Vouard language

The Vouard language is a group of largely mutually-intelligible dialects spoken by the native inhabitants of the Vouard exoplane. A large number of Vouard-speaking refugees have resettled within Andorith. This is a brief overview of the standardized version of their language.

Vouard is highly-analytic and nominative-accusative. Roots are written and pronounced as separate words, and word order is determined by the grammatical aspect of a sentence. A small amount of derivational morphology in the language is derived from reduplication. Both adjectives and verbs are closed classes. There are no verbal person markings or numeral classifier systems.

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar / Palatal
Nasal	m		n
Plosive	p b	t d		t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
Fricative	f v	θ ð	s z	ʃ ʒ
Tap			ɾ
Approximant			l	j

The consonants are written as b, ch (t͡ʃ), d, dh (ð), f, j (d͡ʒ), jh (ʒ), l, m, n, p, r, s, sh (ʃ), t, th (θ), v, y (j), and z. The least commonly used consonant, Y, has largely been absorbed by diphthongs.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Diphthongs: /ei/ /oi/ /ai/ /au/ /ua/

Abbreviations

• 1st: first person, "I"
• 2st: second person, "you"
• 3rd: third person, "he/she/singular they/it"
• HUM: humanoid noun class
• AN: non-humanoid animate noun class
• IN: inanimate noun class
• Nom: nominative
• Acc: accusative
• Dat: dative
• INTRANS: intransitive particle
• NEG: negation particle
• QUE: question particle

Word Order & Aspect

A Vouard sentence's word order is dependent on its aspect: perfective, continuous/progressive, or habitual. Vouard noun phrases' clear boundaries -- beginning with the noun itself and ending with the noun's case marker -- allow phrase order to be very flexible. The perfective aspect sees an event as a complete action. The continuous/progressive aspect sees an event or state as an unfolding process. The habitual aspect indicates an action is usual, ordinary, or customary. Tense may be suggested by a sentence's aspect, but tense is more commonly implied through context and adverbs.

Aspect	Word Order	Example	Translation
Perfective	VSO	Tizuor ddu mad ber chevu.	He daydreamed. [The action is done once]
Continuous/Progressive	SVO	Mad ber tizuor ddu chevu.	He was daydreaming. [The action may or may not be completed]
Habitual	OVS	Chevu tizuor ddu mad ber.	He daydreams. [He daydreams habitually; he was/is a daydreamer]

Verbs

Vouard has 94 simple verbs; all other verbs are a combination of one of these simple verbs paired with a noun without a case marker. When negating a sentence, the negation must come before the simple verb, not the noun.

Copulas

Copulas ("to be" verbs) are required in predications. Predications are statements that declare something about a noun, such as "It is red" or "She is a doctor." Vouard's three copulas are locative, equative, and existential.

Auxiliaries

Auxiliary verbs are placed directly after the simple verb they support. This placement doesn't change in serial verb constructions, i.e. when two or more verbs or verb phrases are stacked together in a single clause.

Grammatical moods are expressed through auxiliary verbs.

Causatives

A few verbs can be made causative with the addition of specific nouns. However, there are no causative simple verbs, and a causative state is usually conveyed through a phrase, i.e. periphrasis.

Nouns

A word is a noun if it can take a case marker, and its animacy/inanimacy class determines which case markers it takes. Marked cases in Vouard are nominative (subject), accusative (direct object), and dative (indirect object). A noun without a case marker is in its "bare" form and can be combined with a verb to make a new verb.

Vouard nouns are classified as humanoid, animate, or inanimate. A noun's sound doesn't predict its animacy class, but class can often be determined logically. A being whose self-awareness, communication, and rough intelligence resembles those of a human are classified as humanoid nouns. Such beings often have a human-like physical shape, but, within the diverse interdimensional universe that the Vouard reside, that is not always the case.

Living animals, cosmic bodies, growing plants, and divine/mythological beings belong to the animate noun class. Objects, land forms, abstract things, picked fruits and vegetables, body parts, and dead things are all classified as inanimate.

A Vouard noun phrase will always consist of a minimum of two words, the head (a noun, pronoun, or determiner) and the case marker. The head will always begin the noun phrase, and the case marker will always end it. Adjectives, demonstratives, numerals, and relative clauses all follow the noun but proceed the case marker. Because nouns always require case markers (see Pronouns for an exception), there are ambiguous markers when animacy/inanimacy is unknown, veija and uneimu.

Beisha as a 1st and 2nd person inanimate case marker is primarily used in stories and poetry. It also means "dough."

Case Markers	1st Person	2nd Person	3rd Person
Unknown Animacy	-	Veija	Uneimu
Humanoid Nominative	Ber	Yol	Yadu
Humanoid Accusative	Thei	Pu	Atha
Humanoid Dative	Sha	Asfa	Dovi
Animate Nominative	Vuor	Dazo	Neir
Animate Accusative	Vuor	Jai	Net
Animate Dative	Vuor	Jai	Douten
Inanimate Nominative	Beisha	Beisha	Beisha
Inanimate Accusative	Beisha	Beisha	Doi
Inanimate Dative	Beisha	Beisha	Yiznu

Plurality

Vouard nouns don't change for number. If a noun is plural, that plurality is inferred through context or indicated by the addition of a number. Counting numbers are used to specify noun quantities.

Numerals
One	Dho.un
Two	Boujha
Three	Mu.oibi
Four	Doij
Five	Mou.tit
Six	Beysu
Seven	Ul.ai.to
Eight	Doimin
Nine	Tar.tit
Ten	Sha.dem.shi

Pronouns

Like other nouns, pronouns take case markers that change based on the pronoun's animacy/inanimacy class. Like all nouns, pronouns have no plural form. When a noun is plural, plurality is inferred through context or indicated by the addition of a number.