Tatari Faran

A constructed language by H. S. Teoh.

Tatari Faran has a typology radically different from the typical average European typology (accusative, ergative, etc.). The relationship of noun phrases to the verb is marked by a system of 3 noun cases, which are chosen semantically rather than syntactically. As a result, the language has no passive voice (and no need for it). The syntactic subject of a sentence is purely syntactic and completely independent of noun case, and has no bearing on semantic role.Tatari Faran also has a class of words called 'complements', which as far as the author knows has no equivalent in any other language. Complements appear at the end of a clause in the indicative voice. They are usually synonymous with the main verb or the predicating adjective, and so add no additional meaning to the sentence. Their main purpose is to reinforce, re-emphasize, and re-affirm the verb or adjective, to make the statement more vivid, to act as an affirmation of the indicative mood, and to mark the end of the sentence by providing a sense of conclusion and closure.There are two distinct ways of marking the same 3 cases on nouns. The first way is via case clitics, and is used in the main clause. The second way is via prefixes, and is used in relative clauses. Hence, by looking at which type of inflection is used on a noun, you know immediately whether it belongs to the main clause or a relative clause. This cue is advantageous for parsing the heavily modifier-final syntax of Tatari Faran.There are also several different types of genitive-like secondary cases: the genitive is used for possession and source, the partitive is used for subsets and is-a-part-of relationships, and the compositive is used for making compound words (e.g. girl of the servant (genitive) vs. servant girl (compositive)).From a phonological point of view, Tatari Faran has the unusual allophony of [4] and [d] (CXS), and the glaring lack of any lateral consonant (there is no [l]).

Language sources: Hawai'ian, for the small phonetic inventory and phonemic glottal stop; Korean, for its pitch-accent patterns; Malay (or Austronesian languages in general) for the general 'sound' of its words; Japanese for its tendency to repeat nouns rather than use pronouns; Sinitic languages for the general isolating tendencies; and many others.

I started out aiming for minimal phonetic inventory (although it turned out to be not as minimal as Hawai'ian), which collapsed /r/ and /d/ in the initial set I had, and later caused the discarding of /l/ altogether. Nevertheless, euphony was still much of a consideration, and so Tatari Faran has quite a number of mutation rules to maintain euphony.Also, I had a particular sound flavor in mind, vaguely Austronesian. Not only was the phonetic inventory modelled after Hawai'ian; every word is carefully crafted to 'sound right'. David Peterson believes I was quite successful in this area.Another design principle is that it will be very isolating rather than inflecting. So noun case (at least in the main clause) is marked by postclitics, which may be separated from the head noun by adjectives, genitives, or even entire relative clauses; verbal aspect, tense, etc. are marked by modifiers, etc.. In relative clauses, however, inflections are used.There is also a tendency towards onomapoiea in the vocabulary, among which are words such as ako' for "chicken"; aku' "to be hit on the head", boha au'au for "to bark", tsuinit for "songbird", sisita for "to chatter", to name a few.Besides this, Tatari Faran being spoken in a highly volcanically-active land, there are a large number of words for volcanism-related phenomena, including several different words for volcanoes of different types, several words for different eruptions, several words for lava (ala Hawai'ian), etc.

A number of people on CONLANG have expressed interest in it."It is so original!" - Sally Caves."I enjoyed it very much" - David Peterson.

Links

• http://conlang.eusebeia.dyndns.org/fara/