Eolai

Eolai - eʒ-l-j

“The language of reality”

Here is the Lexica Eola, a work-in-progress dictionary for Eolai

Background

Eolai (adapted from the original “eʒ-l-j”, meaning “creating by speaking”, closely related to the concept of Logos) is a constructed language for my Dungeons & Dragons-Campaign “Une aventure à travers des mondes”. It is supposed to be “the language of reality”, primarily spellcasting from third-quadrant dimensions. From there it spread (as a language, as a magic system it is already technically omnipresent).

Goals

As the spellcasting language, it must be the best for that purpose. As such, it must necessarily be able to to describe every possible thing, action , occurrence or concept. This is fairly easy to do when the language has sufficient complexity by simply describing everything with more complex phrases. But the second requirement complicates things: The language should also never be ambiguous, which is not trivial to implement or formalise, and ideally will also be prefix-free. This means that no word is a prefix to another word, so interruption can never conclude in a finished word.

Formally: TODO

$$...$$

(Im)possibility

An implementation of a language fulfilling all requirements is probably very difficult, if not impossible. TODO

The Basics

Sentence Order

Always V(SO)

Phonemes

Eolai an atonal language

Idea for later: alternate phonemes (non-pulmonic)

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Linguolabial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	pharyngeal	Glottal
nasal	m		n̼		n			ɲ	ŋ			-
plosive	b		d̼	d̪	t d				ɡ	(ɢ)		ʔ
sibilant affricate	-	-	-			d̠ʒ			-	-	-	-
non-sibilant affricate						d̠ɹ̠˔
sibilant fricative	-	-	-		z	ʃ ʒ			-	-	-	-
non-sibilant fricative	β	f v			ð							h
approximant						ɹ̠		j
tap/flap									-			-
trill									-			-
lateral affricate	-	-									-	-
lateral fricative	-	-			ɮ		ꞎ				-	-
lateral approximant	-	-									-	-
lateral tap/flap	-	-									-	-

Simplified:

	labial	dental	alveolar	postalveolar	palatal	velar	uvular	glottal
nasal	m		n	ɲ		ŋ
stop	p b	d	t d	d̠ʒ		ɡ		ʔ
fricative	f v		z ɮ	ʃ ʒ				h
trill				r̠
approximant	β̞				j
lateral		l

Vowels

TODO, but lots of vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i | y(ɥ)	ɨ| ʉ
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid		ə
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Phonotactics

The phonotactics are slightly different for verbs and nouns, as the structure of verbs and nouns already encodes phonotactics.

Syntax

Verbs

The basics of verbs

Infinitive verbs consist of only consonants with “blanks” in between. The infinitive will never be used in actual language, it will always be conjugated and the blanks will be filled. $V_0{C}_1{V}_1{C}_2{V}_2{C}_3$ Here $C_n$ refers to one consonant, rarely to a consonant cluster. $V_n$ stands for one (or two) vowels. It follows that verbs always start with vowels. $V_0$ indicates the verb class as seen in the table below. $V_1$ indicates the subject and $V_2$ the tense. Because of palatalization of $C_1$ for plural forms, $C_1\ne /j/$.

Link to original

Nouns

The basics of nouns from verbs

To adapt a verb stem into a noun, $V_n$ will be modified accordingly. $C_1{V}_1{C}_2{V}_2{C}_3$ It is apparent that $V_0$ is completely removed from the word. This makes sense as it would indicate the verb class, which doesn’t exist anymore in nouns. The remaining vowels will be adapted to form a noun instead of a verb. For this, $V_1$ and $V_2$ change their meaning: The first vowel indicates the noun class and the second vowel shows the grammatical number.

Link to original

Morphology

Affixes

List of Affixes

Prefix

Affix	Meaning	Example
	negation

Suffix

Affix	Meaning	Example

Infix

Affix	Meaning	Example

Circumfix

Affix	Meaning	Example

Transfix

Affix	Meaning	Example

Duplifix

Affix	Meaning	Example

Link to original

Syntax tree:

TODO very cool if i could do that

Voices

Antipassive Voice

Basque has an antipassive voice which puts the agent into the absolutive case but does not delete the absolutive object. This leads to the agent and object being in the same case. I may want to adapt this into Eolai. TODO

thing wonderful-PL-ABS see-PERF have-PRES-PL-1P (I-ERG) ‘I have seen wonderful things.’

when transformed using the antipassive voice, becomes: thing wonderful-PL-ABS see-PERF-STAT am \ see-PERF-ACT am ‘I am seen wonderful things.‘

Orthography

Capitalisation

Names, sentient beings (and their designations) and concepts are capitalised. Examples:

• since K’vara is the name of a city, it is capitalised
• since Eolai is the concept of the creating word, it is capitalised

Accents

Draconic species

Tendency to pronounce dental und alveolar phonemes as lingolabial, because their tongues are longer.