixes and suffixes. This means that it is common for words and/or affixes to combine in ways that result in forbidden clusters according to phonotactic rules. This section gives an overview of the possible ways those clusters are resolved, although the rules are complex and not always regularly followed (when it comes to compounds. Inflections always follow regular morphophonemic rules).

The simplest case is when two vowels meet. As indicated in the section above, a, e and o can happily coexist (although the sequence ae is sometimes simplified to e). The other rules are:

• When two identical vowels meet, they are simplified into one.
• When i meets another vowel, it becomes j. That j might then interact with neighbouring consonants.
• When u meets another vowel, j is inserted to break the sequence.

Consonants are more complicated, as there are many more possible cases of disallowed clusters. Nevertheless, the number of rules governing the treatment of disallowed clusters is still relatively limited.

There are two overarching rules that affect consonantal clusters before any other rule is applied:

• Consecutive consonants must be all voiced or all voiceless (keeping in mind that the nasals, laterals and approximant are voice-neutral). When consonants of different voicing meet, at least one will change to meet the other consonant's voicing. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a single rule that states which consonant should change in which case. There are some tendencies, like the fact that s and z will always be the ones to change voicing when meeting another consonant, while f and v, on the other hand, always impose their voicing to neighbouring consonants. But there doesn't seem to be any such rules for other consonants.
• Two identical consonants (possibly after voicing agreement) will merge in one.

Next are a series of rules for cluster simplification and breaking. Note that those rules don't have any inherent order. They happen more or less simultaneously or in different orders depending on the context:

• The sequences *ts and *dz become respectively |s and |z. In a similar manner, the sequences *lj and *jl become |l, while the sequences *nj and *jn become |n.
• The consonants |l, |n, |s and |z are simplified to l, n, s and z respectively, when in a position where they are disallowed. This rule has exceptions though. In particular, when next to s or z, it's not |s and |z that are simplified, but rather s or z that disappear. Also, when |l and |n appear next to a continuant (other than j, which disappears) and simplifying them would still result in a disallowed cluster (for instance two consonants in coda position), they are not simplified. Rather, an u is inserted to break up the cluster.
• If, despite simplifications, impossible clusters still appear, those are broken by an epenthetic u.

This last rule has a lexical exception. In Moten some roots break the phonotactics of the language by ending with two consonants. Those roots are used as is for inflection and compounding, but rather than using an epenthetic vowel, disallowed clusters involving this coda cluster are resolved by deleting the last consonant of the root. This last consonant is fragile, and will tend to disappear as well when forming a cluster onset in a following syllable, unless it was simplified in another way.

The most typical example of such a root is the numeral vel(d): five. In the nominative, it will surface as vel, while its genitive is veldi. In compounds, in some cases the final (d) is present (even if simplified): vel|ziza: the fifth of the month (vel(d): five + siza: day). In others it's absent: velmune: May (vel(d): five + mune: month). In some cases, it's absent, but its influence is present in voicing effects: velbele: five minutes (vel(d): five + pele: minute, used when telling the time).

Such roots are relatively uncommon, so I will always make them obvious when citing them by putting their last consonant in parentheses, as I did here.

Stress and Pitch

Stress in Moten is usually not distinctive, and very weak in any case. All syllables in a phrase are pronounced equal in time, strength and pitch, except the first syllable of the phrasal head, which receives a very weak high-pitch stress. This stress pattern helps identify the head of a phrase, but it is usually superfluous. For this reason, stress is not indicated in writing.

What's Next

OK, I believe this will do for now. Sorry for the relatively dry post. I promise the next ones will be more lively, including more examples of the Moten language. Hopefully you still enjoyed it. If you have questions (whatever they are), don't hesitate to ask them in the comments. I will try to answer them to my best ability.

Next post will be about nominal morphology and syntax. I will present noun declension, pronouns, and noun phrase formation. I will also discuss the meaning of the various noun declensions, which can be surprising at first. So stay tuned!