Language of Uurwerk
From The Skybrary
((Note that the following is the exact opposite of set in stone. Feel free to discuss at the Forum and make changes.))
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[edit] Sound Details
Consonants dental alv velar uvular glottal stop t k ng q th g fricatives kh affricate kc ks ts
vowels: English-like, without long a,e,o sounds.
stressing - first syllable
Word construction: (C) repetitions.
[edit] General
There is one word for nouns, adjs, advs, and verbs. There is a disconnection indicator (a) that separates word-concepts from each other. Within a word concept, the order is assumed to be decreasing importance -- so the first word in the subject phase is taken as the actual noun etc.
The language follows a S-O-V word order. nga can be used as a skip (including the following a), indicating this placeholder is to be inferred. If it's the verb, often the nga is also dropped, which, though it can mean that the verb is to be inferred, usually means that the verb is the default "to communicate".
Uurwerkians think in terms of this default communication, so their sentences seem to naturally flow as a description (or reporting, or questioning etc.) of communication.
There are defaults for the Subject and the Object as well, specified by simply using a without a concept in between instead of nga, (although the inference of nga can also be 'the default', and indeed is widely used in that sense, so watch out there). But these are much less widely used and are more subject to variation in different contexts (see the section on contexts below).
Grouping of constructs is with kce and ekc.
E.g. [Sky] a [Blue] (verb dropped)
The sky is blue.
[Weather] [Day] a nga [Pleasure]
Today's weather pleases (inferred me)
[Wrench] kce [Usage] [You] ekc a nga (verb dropped)
The wrench you used speaks to me.
(This is idiomatic? How they think? for 'Hand me that wrench you used.')
[edit] Continuations
Normally a sentence is assumed to end after the verb, or at the start of the next subject if the verb is dropped. But there are two special sentence continuation indicators - ta, and kha. Both of these immediately end the sentence, filling in as and ngas as necessary. ta is a repeat operator -- it means 'append the following idea-forms in the S-O-V pattern to the preceding sentence', and kha is a tagging operator, fulfilling the same purpose as ?,!, etc in English but allowing any word to be used.
So, [Wrench] a [Sluor] ta [Usage] [You] kha [Request] means "Could you please hand that wrench you used to Sluor?"
The purpose of ta: Firstly, the new terms are implicitly grouped, if it makes sense. But more importantly, since these extra descriptors are appended to the end of the initial words, they are automatically less important, less relevant to the meaning of the concept, than the initial SOV group. Thus, the sentence can be interrupted at any time, once it is understood, and Uurwerkians make heavy use of this ability. Silence in Uurwerkian is taken as a request for clarification, which is then done by adding more and more precise ta-clauses.
Since qoth is the null word, signifying 'nothing', kha qoth can be used to immediately end a sentence that has no further meaning. Through colloquial shortening, this has been commonly reduced to qath as an all-purpose sentence-end marker.
[edit] The Role of a
You may have noticed that the sound a is within many of the connecting words above. (It's always the same sound -- since Uurwerkian doesn't have the long a, a by itself can only mean the short a sound.)
Uurwerkian reserves this sound for the endings of concepts. Note that only those connective words which signal the end of one concept have the 'a' sound. It is only used in this scenario -- Uurwerkian vocabulary words do not actually contain this sound.
The purpose of this is similar to that of the importance-ordering -- when the concept contained within one block is understood, the listener can almost zone out, while just keeping their ear pricked for the 'a' sound. This readily enables speech as a sort of extra task that is done in addition to, say, working on an engine or a problem or something similar, for the listener has a useful and unambiguous cue to reset their attention back to maximum.
Though this idea does not have all that meaning in text, The Uurwerkian script lightly emphasises the 'a' vowel to give a similar visual cue when reading.
[edit] Contexts
Finally, Uurwerkian has contexts. The context can be inferred, or explicitly specified with a standalone kha-clause at the beginning of the conversation. A context is basically a collection of defaults, for subjects, objects, verbs, subject-descriptors, object-descriptors, verb-descriptors, as well as implied additional ta-clauses and kha-clauses. This can be used to collapse lengthy sentences concisely into their most important bits.
Contexts are learned and created - specifically, they are a formalisation of shared understanding. Two friends may have a default context they slip into when talking to each other; a master and student may have another. These very low level contexts will generally be specialisations of broader contexts -- all Uurwekians learn the general "Home" and "School" and "Work" contexts, for instance, and a specialised version of them which is specifically that of their particular home, school, and work.
