The triple grammar
Unlike any human language, xathmel has not one grammatical structure but three. These forms are known as roxathmel or roxaîni, the simple or isolating grammar; baxathmel or baxaîni, the complex grammar; and tixathmel or tixaîni, the agglutinating or high formal grammar. Which of the three a native speaker chooses to employ in a given situation depends on a host of factors such as the caste and occupation of the speaker and the person(s) addressed, the matter under discussion, the place in which the conversation takes place, the nature of the relationships between speaker and audience, the weather, the season, and the time of day. As a non-human language, xathmel naturally reflects some psychological differences from a human language.
The same basic roots, with some exceptions, are used in all three forms, but are put together and inflected quite differently. For example, consider the sentence "Is he coming to the festival tomorrow ?"
roxathmel : resh ar la te parth ar tiep ?
baxathmel : amarammeresh la tiep te parth ?
tixathmel : (7) amarawareshtep ozu uparththe ?
In the simple grammar, the sentence literally reads: (question) go he motion-towards festival go future-day.
The initial particle, resh, indicates that the phrase is to be construed as a question, and is followed by the verb root for go, which cannot be conjugated in this form, but is immediately followed by the pronoun la, he, indicating its subject. After 'te parth', to the festival, the verb root is repeated with the time-sequence particle tiep, indicating something happening in the near future but not on the day of speaking. There are no tense markers as such in the simple grammar.
The baxathmel sentence is closer in construction to an Indo-European language. Here the future marker am- is prefixed to a conjugated verb form, aramme, which may be understood as 'he goes', although for the complexities of conjugation see below. The particle -resh is now suffixed to the verb stem, indicating a question - it has become a math, or verb qualifier.
Further complexities become apparent in the tixathmel version. The (7) indicates one of a number of possible tone patterns that may be applied to the sentence. The tone pattern indicates that the conversation is taking place within the family enclosure of the speaker and carries no great emotional charge. The future marker is still am- but the verb has become arawa. Together with the use of the pronoun ozu for he, this indicates that the speaker is of the artisan-scientist caste, but the person to whom they are speaking is of the warrior-administrator-poet caste, as is the subject of their conversation. The use of resh as a verb qualifier is now complemented by the use of a degraded form of tiep as a qualifier of time, again affixed to the verb. Finally, the noun parth here has the prefix u-, indicating space - in this context, an outdoor event, and the suffix -the, which is our te, having undergone lenition because of the preceding th of parth, and here used as an inessive case marker.
Because of the ambiguities of the roxathmel grammar, and the cultural complexities of the tixathmel, I have confined my subsequent explanations to the middle grammar, baxathmel.
The parts of speech in baxathmel are understood by the Xaîni to be :
the verb
the noun
the adjective/adverb
the particles (a class including pre- and postpositions, vocative affixes, personal pronouns, qualifiers of size, time, and sequence, and the verbal maththa).
Xaîni grammarians would consider the verb and the adjective to be in fact compounds, comprising a root plus bound particles defining their function within the sentence. Those of the Tserayanu school would consider the noun in the same light, although admitting
that in many cases the bound particle was a null one, that is that the root and the noun formed from it were identical in form. This view is strongly
influenced by the fact that the influential Tserayanu school was based on Tsund: in the grammar of the Tsundranese languages, all words comprise a root form plus definer, but it is less clear
that the principle can meaningfully be applied to xathmel.
Baxathmel is a VSO language, that is, in a normal sentence the verb comes first, followed by the subject of the verb, followed by its object.
Some simple sentences:
aramme e-ko te ntaa - the woman goes into the house
arammu te pare - I go into the garden
doikke nein endo x-ntaa - we stand in front of the house
arammen nein xan e-ko - we go with the woman
More about the Common Tongue
Prepositions and other particles