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 only ?? pure verbs; all other verbs are a combination of one of these verbs paired with a noun without a case marker. When negating a sentence, the negation must come before the 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.
