naku

This language is based on concepts from Lietal. I liked the word assembly based on minimal roots, but didn't like the root choices and how they went together. This is my attempt at a similar system with my own roots. It also owes a lot to toki pona.

Words are built from concepts ordered into trichotomies, or groups of three. A leading consonant defines the category, the vowel (one of three) specifies the specific meaning. These conceptual building block syllables are referred to as grains.

These concepts are pretty broad and words built with them will often allow different meanings. This is part of the idea. It is not meant to be literal and constructive. It is meant more to be conceptual and broad. (It is really just an exercise in linguistic minimalism.) Context will add a lot to meaning.

Trichotomies

Word Formation

Words begin with a head grain, followed by modifier grains. The head is the root of the meaning and each modifier cumulatively adds on to that concept. So the meaning of a word made up of two grains would be the head concept modified by the second one. In a word made up of three, the head concept modified by the second concept forms a meaning, and that meaning is modified by the third concept. A fourth concept would be applied after the third, and so on.

If you need to attach concepts to each other in a different order, you can use one of the grammar grains within a word. Intraword grammar grains break the word up into parts with separate meanings. Those parts are then assembled into an overall concept based on the meaning of the grammar grains.

For instance zadi (dynamic location) usually implies motion. zaditi could mean "good progress". But diti (good dynamic thing) by itself could be used to mean "play". If you want to talk about a playground, you might be tempted to use zaditi, maning "play location". But as we saw, zaditi means something more like "good motion". You want to say "a location of playing". You do this with "pi": zapiditi. (Yes, I stole this directly from toki pona.) "pi" breaks the word up into two meanings, "location" and "play", and connects them with the concept "of".

Proper Nouns

Lowercase letters are always used to write naku. To indicate a proper noun or borrowed word, simply capitalize its first letter. It is also nice, but not required, to adjust the word to use only sounds found in naku.

Romanization

I use IPA symbols throughout this document and that is a good way to write this language. If you want to avoid the unusual symbols ʃ and ʒ, you can simply romanize these as "sh" and "zh".

Structure

A sentece begins with a verb phrase, followed by a noun phrase for the subject, and then depending on the sentence, noun phrases for the direct and indirect objects. They phrases are indicated with the grammar grains used as words on their own. "pi" introduces the subject, "pa" introduces a direct object, and "pu" introduces an indirect object.

Phrases begin with a head word, indicating the root meaning of the phrase. Further words in a phrase cumulatively modify the head word. This works similarly to how words are formed. So "tool picture red" would be a red camera, not a camera for taking red pictures. If this structure isn't enough for what you mean, you have to use or create different words. For instance, you could make a single word that means "red picture" (possibly using "pi") and use that along with "tool".

Questions

Questions are formed by placing "ʒa", the question word, in the place of the thing being asked about. To ask "Who jumped?", place the question word as the subject: zadifa pi ʒa ("jump who?"). To ask "What did the athlete do?", place the question word as the verb: "ʒa pi nipidiki" ("what-action athlete?").

To ask a yes/no question about the truth of a whole sentence, append the question word as the last modifier on the verb phrase. So to ask, "Did the athlete jump?" use zadifa ʒa pi nipidiki.

Linking Sentences

Linking sentences describ a connection between two things like, "The sky is blue" or "Joe is an athlete". There are a couple ways to construct these sentences. One is to use the second thing as the verb. To say the sky is blue you might say vu pi ʃi ("The air blues"). If using the word as a verb leaves the meaning too ambiguous, you can use la ("equal") as the verb to show that the subject is being linked to the direct object. la pi Zhu pa nipidiki ("Joe equals an athlete.")

Some Possible Definitions

Here are some words I've tried to define while working on this language (in no particular order).

Sample Sentences