Universal (Esperantido)

Last updated
Universal
Pronunciation [univerˈsal]
Created byG. I. Muravskin & L. I. Vasilevskij
Date1923
UsersNone
Purpose
Esperantido
  • Universal
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3 None (mis)
Glottolog None
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Universal is an Esperantido, a constructed language based on Esperanto. It has inclusive and exclusive pronouns, uses partial reduplication for the plural (tablo "table", tatablo "tables"), and inversion for antonyms (mega "big", gema "little"; donu "give", nodu "receive"; tela "far", leta "near"). Inversion can be seen in,

Contents

Al gefinu o fargu kaj la egnifu o grafu.
He finished reading [lit. 'to read'] and she started to write.

The antonyms are the pronouns al "he" and la "she", the ge- (completive) and eg- (inchoative) aspects, the verbs fin- "to finish" and nif- "to begin", and the verbs graf- "to write" and farg- "to read".

The Universal reduplicated plural and inverted antonyms are reminiscent of the musical language Solresol.

Orthography

The Latin alphabet is used with IPA values, with five additional IPA letters: ø, ə, ʃ, ʒ, ŋ. The affricates are written ts, dz, tʃ, dʒ. The schwa ə is used to break up consonant clusters in compound words and the like.

A palatalized consonant is marked with a hacek, a nasalized vowel with a tilde: ã (among other things, nasalization marks the accusative case; a long vowel by a circumflex: â

If stress is not marked, it falls on the last non-schwa vowel preceding the last consonant of the word. Otherwise it is marked by an acute accent: á.

Grammar

Inflectional morphology

As in Esperanto, Universal nouns are marked by the suffix -o, which is elidable in certain cases. O by itself is a subordinating conjunction:

al gefinu o fargu kaj egnifu o grafu
"he has finished reading and is beginning to write."

As in Japanese, adjectives and verbs are a single part of speech in Universal. They have two forms, an attributive form when they modify a noun like an adjective, and a predicative form when they stand on their own to form a clause like a verb.

The predicative form is marked by the suffix -u: urbo megu "(the) city is big", lampo pendu "(the) lamp is hanging". On its own before a noun, this u is a copula: formiko u insekto "(the) ant is an insect". Tenses are optional. (See below.)

As in Esperanto, the attributive form is marked by the suffix -a: mega urbo "big city", penda lampo "hanging lamp". This a on its own is a preposition: podo a tablo "leg of a table", luso a deno "light of day, daylight". Nouns may instead be converted directly into attributives with the suffix -j-: denja luso "daylight".

Personal pronominal roots end in i, as in Esperanto, but inflect for number and gender as do nouns. (See below.) Possessives take the -j- that converts nominals to verbals as well as the attributive -a: mi "I", mija "my, mine"; vi "you", vija "your, yours"; al "he", alja "his"; la "she", laja "her, hers"; lo "it", loja "its", etc.

Optional inflection

Plurality and pluractionality may be shown through reduplication, usually partial: tatablo (or tablo-tablo) "tables", dendeno or dedeno "days", kloklora "of many colours", marmarʃu "walk repeatedly".

Tense is also optional, and may be used with verbs or nouns. The affix e indicates past tense when prefixed (ebela "formerly beautiful", eʃefo "ex-boss"), but future tense when suffixed and stressed (sanéa "healthy-to-be", urbéo "city-to-be"). The imperative is marked by the prefix ʒ-, which often requires a schwa to break up consonant clusters: ʒədonu "give!", ʒəluso "let there be light".

Oblique case (direct and indirect objects) may be marked by nasalisation of the final vowel of the noun and also of any attributives: ʒədonu zeã librõ "give this book!". This includes the conjunction o: ʒənifu õ grafu "start writing!".

Gender is optionally indicated by the prefixes al- for masculine (altigro "he-tiger", al-Dʒonson "Mr Johnson"), and la- for feminine (latigro "she-tiger", la-Dʒonson "Ms Johnson"). In a few words gender is marked by a, infixed before the last consonant for the masculine (tigar or tigaro "male tiger"), suffixed and stressed for the feminine (tigrá or tigráo "tigress"). Even verbs can be marked for gender, with the meaning of performing the action in a masculine or feminine way.

Personal pronouns take gender in a, and may drop their characteristic i ending when they do, just as nouns may drop their o:

mi "I", masculine ami or am, feminine mai or ma;
ti "thou", masc. ati or at, fem. tai or ta,

and similarly with formal vi, av(i), va(i);

li "s/he", ali or al "he" and the masculine prefix, lai or la "she" and the feminine prefix, etc.

The latter forms use reduplication for plurality: alali "they" (masc.), lalai "they" (fem.).

Derivational morphology

Some of the structure of Universal words is apparent at a glance, but cannot be easily extended to create new vocabulary.

As in the Semitic languages, vocalic ablaut derives roots with related meanings, such as lina "long", lana "wide", and lona "tall", or valdo "forest", veldo "savannah", and vildo "steppe".

Inversion is used to create antonyms, and is so characteristic of Universal that one of its creators jested that the language should be called "Inversal".

Some inverted antonyms
mega"big, great"gema"small"
donu"give"nodu"receive"
za"the"az"a, an"
tela"far, distant"leta"near, close"
ponu"put"nopu"take"
jen"yes"nej"no"
bona"good"noba"bad"
lisu"speak"silu"be silent"
se"if"es"unconditionally"
bela"beautiful"leba"ugly"
ploru"cry, weep"lorpu"laugh"
kon"with"nok'"without"
masa"mass, amassed"sama"lone, single"
grafu"write"fargu"read"
do"to, towards, till"od"from"
meza"middle"zema"marginal"
merku"sell"kremu"buy"
kaj"likewise, and"jak"contrariwise, but"
nera"black"rena"white"
produ"produce"dorpu"consume"
al(masculine)la(feminine)
stroju"build"jortsu"destroy"
un"one", singularnu"several", plural
zea"this"eza"that"
deno"day"nedo"night"
fino"end"nifo"beginning"
zena"the same"neza"other, another"
kozo"reason, cause"zoko"consequence"
medo"means"demo"goal"

As in Esperanto, extensive compounding keeps the number of roots low; cf. simpatu "sympathise" and its partial inversion mispatu "be hostile". However, a number of frequent compounds are contracted into new roots: dennedo → dendo "day and night", evdeno → evdo "morning", evnedo → evno "evening", evzaro → evzo "spring", evrazo → evro "autumn".

The personal pronouns have somewhat irregular morphology. The bare roots are all singular:

mi "I", ti "thou" (informal "you"), vi "you" (formal or honorific), li "he/she", and—through ablaut—lo "it" (inanimate).

The plurals are based on Esperanto ili "they":

imi "we", iti "ye" (informal), ivi "you" (formal), ili "they".

Compounds are used to specify clusivity:

mimi "we" (exclusive), timi "we" (inclusive informal: thou/ye & I), vimi "we" (inclusive formal: you & I).

(The base (singular) form of the second-person pronoun appears to be used in the compounds timi and vimi regardless of number. That is, no dual–plural distinction is attested.)

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

Neo-Mandaic, sometimes called the "ratna", is the modern reflex of the Mandaic language, the liturgical language of the Mandaean religious community of Iraq and Iran. Although severely endangered, it survives today as the first language of a small number of Mandaeans in Iran and in the Mandaean diaspora. All Neo-Mandaic speakers are multilingual in the languages of their neighbors, Arabic and Persian, and the influence of these languages upon the grammar of Neo-Mandaic is considerable, particularly in the lexicon and the morphology of the noun. Nevertheless, Neo-Mandaic is more conservative even in these regards than most other Neo-Aramaic languages.

The word base of Esperanto was originally defined in Unua Libro, published by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887. It contained around 900 root words. The rules of the language allow speakers to borrow words as needed, recommending only that they look for the most international words, and that they borrow one basic word and derive others from it, rather than borrowing many words with related meanings. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto dictionary, Universala vortaro, which was written in five languages and supplied a larger set of root words.

An Esperantido is a constructed language derived from Esperanto. Esperantido originally referred to the language which is now known as Ido. The word Esperantido is derived from Esperanto plus the affix -id- (-ido), which means a "child, young or offspring" (ido). Hence, Esperantido literally means an "offspring or descendant of Esperanto".

Yiddish grammar is the system of principles which govern the structure of the Yiddish language. This article describes the standard form laid out by YIVO while noting differences in significant dialects such as that of contemporary Hasidism. As a Germanic language descended from Middle High German, Yiddish grammar is very similar to that of German, though it also has numerous linguistic innovations as well as grammatical features influenced by or borrowed from Hebrew, Aramaic, and various Slavic languages.

The Ojibwe language is an Algonquian American Indian language spoken throughout the Great Lakes region and westward onto the northern plains. It is one of the largest American Indian languages north of Mexico in terms of number of speakers, and exhibits a large number of divergent dialects. For the most part, this article describes the Minnesota variety of the Southwestern dialect. The orthography used is the Fiero Double-Vowel System.

This article describes the grammar of Tigrinya, a South Semitic language which is spoken primarily in Eritrea and Ethiopia, and is written in Ge'ez script.

The grammar of the Ukrainian language describes the phonological, morphological, and syntactical rules of the Ukrainian language. Ukrainian contains 7 cases and 2 numbers for its nominal declension and 2 aspects, 3 tenses, 3 moods, and 2 voices for its verbal conjugation. Adjectives must agree in number, gender, and case with their nouns.

This article discusses the grammar of the Western Lombard (Insubric) language. The examples are in Milanese, written according to the Classical Milanese orthography.

Breton is a Brittonic Celtic language in the Indo-European family, and its grammar has many traits in common with these languages. Like most Indo-European languages it has grammatical gender, grammatical number, articles and inflections and like the other Celtic languages, Breton has two genders: masculine and feminine. In addition to the singular–plural system, it also has a singulative–collective system, similar to Welsh. Unlike the other Brittonic languages, Breton has both a definite and indefinite article, whereas Welsh and Cornish lack an indefinite article and unlike the other extant Celtic languages, Breton has been influenced by French.

Somali is an agglutinative language, using many affixes and particles to determine and alter the meaning of words. As in other related Afroasiatic languages, Somali nouns are inflected for gender, number and case, while verbs are inflected for persons, number, tenses, and moods.

Inflection Process of word formation

In linguistic morphology, inflection is a process of word formation, in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and definiteness. The inflection of verbs is called conjugation, and one can refer to the inflection of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, determiners, participles, prepositions and postpositions, numerals, articles etc., as declension.

Tangale language West Chadic language spoken in Nigeria

Tangale (Tangle) is a West Chadic language spoken in Northern region of Nigeria. The vast majority of the native speakers are found across Akko, Billiri, Kaltungo and Shongom Local Government Area of Gombe State Nigeria.

The morphology of the Welsh language shows many characteristics perhaps unfamiliar to speakers of English or continental European languages like French or German, but has much in common with the other modern Insular Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, and Breton. Welsh is a moderately inflected language. Verbs conjugate for person, tense and mood with affirmative, interrogative and negative conjugations of some verbs. A majority of prepositions inflect for person and number. There are few case inflections in Literary Welsh, being confined to certain pronouns.

Old Norse has three categories of verbs and two categories of nouns. Conjugation and declension are carried out by a mix of inflection and two nonconcatenative morphological processes: umlaut, a backness-based alteration to the root vowel; and ablaut, a replacement of the root vowel, in verbs.

Marra is an Australian Aboriginal language, traditionally spoken on an area of the Gulf of Carpentaria coast in the Northern Territory around the Roper, Towns and Limmen Bight Rivers. Marra is now an endangered language. The most recent survey was in 1991; at that time, there were only 15 speakers, all elderly. Most Marra people now speak Kriol as their main language. The remaining elderly Marra speakers live in the Aboriginal communities of Ngukurr, Numbulwar, Borroloola and Minyerri.

Warndarang is an extinct Aboriginal Australian language in the Arnhem family, formerly spoken by the Warndarang people in southern Arnhem Land, along the Gulf of Carpentaria. The last speaker was Isaac Joshua, who died in 1974, while working with the linguist Jeffrey Heath.

Historical linguistics has made tentative postulations about and multiple varyingly different reconstructions of Proto-Germanic grammar, as inherited from Proto-Indo-European grammar. All reconstructed forms are marked with an asterisk (*).

Zotung (Zobya) is a language spoken by the Zotung people, in Rezua Township, Chin State, Burma. It is a continuum of closely related dialects and accents. The language does not have a standard written form since it has dialects with multiple variations on its pronunciations. Instead, Zotung speakers use a widely accepted alphabet for writing with which they spell using their respective dialect. However, formal documents are written using the Lungngo dialect because it was the tongue of the first person to prescribe a standard writing, Sir Siabawi Khuamin.

The morphology of the Polish language is characterised by a fairly regular system of inflection as well as word formation. Certain regular or common alternations apply across the Polish morphological system, affecting word formation and inflection of various parts of speech. These are described below, mostly with reference to the orthographic rather than the phonological system for clarity.

This article describes the grammar of the Old Irish language. The grammar of the language has been described with exhaustive detail by various authors, including Thurneysen, Binchy and Bergin, McCone, O'Connell, Stifter, among many others.