olsᴕrosoƶɥ

information on the constructed language alsoura

Alsoura is an artlang I've been constructing on and off since 2020. It has evolved a lot over the years, and taken on its now-central aspect of the "vowel cube", which is related to both the vowel system itself and to the noun classes which are the heart of the "art-" aspect of the language. This page includes some linguistic information that might be of interest to other conlangers and appreciators of language. Elsewhere on my neocities website I've hosted some information on the worldview and cosmonogy of the Alsoura and have also made an online dictionary of all the Alsoura words which currently exist. The single-word translations on this page are meant to give a feel for the language, fuller translations are given in the dictionary.

The consonant system is very simple, just 12 (don't miss the guttural stop!) phonemes all together.

All together, in order: ɥ ʾ ᴕ p c ï t ı l ƶ s h œ n o ƞ m ɛ r a .

This 8 vowel system is the heart of things. It is very similar to the Turkish vowel system, but has some special properties which will be explored in the next section. The vowels are imagined as vertices on a cube, each of the eight sitting on one of the eight corners.

The type and place of articulation in these charts are left somewhat underspecified to suggest allophony. The symbols are my own indicators of the phonemes and mirror the orthography used by the Alsoura. I primarily use this system to write Alsoura throughout this page and most others. The chart below shows this orthography along with an all-ASCI-simplified-more-roman-romanization (an AASMRR for whisper lovers) and a suggestion of normal IPA values of each letter.

Sylables are (C)V(C), with the only restriction that r can't be word-initial. Alsoura is happy to put stops at the ends of sylables, and so there are plenty like mıt ("dead"), oʾ ("big"), and atpı ("top").

The AASMRR occasionally creates ambiguities, like between œman ("wade") and oɛman ("statues"), which would both be rendered oeman. For the possible offending sequences oɛ and oɥ we will use o-e and o-u, giving o-eman ("statues") and no-uroe ("frog-bat").

noun class and the vowel cube

Nouns are divided into 6 "genders" or noun classes. These categories are intimately tied to the worldview and cosmonogy of the Alsoura and serve to knot their phonology, semantics, and religion into a kind of unified whole. As the lines between nouns, adjectives, and verbs are sometimes fuzzy in Alsoura, these categories also apply to the majority of adjectives and are present in the background of most verbs.

There are three pairs of vowel properties, as seen above: high/low, round/unround, front/back. Each noun class corresponds to one of these vowel properties, and a word in that noun class can only use vowels that have that property; each class has its own "vowel harmony". For example, the vowel property of mıt ("dead") words is unround, so words in this class like halıh ("corpse"), tïpas ("copy"), and nımıs ("law") only contain unround vowels.

Remember that the vowels are conceived of as the vertices of a cube. This framework makes each noun class clear as a face of the cube, so class Ï is the top face, class Ƶ is the left face, and so on.

Noun classes also have opposites, and words often have reflections in their opposite class. Thus the dead word halıh _M ("corpse") has its reflection holᴕh _Ƶ ("body"), a living word; reflecting the inert word corta _A ("dagger") produces the human word cœrtɛ _N ("killer"). The ïᴕ ("one") / parœm ("many") pair serves to form some singular / plural forms, especially when this distiction is seen as fundamental to the meaning of the words. The pair hïmsɥ _Ï ("faction") / hɛmsœ _P ("factions") is an example of this type of pluralization, where hɛmsœ can also be taken to mean "the entity which is divided into factions".

The noun class system is somewhat based on animacy, with many inanimate words in class A, low animacy words in Ƶ, and high animacy words in N. In truth, the system is far more fluid and elaborate than this, with each class having its own force, direction, and energy. Many words are placed in a noun class that might 'on its face' appear strange: the word ƶamıt _M ("jelly, to congeal") is a dead word because mıt has a connotation of fixing and preserving. Many preserved foods are also dead words. The word tɛœr _N ("observation, to look") is a human word because nœs has a connotation of intellect and intention.

word and sentence formation

Alsoura is loosely analytic. Words can be modified by a number of affixes; those which change gramatical function are added to the end of a word, while those that change the meaning of a word are added to the beginning. The example below shows the full word, then the head + a postfix, finally the decomposition of the head (which is a compound word). Note the harmonizing of the affix.

Sentences follow VSO order, and adjectives and adverbs follow the words they modify. Some simple sentences:

pluralization

Most unmarked words are not explicitly single or plural and context is used to distinguish. The major exeption is for ïᴕ and parœm words, which unmarked are considered single and plural, respectively. Some unmarked words in other noun classes are considered single or plural, almost all of which use the first pluralization/singularization scheme described below. Unmarked forms are called general.

Two main pluralization/singularization schemes exist in Alsoura. The first involves switching the height parameter of all of the vowels in a word - in an ïᴕ or parœm word this also flips the noun class. This type of pluralization sometimes shifts the meaning, with some pairs shifted to the point that their original single / plural relationship is obscure. In this way both the single and the plural forms are general and can be thought of as seperate lemmas, though they clearly have a relationship. Some examples:

The relationship shown above is used when the distiction between the plural and single forms is seen as fundamental to the meaning of the words. The pair hïmsɥ _Ï ("faction") / hɛmsœ _P ("factions") described earlier on is another example. The same many word hɛmsœ _P also has the more plain meaning of "(two) halves" and can also be singularized in this sense to hɛmsœƞɛ _P ("(one) half"), another many word - here the difference is not seen as fundamental. This is an example of the second scheme.

The second pluralization/singularization scheme is done with affixes. The primary affix is -ïƞï (or -ƞï for words ending in vowels), which makes a plural word singular, or indicates a single unit of an uncountable mass noun. Adding this never changes the noun class, even for parœm words. There is usually no major shift in meaning, but sometimes these words are diminuetive or are contrasted with the other singularization scheme (see the first example oɛman above and below). Some examples:

To make a singular word plural, -oco (or -co for words ending in vowels) can be used - this affix is more rare, given that plurals usually are left unmarked. Adding -oco gives focus on the multiplicity of something:

The words tɥcmo and holᴕh here are labeled as "single" but in another context they could be used as plural as well, for example "oloƞcaıto, naᴕntatım ïmpïrastım œïlœtïm, sœtmɛ ɥt tɥcmo" [I heard Olongai's orations in Neunda, Mbiras, and Oilo] (from Qopop's Slumber and Waking in Ofungland).

color terms

Alsoura has 6 basic color terms which correspond to the faces of the cube. I was inspired, like in many other aspects of the language, by the Coptic language, with it's distiction of two basic reds despite a quite small inventory of basic color terms.

This page is a work in progress, last updated September 2024.