Kiwia o miwii: a personal conlang

[Evynova]

Kiwia is a conlang I did not make as a part of my conworld, or any conworld for that matter. Kiwia is my personal language; I intend to make it as I see fit, and let it represent who I am. As such, I am taking inspiration from several natlangs. I am going to use some of their grammatical features I like and try to make them work together. In this thread, I will briefly describe it and post as I make progress in its development, as well as various translations and original creations, which will be the main purpose of this language. Personal expression is the goal.

Nevertheless, even though it is a personal language and I don't necessarily have to be able to explain or justify this or that feature, I do not want to be lazy and half-ass a bad, dysfunctional language. Not having to justify does not excuse poor craftsmanship. With that in mind, I am also trying to step away from the overly quirky and unjustified oddities, something I've been doing in my past conlangs. I want this conlang to be more subtle, more sober.

I hope you like it as much as I do.

Phonology
The phonology is very much inspired by Polynesian languages, though I have altered a few things to my liking.

Consonants are:

/p t k ʔ/ <p t k ‘>
/m n ŋ/ <m n ng>
/v s h/ <v s h>
/ɾ l/ <r l>
/w~ɥ/ <w>

• /w/ becomes /ɥ/ before a front vowel
• All the consonants can be geminated, even in word-initial positions. Word-initial long plosives can be glottalised to contrast with their short counterparts
• Geminated /ɾ/ is realised as [rː]. Geminated /w~ɥ/ is always realised as [wː]

As for the vowels, they are:
/a e i ɔ u/ <a e i o u>
/aː eː iː ɔː uː/ <aa ee ii oo uu>

• Combinations of vowels have no restriction. That said, each VV sequence can be pronounced in 3 different ways. For example: rauna, rạuna, raụna: /ˈɾa.u.na/, /ˈɾau̯.na/, /ˈɾa̯u.na/. If the VV sequence is a diphthong, the phonemic vowel is marked with a dot under it in the romanisation.

The phonotactics are also simple.

• (C)V(V) syllable structure. The heaviest allowed syllable is CVV where VV are two vowels of a diphthong or a single long vowel
• Consonant clusters are therefore not allowed; words must end in a vowel
• Stress usually falls on the first syllable of a word, though syllables with diphthongs or long vowels often tend to attract the stress

Example sentences

Iẹ tetẹu uạ ngi Kiwia o miwii.
/i̯e teˈteu̯ u̯a ŋi kiɥia ɔ ˈmiɥiː/
PRS speak CAP 1S Kiwia DEF language
I can speak Kiwia.

Iẹ mara ngi me.
/i̯e ˈmaɾa ŋi me/
PRS love 1S 2S
I love you.

We matae no neạ va annai ire ngi.
/ɥe ˈmatae nɔ ne̯a va ˈanːai iɾe ŋi/
PST caress EXCL 3S DEF heart POS.INAL 1S
I find him/her interesting/appealing. Lit: S.he caressed my heart.

From these examples, one can already see some grammatical features:

• Isolating nature and use of particles
• VSO word order
• Lack of grammatical gender
• Distinction between alienable and inalienable possessions

More to come. I'll write more about the grammar next week when I have more time. I'll also work on Roderan.

[Tuyono]

I like it so far! It will be interesting to see more.

[Evynova]

Syntax & bits of grammar
Kiwia is strongly verb-initial, with a VSO word order. Adjectives and adverbs follow, whereas prepositions are used. As for determiners, some of them precede (the definite article, demonstratives) but others follow (possessives, quantifiers).

Kiwian verbs have a peculiarity: they are a closed class in subclauses. Only three verbs can be used in a non-initial position: do (perform an action), be (state), and become (describes a change of state). These verbs can however incorporate nouns to form new meanings.

Iẹ ngaụ va eo‘o, wa‘‘ạuru ngi ili roa.
/i̯e ŋa̯u va eɔʔɔ | waʔːau̯ɾu ŋi ili ɾɔa/
PRS be DET person, sight-do 1S day last.
This is the person I saw yesterday.

Here, the construction is wa‘‘ạuru, from wa‘‘a, "sight, vision, appearance" and uru, "do, make, perform".

We perepere aụa ewa neạ tee kenẹiwahawa ire Aka.
/ɥe peɾepeɾe a̯ua ewa ne̯a teː kenei̯waɦawa iɾe aka/
We perepere aụa ewa neạ tee kenẹi-waha-wa ire Aka.
PST destroy PROG PAS 3S by death-become-NOM POS.INAL Aka.
S.he has been destroyed by Aka's death.

Perepere, which means "to destroy, to annihilate" is the reduplicated form of pere, "to damage, to break".

The passive is constructed by means of a particle ewa after all the other tense and aspect particles and before the pronoun. Tee is equivalent to the English "by".

"Death" here is constructed as a nominalised verb, using the nominaliser -wa. The verb, kenẹiwaha, is a compound of kenẹi, "death" and waha, "to become, to change into". The noun kenẹi refers to death as a concept or personification, and cannot be "owned". The construction is similar to English "by his/her dying".

Verbs
Verbs do not inflect. Instead, particles are used for mood, tense and aspect.

There are three tenses:

• iẹ: present tense
• we: past tense
• ui: future tense

And there are three moods:

• Indicative, which is unmarked
• Inferential, with the particle e
• Optative, with nu

As for the aspects, there are four of them with three particles:

• Punctual, habitual is unmarked
• Progressive uses aụa. It describes an action that is/was/will not be complete
• Completive describes an action that was/is/will be complete; it uses the particle eke
• Exclamative is used to express surprise, anger, fear, etc. It shows the speaker is emotionally connected to the action that is being described. The particle no is used

The negation is also a particle: u‘uạ.

The particles are used in this order:

tense - mood - VERB - aspect - negation - subject

For example:

Iẹ ngaụ neạ tarraha.
/i̯e ŋa̯u ne̯a ˈtarːaɦa/
PRS be 3S innocent
He is innocent.

Iẹ e ngaụ no neạ!
/i̯e e ŋa̯u nɔ ne̯a/
PST INF be EXCL 3S
Like hell he is!