Ćwarmin Vocabulary: Accomodation

I'm planning to do some posts with the intention of increasing the size of the vocabularies of my conlangs. So, here's a first post on the theme. There'll be some cultural information as well.

Although the Ćwarmin were nomads until recently, a fair share of their population has settled in permanent settlements. The Nomadic lifestyle still holds a significant share of the Ćwarmin speakers.

This affects some 

badku has already been mentioned, and now means 'village'. It also signifies 'band'.

birsi signifies barns, and seems to come from bir, cattle. The latter part may have some connection to śisən, to build, which also is cognate to sirni, a temporary (wooden) structure.

perəc - granary. This is a loanword from Bryatesle pesr-axse, grain-store.

rumb - temple. A loan from Dairwueh ruvbe.

tor - well, but also water source in general

camto - the wall of a building

releś - door

xarsab - roof

rukun - the 'floor' (generally, earth floors are the common thing)

woxa - a fire, from a word that was non-count in early Ćwarmin. Different dialects have developed a few different new words for the non-count meaning of 'fire', most deriving from either woxa or mexəć, e.g. woxruś, mexćeś. Several dialects still permit using woxa in a non-count sense as well.

kotad - a building, a house

cirneć - home (from the diminutive prefix cir- and early Ćwarmin mexəć, fire (countable))

'home' in a more general sense tends to form its case forms from 'mex-', rather than from 'cirneć', whereas when talking of a specific home, i.e. 'the home of a rich person' or anything where it is more specific than usual, you are likely to use cirne- as the root.

Few Ćwarmin houses have multiple rooms; windows are unusual too. A couple of holes exist, though, at opposite ends of the roof, for letting light in, smoke out, and air through. These can be covered with animal skins. 

arkal, poktal – leeward, windward air/smoke/light-holes

barg - skin for covering these holes

worarkal - 'big leeward air-hole', the usual name for glass windows. Such called because wind does not enter through them. Window glass is sirgurbarg, 'small big covering skin'. Where, 'sirgur-' signals the astonishment that glass first caused among the Ćwarmin.

walan - bed. Generally not a very comfortable nor large bed, usually just a pile of wool, sometimes hay and moss.

saupa - a big wooden water container

kosdan - tent fabric (generally skin)

matup - the wooden structure that keeps the tent up

ćiriŋ - the first tripod that is raised when raising a tent

Detail #264: Some Origins for Dual Marking on Verbs

Consider the comitative. Now, let's consider this grammaticalization path:

general comitative case exists
the language has plural and singular congruence

>
 the comitative is lost, in general
 pronouns retain it, though

>

comitative pronouns get more restricted in distribution, and only appear after verbs

>

comitative pronouns are phonologically reduced and turned into affixes

>

the usage patterns make the meaning more like 'singular subject doing a thing together with singular comitative'

>

meaning slowly changes to just meaning 'two subjects'

Another possibility would be an adverb-like 'with' that needs no noun (but can take one). Things like 'he went with' come to signify 'he went [with (discourse topic)]'. Another possibility is for an applicative comitative voice, possibly by incorporating a comitative adposition.

Bryatesle: A Farewell with Religious Significance

In Bryatesle, Dairwueh, and less so Ćwarmin society, greetings often convey religious sentiments. Consider, for instance, the 'good night' farewell; many Bryatesle religiolects form this very much like English, but in the ablative (because that is the case generally used when wishing someone something) -

vind-ïn tal-ëta
good-abl.fem night-abl.fem

The kindaper religion, however, considers the night to be evil per se, a time when the sun-angel is subdued and weakened. Instead, they say

snyk-Ø ɕavr-ity
fast-(abl.masc) victory-abl.masc
(for a) fast victory!

Sometimes,  these also render 'good morning' as tënek/drask ɕavrity, either a 'strong' or 'right' victory, referring to the perception that the sun has (again) won over the night. Snyk-Ø and drask are shorter than the expected forms *snyk-ek, *drask-ek, due to haplology.

The same happens in Dairwueh, and to a lesser extent in Ćwarmin:

Ćwarmin:
samar śavr-otuc
fast victory-[def. comitative-to]

The comitative-to is used in Ćwarmin also for wishing someone something, or wishing it more generally as a form of interjection-like statement. Śavar is borrowed from Bryatesle's ɕaver, and the loss of the second syllable in both is a coincidence - the languages happen to have a similar morphophonological process going.

Dairwueh:
korŋa i marbr-u-ŋa
speed-instr to victory-instr
(victory comes from marbar, 'stronger', and basically originally meant 'strongerness')

Sargaĺk: Numbers and Numeracy

The number system in Sargaĺk is somewhat limited – for numbers above 30 or thereabouts, most speakers switch to Ćwarmin numbers. The native Sargaĺk number system does cover numbers up to 55, however.

1 dem
2 k'em
3 prex
4 t'nez
5 voʒe
6 jiʒe
7 t'epp'u
8 (a)t'ep

9 dem at'epat or dmetve
10 k'em at'epat or k'metve
11 prex at'epat, pretve.

16: k'emat t'ep
17: dem (a)k'emat t'epat
18: k'em (a)k'emat t'epat

55: t'epp'u ajiʒat t'epat

Why 55? The Sargaĺk number system is octal, so 55 might seem like an odd point to stop at. However, for some reason there's no way of forming higher 'octaves' than 6*8, and thus the limit comes at 6*8 + 7. (This limit seems to have to do with seven being formed as "almost eight", and seven itself is not quite a regular number, lacking some of the syntactical properties of the other numbers.)

Native speakers who do not interact with traders may not necessarily be proficient with numbers above 32 or thereabouts.

Subject and Object Omission in Ŋʒädär

Despite the lack of person congruence on the finite verb, Ŋʒädär permits some amount of subject and object omission. Generally, the most recent subject and the most recent object will carry over.

Example 1: NP₁ NP₂ V₁. V_trans.

The same NPs will be considered subjects and objects of the next verb, and the next after that and so on until new explicit argumenst are present. If it is intransitive, the previous subject generally will carry over, except for a handful of verbs for which the object will be considered the subject. These generally encode reactions to the first verb, and there are some lexically determined things going on there. 

Example 2: NP₁ NP₂ V₁. NP₃ V_dir.
Example 3: NP₁ NP₂ V₁. NP₃ V_inv. 

Although the subject of V₁ is whichever of the two NPs whose ranking is preferred by the direct/inverse marking, the first noun phrase syntactically has some subject-like properties – it will carry over to the next verb - unless NP₃ and NP₁ are co-referent, in which case some other noun takes precedence - a previous subject or the other noun of the previous verb phrase, or the discourse topic. This is somewhat ambiguous, and depends on the nature of the verbs and the involved nouns.

If more than one third person argument is present, however, one will have to be marked for obviativity, which simplifies things a fair bit - the omitted argument will either be obviative or not, which will affect the marking of the next verb.

The Ŋʒädär branch lost a lot of the verb complex during its development out of Proto-Ćwarmin-Ŋʒädär. Most direct-inverse languages seem to have pretty rich verb complexes, with person congruence almost omnipresent in this typological class. Therefore, Ŋʒädär is a bit of an outlier - in fact, I'd dare say it's typologically unlikely altogether. The Dagurib branch is more typical of direct-inverse languages.

The Verbal Marking of the Proximate-Obviative Distinction in Ŋʒädär

Ŋʒädär noun morphology distinguishes obviative and proximate nouns; the obviative nouns do not distinguish number as readily as the proximate ones. There are situations where an obviative prefix is attached to the verb:

• any verb with a pro-dropped obviative subject or object
• intransitive verbs whose subject is obviative
• subordinated verbs that relate to an obviative more than to a proximate noun
• any verb with an obviative subject or object can take the obviative prefix, but this serves to emphasize the obviative noun. Since obviative nouns generally are more 'backgroundy' than proximate nouns, such emphasis is unusual.

The morpheme happens to be cognate to the Ćwarmin ok-/əc-/ec- morpheme. It goes back to Proto-ĆŊ */q'ovk-/, */q'eyk-/. In Ćwarmin, #q' > #ʔ > ∅. Being a doubly closed syllable, these behave somewhat oddly compared to other initial syllables in Ćwarmin: *ʔovk, ʔeyk > ok, əc, ec.

In Ŋʒädär, */q'ovk, q'eyk/ > /q'ovx, k'eyc/ > /q'oux, k'eic/ > /q'ou-, k'ei-/, with further vowel harmony forms having appeared for some verbs.

No cognate morpheme is present in Dagurib, although morphemes with similar function can be found in that branch.

Ćwarmin Vocabulary this far

I compiled a list of the full vocabulary of Ćwarmin in order to check if certain things I suspected held with regards to its phonotax were accurate; turns out I was right, and this will help me with regards to constructing Proto-Ćwarmin-Ŋʒädär-Dagurib a lot.

COMPLETE ĆWARMIN VOCABULARY THIS FAR except some pronouns  







ainik, amśik, aunik - is/was not
ambad = octet      
arkal - leeward (wrt prevailing winds) opening in a building for smoke to escape/air to enter
arna = this     
arnjan- hurry (re making something or finishing something)
atosćun - to attack    
au - present     
aun - far past    
awwun - was  
badku - village
bara - a flap for closing the arkal and poktal wind openings
barin - walrus meat
baust[??] - fighter     
bax - determiner of some kind
bordo - edible tubers
bičər - wheel     
bir - cattle
birsi - barns     
brewən = to grip    
ćan - table     
cawxur - nine day week   
ćimamce - just a moment ago  
ćimij - oftentimes (verb)
ćiriŋ - the "leg" that is used to lift a V-shaped agglomeration of two sticks in order to form a tripod for a tent
ćirgin - horseradish
cirneć - home

cirverter - big small what  (idiomatic - essentially, 'whatchamaycallit')  
ćiwuru - sometimes (verb)    
cixkan - write
ćorda - cranberries    
ćul = few     
curronguska - tiny big chief   
curworkar - big small who ('whatshisface')
ćwarola - ćwarmin descendants    
dart[??] - withstand     
daval - to consider oneself something  
davlakol - not to consider someone something 
davlap - to consider someone something  
jaźe - whole?     
dəšip - to be named   
dimrəs - parsnips
dintan - bass (fish)
jirune - soon
dop - sweet
dopor - sweet sauce   
dunvali - kingdom     
dustokvo - enough for ten   
əcgettin - to answer no   
(əc)lədilən - refuse an offer politely  
ecnitren - obey     
əcritən - to deny an accusation or allegation
ecsidten - refuse     
əmni- build      
eramće = a specific, a particular  
erća = a specific, particular   
ered = solo, unity    
erkar, erter (one-who, one-what)    
farna - old     
farso - buckwheat
ferkij - cabbage tubers
fird - debt     
firdiŋ - debtor     
gara - red     
garkaaćwurga - huge storm    
garnun - body part
garpa, garva, garća - porridges and similar foods
gemi - grains
gəne - long
gimin fish      
girś - net     
grundu - pasture land    
gukula - viceroy     
ǧacjad - thinker     
ǧar - mr, mrs, ms   
ǧarsab - roof (from sabam)   
ǧaruhno - gentleman     
ǧərrip leghold traps     
iməl - river
ipsər - thyme (or rather, a thyme-like plant)
ipsərv - thyme-flavoured
itred - drunkard     
itrin = drink     
jeǧir - royal crown    
kalć - stick, branch, plant   
kamu-sun - his wife    
karaž - acres     
karća - aim     
karn - long     
kartapur - taxman     
kelə - know
kəc - wall     
kic - sea animal    
kiŋre - flock of tame animals, fortune, boon
kinij - question     
kinil, kinən - ask
kiri - mint

kopon = hammer
kosdan - tent skin
kotad - house, home
kupni - a kind of whitefish
kur - salt
kurćap - salty
kuvara - attempt to open   
lank - door
laŋras - black salsify
lendə - apples
lentapritaś- 'morning', '(the time) of someone obligated to milk the cows'
lentek - to harvest milk, blood, eggs, meat of small
loma - bird or bat   
maruw - kidneys
matup - the wooden structure, often a tripod, that a tent is based on
mauŋ - food     
mauŋed - eater     
meǧwi = bread     
mered = duo, but also mother of two
mərə(s) - travel     
merk - improve
mewie - milk
midreviŋrə - our praise    
migit - old
milti - liver
mirgə - board, cloth, skin, cover  
miske - greedy     
mokmo - action, story, outcome, result  
murus = tusk
narwo - parsley
nedim = bit (uncountable)    
nəmirəmcə - demand-past.recent     
nerel - leeward     
niźilgə - my love
nopor - cabbage leaves
nuna - reindeer milk
ogmo - stone     
okkaulad - resistance fighter    
okkaulan - resistance
əctəriln - answer   
okratun - to answer yes   
okruncan - fall over from being kinetically affected
(ok)samawan - succumb to something   
olba = that     
ostanc - storm (synonym)    
pəktən - hundred     
pər - man     
perəc - granaries    
pokra - onion
poktal - windward (wrt prevailing winds) opening in the wall for air to enter into a building
ragad - speaker     
ragam - talk     
ragan - left     
rakad - reader     
rakam - walk     
rəige - bay, cove
releś - door
remuk - a kind of herring
resepaŋ - criminal     
riekye - scissors     
rigən, ridjel, ridjen, ridjin - hurry (re: movement)
ripen, ripəm, ripjig- bite    
roŋ - flock of wild, carnivorous animals 
rukun - indoor ground, floor
rumb - temple     
runa - road     
sabam, sabjul - cover    
sabokvo - duvet, blanket    
salcan - great     
śalda  - blueberries
samar fast      
samarad - a fast one   
saŋ - a determiner, but also 'up'; as a determiner it serves to mark that a noun, as part of the event the clause refers to, is differentiated from other objects or subjects; it is selected or otherwise differentiated.
śaŋikara - attempt to appear as, attempt to impress
saŋmoru - fallow land    
sapr(ul) - strike, hit    
sarbatuŋra - our obligation    
saul - see
saupa - a big water container
seben - right    
śeme - flour
śenər - blood
śenərv - blood-food
səkve - land animal    
seltimgə = fisherman     
semtə - flock of wild, non-carnivorous animals 
sewkən = eat     
sicə - vinegar     
sidestigə - my child    
sikred = trio, but also mother of three
sikrekye - enough for three  
sirgurbarg - glass
širmes ship      
sirni - temporary building    
sirpən - catch a fish   
sirpist - the catch of fish
skense - a type of salmon
śpal       
śpanit - in the nights   
suŕurŋaca - widower     
taucon - breathe     
taxkar, taxŋar - assembly of parts  
taxuga(r) - swith places    
tebuvu - cake     
tergin - clergyman     
toŋugul = winter    
tor - well, water source
tretke - town     
tuam, twam = reside, live somewhere, stay somewhere
twiǧerćel       
učuśan - plow     
udug - lake
varsan - harbour    
vasni - a kind of salmon
verći - account, words, story, sum, plan 
verhərgimin, largest moderately large fish    
voram - belly, torso
walan - bed
wekre - garlic
wicxə - house     
wicxit - house     
winćə - city gates    
windarś - marketplace, open square  
wirdə - plums
worarkal - window
woxa - fire
woxar - smoked (meat)
wruŋna - castle     
wundarś - marketplace
wərse - walrus meat 
xaukam - read     
xuvop - to become    
yulzor - assembly of people, bunch, gang, congregation
yulzvonar - horse-mounted assembly of people  
źaŋk - fisherman     
źaŋkasta - net repair tool   
žewa - maritime sound    
źil - nail