2. General info (GOISOPL)

“I’m as happy at shortening a word by half a mora as I’m at having a child born”

(Nagesha*, XVIII century)

Have you ever wanted to learn some foreign language as quickly as you learn an unknown alphabet? If yes, then Arahau is what you need. It’s a language-transformer, language-constructor. There are only three one-letter words in English: “a”, “I”, “o”**. Other letters can be meaningful in long words only. Is this fair? In Arahau every letter has its own independent meaning.

The goal of the Arahau project is to try to express the maximum number of meanings through the minimum number of sounds.

The complexity of Arahau is just imaginary. Soon you’ll understand “Lo! Saananrarraat”, which means “Don’t worry! Soon you’ll be able to talk the way we do”

Constructing a language is like solving a differential equation. There is a term in quantum mechanics - “principle of complementarity”, when for describing a phenomenon fully you need to use two alternative (additional) sets of classical conceptions. The more certainly one parameter is determined, the fuzzier the other one will be. Imagine that you got significantly more alternative variables (compactness, logicality, aesthetics, number of sounds and grammatical categories, simplicity of interpretation etc.). The balance of these variables gives us the language of Arahau.

Practical value

● Ultra compactness, reducing the flow of speech multiple times that theoretically can hasten the thinking.

● The language can be used as a mantic system. As every letter in Arahau has a concrete meaning, every word can get a concrete interpretation. (See Interpretation of Secret Names in the Appendix).

● It is interesting to apply the Arahau experience to the verification of such linguistic theories as monogenism and production of words from the low number of basic sound complexes.

Arahau accumulates the most archaic methods of production of words and sentences that are known in linguistics.

● Arahau as an indirect instrument can be used in deciphering ancient Non-Indo-European languages of the Mediterranean, the key to which as it seemed was lost forever. (See Fictitious Kinship of Languages in the Appendix).

● The use of techniques of secondary etymologisation of unknown words.

Exoticism

● Epic pronomens - specific pronouns, based on the nominal classes (ta “I, a human”, tüf “I, dried up river”).

● Meros - protogender category, differentiating the left and the right side (ard “right hand”, arf “left hand”). Meros is the basis for the system of numerals.

It’s possible that the binary gender division of nouns has developed from this archaic category. Meros exists in Arahau as a cryptotype and is not distinguished grammatically. The Meros paradigm, which is very important for building numerals, appears to be not exactly completed at the moment: there are paired nouns present for a very few number of parts of the body (hands, fingers, legs). So there is “ard” - the right hand, to rule, to govern, right and “arf” - the left hand, lie, to betray, to write; “ark” - the right leg, to walk, “*rza” - in the original variant - the left leg, to glide away, to stray (now means “the trunk”), “arg” - the right finger, to point at, “arh” - the left finger, to count, to read.

It’s interesting that in Chechen language the parts of the body and some orientational conceptions are constructed using the similar rhythmic scheme: ärru – ättu, “left - right”, mhara – mara, “nail – nose”. See Rhythms and Name Classes in the Appendix.

● CO...C… - like centerfix (the first element is a conjunctional formant and the second is the conjunction “and”): No.l.sa.c.t “Not you but me”. The role of conjunctions is played by prefixes coupled with an infix.

● Two-person system of pronouns. The possibility to form the third person of a verb with null affixes (us - “he has him”).

● World-forming cases: a – a human, ad – a child, az – a master, af – a corpse…

● Important role of pronouns in marking the borders of a word (the pronoun for the actor is placed in the beginning while the pronouns for passive meanings are placed in the end). The frame sentence structure.

● Spread-out category of Name classes.

● Quinary number system with 22 as the highest possible number within a few tens that has the own name, not dividing into parts.

● Hypersynthetism

● Use of the Qualitative (the grammatical category of good and evil) as well as the Respective and Invective associated with it (të – you, respected; ty – you, nonentity).

● Phoneme meaningful nature of the language, when each letter has its own semantic load resulting in the etymological transparency of the word structure.

● The priority of the vowels over the consonants (basic roots consist of a single phoneme, a vowel, while consonants are used as specifying markers).

● A possibility of constructing palindrome affixes (taa...aat – we...them), names and verbs (afrfa - eyes see, ese - to do the job).

● Position invariance of locative formants and somatic gradients (-pa/ap - in a human). The meaning of the affix depends on the position in the word. ka – that, who is a human, ka / ako – above the human, ak – not a stranger.

● Active structure of the language. Differentiation of organic and non-organic (temporary and permanent) belonging like it is in the most active languages. fagua – a house of a human, that not necessarily belongs to the human; farua – a house of a human, that has always belonged to the human.

● Morphological and phonological syncretism. Even a verb can play the role of a noun and vice-versa (tas - I’m thinking of you, gastas - the thought of you). There are elliptic verb forms made of a single vowel or consonant (Sut / Sust - you live with me, Tálk / Tílsk - I’ll kill myself).

Source

Analogies with natural languages

● Abkhaz language. There’s no Nominative and Ergative here with common ergative structure of a sentence. Ergative, Nominative, Dative and Possessive constructions are corresponded by the variation of class-personal prefixal morphemes in the structure of a verb which plays the role of a whole sentence. The word order is strongly fixated. The grammatical category “A human - Not a human” has survived. The loss of the category of the case is compensated with the branchy system of postposition constructions.

Uzboit – uzboit< usboit = (uara + sara + abara + oit) – “You (m.) I to see present tense” (I can see you);

Suboit – (sara + uara + abara + oit) “You (m.) me to see present tense” (You can see me);

Bəzboit– bəzboit < b(ə)sboit = (bara + sara + abara + oit) – “You (f.) I to see present tense» (I can see you, a woman);

Səbboit – (sara + bara + abara + oit) – “You (f.) me to see present tense” (You, a woman, can see me);

Lara amšən ah’ d-ts-oit – “She the sea to she-to go-tense” (She’s going to the sea); Sara s-ts-oit – “I I-to go-tense” (I’m going).

● Amerind languages. Personal pronouns act as possessive ones “I book = My book”. The hypertrophy of the system of pronouns is overburdened with exclusive and inclusive forms. The name paradigm is less developed than the verb one. Adjectives form an extremely limited class of words. Verb-centric structure of a sentence.

In the language of Dakota the 1st and the 2nd person differ in markers while the 3rd person is not marked and equal to the impersonal category. makhúže I’m sick, nikhúže you’re sick, khúže sick = he (someone) is sick.

In the Shughni language (the Pamirs languages) the 3rd person of a verb is expressed with a demonstrative pronoun (the similar method is used in the Ainu language, where the 3rd person of a verb can have a zero marker).

● Kwa languages (Yoruba, Igbo and Akan). The Passive is absent, 2 verb tenses - Real and Hypothetical (Present-Past and Future-Conditional). Words have generalized meanings, which are concretized using two or more formants (“chains”). Complex words and word combinations can’t be distinguished principally. There’s a clear border present between verbs and non-verbs. The Genitive is expressed through the position. Strict word order, no division into parts, frame sentence structure.

● Kru languages (Bété, Bassa, Bakwe). Using of resonant infixes for logical negation: in Bakwe ka - to close, kra - to open; in Bété ka - to open, kla - to close.

● Basque language. The similarity of phonology and methods of word-formation. The Basque language has shown a variety of equally sounding words with the Arahau-resembling meaning. (See Arahau-Basque Hypothesis in the Appendix).

● Languages of the Caucasus, especially those of Nakh-Dagestan. The Godoberi language has quasi-tones and the developed system of diphthongs (in Chechen there is about 33 vowels taking the polyphtongs into account). The Adyghe language declines nouns into 4 cases: absolutive, ergative, instrumental, and invertive. The simultaneous similarity among Arahau, Basque and Godoberi suggests Euskara-Dagestan cognation, the existence of some “fictitious cognation” between natural and planned languages and also non-obvious analogies between the languages of the Caucasus and a number of a priori languages.

● Ket languages. Syncretic structure of the language, embodying relics of ergativity and activity (as well as in the Ainu language) in itself. Late development of the possessive construction. Verb word-form dominates the sentence, demonstrating the tendency to reflect all parts of the sentence in its structure. Poor ruggedness of words in terms of common categories is typical. Merely nouns, verbs and personal pronouns are morphologically shaped. The system of noun classes pierces the entire morphology of the verb. Verb system is surprisingly complicated. All types of conjugation haven’t been discovered yet as each verb in the speech of Kets can suddenly show its special structure. Curiously detailed concreteness of the way of action is expressed through solid formations with wide semantics. Here are homonym-like syncrets (a war = a battle = a struggle = a combat = to wage war = military = fighting; a grandfather = the Moon) as well as abundantly separate distinguishing of words (absolutely different forms for such words as a tail of a bird, a fish, a snake; a snow falling, lying on the ground, on the trees…).

● Russian language. The presence of the aspects of verbs, the complexity of fragmentation of words into syllables due to the aggregation of consonants (up to four consonants).

Some Arahau words unintentionally remind of Indo-European roots: uzöbr - a goat (compare the Russian “izyubr'”), ügr - a shore (“ugor'”), vera - a rescue (“vera”), zra - an eyelash (“zrak”), zl(o) - a nobody, a smallness (“zlo”), uz - a bear (Latin “ursus”). In Arahau kvar - an ancestor; compare the Roman divinity Quirinus (quirites were competent citizens of Ancient Rome). Perhaps, this word comes from the Indo-European name of the most respected tree - *quercus (an oak). In the Georgian mythology Kviria the divinity is the personification of fertility and celestial moisture.

● Guarani language. Absence of cases, active structure is expressed with a variable degree of the control of will.

● Paleo-Asiatic languages. Polysynthetism. There is practically no stress in Chukchi and Georgian languages.

For instance, prosodic organisation of words in Chukchi language is characterised with the syllable interchange appurtenant to the trochee type: _v_v_v: 'myt-re-'mig-či-'re-ty-'rkyn - “We will work”. According to the researches, this expression doesn’t mean that unmarked even syllables are unstressed; they have another prosodic characteristic in comparison with non-even ones.

● Afro-Asiatic languages. Construction of plural forms by means of reduplication of vowels. Broad usage of formants - infixes, confixes, transfixes, specific for the most of other languages.

● Papuan languages. There is dual and even triple number among some of the languages (in personal pronouns of Australian languages up to four numbers are opposed to each other). There’s a highly complicated counting system, based on the designation of body parts used as abstract tallies.

The division of names into classes in the Papuan language of Asmat is highly notable. There are five classes. They are standing, sitting, lying, floating, flying (suspended) objects. See Rhythms and Name Classes in the Appendix.

● Andamanese language. In this isolated and very archaic language (there are hypotheses of its kinship with Tasmanian and Papuan languages) there’s the opposition between independent and dependent substances. The specific method of derivation in the Onge dialect is the alternation of thematic classifier: m-i-dange “my bone”, m-o-dange “my skull”.

● Finnish language. It characterizes as a language with primitive consonantism (if we don’t take long and palatal consonants into account) and the system of vowels, effuse due to the diphthongs , where the vowels are opposed to each other according to the length, front and back position (umlaut).

● Cham language. It’s highly notable, that polysynthetic Arahau demonstrated the certain similarities with the structure of some analytic languages of isolating typology. Though, in different works devoted to the diacronia of polysynthetism the hypothesis of the origin of the polysynthetic type from its antipode - the analytic type with the minimum degree of synthesis is being actively discussed at the moment. This comparison is a special subject of research. We only mention that Arahau has quite a lot of similarities with the Cham language, they are: maturity of homonymy, use of frame constructions, striсt word order. We were interested in the very terminology of syntactic units in the Cham language - a word, a grammatical complex, a word-combination, a group, a construction.

Analogies with artificial languages

● Author’s projects of a posteriori conlangs: Japik (linguistic game replacing the sibilant, hushing and fricative with the only sound “p”), Durlaa (linguistic game based on the mutual change of the consonants and vowels which makes the language be similar to Finnish), Sunilinus (linguistic game deforming all words into palindromes).

● A priori languages - Ithkuil, po, aUI.

● Mixed languages - Loglan, Lojban, Black Speech of Mordor, Cthulhu.

Philosophy of Arahau

In the basis of the conlang lie the Taoist principle of binaryness, animism, the natural philosophy system of analogies, when concepts of different ontological status are classified, as well as the mathematical set theory.

The project “Arahau” is an attempt to explain glottogonical processes of the language phenomenon, the original generative schemes of which, as it seemed, were lost forever. One can figure out that Russian “Spasibo” (Thank you) originates from the word combination “spasi bog” (Save God), but where do the words “bog” and “spas” come from? The process of formation of numerals in the most of the natural languages is not transparent at all.

Arahau is someway related to Cabbalism and the Japhetic theory of N. Marr, who faithfully believed that all the languages of the world originated from the four protowords: sal, ber, yon & roš. Avoiding linguistic controversy we should accept that the conception of monogenesis is more logical than the independent appearance of “lingua-organisms”.

The language of Arahau is minimalistic. There’s no grammatical agreement, conjugation and declension. One can substitute any action verbs for the superverb “es” (especially in case of “verbal pleonasm”) and use substitute for a noun, “arg”. Thus, the Russian phrase “Povar varit varevo”, in which all the words are formed from the same root is transformed into Arahau “Kvuls-es-arg” (literally “One that gives the food does it”). Here “does” and “it” are anaphorical morphemes.

The Arahau language is dichotomic. There are two parts of speech - a noun and a verb. Pronouns, numerals, interjections are considered to be nouns. Adjectives, adverbs, participles and adverbial participles are not present as a separate class.

In the modern variant of Arahau there’s the binary principle of formation of grammatical oppositions. The key principle is the dualism - there are two non-prepositional case formants (Possessive and Translative), two parts of speech (a noun and a verb), two persons in pronouns (personal and foreign), two moods (conditional and imperative), two temporal forms of verbs - the real (Present Tense) and the hypothetic (Past-Future Tense). Instead of the linear temporal conception of Indo-Europeans (yesterday - today- tomorrow) in Arahau there’s the radial model of time (now and probably), which changes according to different viewpoints aka aspects - duration - remoteness and frequency - quickness. The similar conception is present in the African languages Kwa (Yorubo, Akan, Igbo), in which there are also two tenses - the real (corresponds to the Present and Past in Indo-European languages) and hypothetic (corresponds to the Future and conjunctive mood).

The duality of characteristics is obvious even at phonetic layer, when vowels and consonants are strictly separated as if in castes. The plain vowels are opposed to the palatal while diphthongs - to triphthongs (by the way, triphthongs are known in Dutch and Vainakh languages).

S-oks-p-nala-fusaa-rr-uzü - “In the new city he feels like a fish to water”; Ta-jáma-t-äärd-g-ezoa-t-s - “I’ll come to you on the wings of the night” (literally “I’m going to come by air with the wings of the night to you”). Notice, that the noun ama has not only taken the function of a verb, but temporal characteristics as well - possibility and quickness directed to the future.

Note

* Bokasanrëksorrgarousadcesduodhad» (Ahenaro). The name “Nagesha” could be also adopted in Arahau by transliteration - Nagescca.

Bo-kasanr-ëks-(o)rr-garous-ad-c-esd-(u)od-had: (When) – a grammarian (that, who-knows-the-language) – is happy – as – the birth – of a son – (and) – shortens (literally: makes smaller) – the elements – (by) half.

** http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category_talk:English_one_letter_words