Faidan Elvish

Contents

• Introduction
• Chronology
• Writing System
• Grammar
• Chrestomathy

Introduction

Chronology

Writing System

Grammar

Contents

• Phonology
• Phonotactics
• Mutation and Sandhi
• Verbs
• Nouns
• Prepositions
• Adverbs
• Conjunctions
• Particles
• Interjections

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Nasal Consonants

Stop Consonants

Fricative Consonants

Approximant Consonants

Phonotactics

Mutation and Sandhi

Verbs

Person Markers and Mood

Indicative Mood

Subjunctive Mood

Optative Mood

Imperative Mood

Object Markers

Indirect Object Markers

Tense

Nouns

Declensions

Nouns fall into one of six declensions: a-stems, y-stems, e-stems, o-stems, obstruent-stems, and r-stems.

a-stems

A-stems are overwhelmingly masculine nouns, ending in -a or -á, and make up a large percentage of Classical Faidan nouns. A small handful of nouns, mostly placenames and theonyms or personal names derived from placenames, are a-stems of the feminine gender, such as Faida ‘Faida’. The a-stems of Classical Faidan represent a merger of MAE’s a-stems and æ-stems.

The example word here is hāra ‘ram’.

y-stems

Y-stems are all feminine nouns, ending in -ia, -ía, -ái, -ŷ, or -úi, with most instances ending in -ia, which is derived from the basic feminine ending -ȳ in MAE (hence the name y-stem). Y-stems often have vowel alternations in different cases, due to a number of historical processes involving synizesis, smoothing, shortening, and breaking.

Y-stems have identical plural forms to e-stems, a feature going back to MAE. The example words here are meria ‘woman’, tomillái ‘little-sister’, iaudŷ ‘city’, and baimmúi ‘alewife’.

e-stems

E-stems are all neutral nouns, ending in -e, -ē, or -ê, with most instances ending in -e, the basic neutral noun ending. E-stems have identical plural forms to e-stems, a feature going back to MAE. The example word here is laine ‘seat, stool’.

ō-stems

O-stems are all masculine nouns, with most o-stems being abstract nouns, collective nouns, animal nouns, theonyms, and anthroponyms. The Classical Faidan o-stem declension represents a merger of two declensions in MAE, the short o-stems and the long ō-stems. Faidan o-stems nouns have been almost entirely assimilated to the reflexes of the long ō-stem forms, however reflexes of the short o-stem declension can be seen in o-stem nouns which lack a vowel ending in the nominative and accusative cases, e.g. Geth, Geith and Deir/Dēs, Dēth; these truncated forms being the reflexes of word final short /o/ when preceded by a voiceless consonant. While vocalic nominative forms of this class of nouns, such as Gethō and Deirō are marked (but not by any means unattested), the vocalic accusative forms, such as Gethôd and Deirôd are actually more common than the nonvocalic, monosyllabic forms, such as Geith and Dēth.

The example words are bāchillō ‘human, barbarian, non-Elf’, and deir ‘order, law, justice, Deir’. There is no plural for Deir—all of the monosyllabic nominative o-stems lack plurals (but do possess attested duals, due to the elliptical dual).

obstruent-stems

Obstruent-stems end in an obstruent consonant in the nominative form. Diachronically, obstruent stems represent a combination of MAE obstruent-stems and certain e-stems, specifically e-stems whose root ended in a voiceless consonant and thus were susceptible to elision, which did not then have their -e restored. The accusative ending of obstruent stems is marked by the replacement of the final consonant with -th, with compensatory lengthening on the preceding vowel and a shift to ultimate stress, but variant forms with a vocalic -éd also surface in Classical Faidan, and became standard in the Middle Faidan vernacular.

Elided e-stems with roots ending in a labial consonant underwent a later elision in which the labial consonant was lost, e.g. dwyrchêb > byrchê. This meant that the labial consonant only surfaced in the dative, genitive, instrumental, and locative cases—these nouns are sometimes assimilated to the e-stems in Classical Faidan, a feature which eventually became standard in the Middle Faidan vernacular.

The example words are arras ‘king, priest-king, master’ and byrchê ‘bodice, jacket’.

r-stems

R-stems end in a nasal or liquid consonant, with suffixes being fairly straightforwardly added to the nominal stem. Some stems undergo vowel lengthening when declined for certain cases, due to a historical process in which word-final long vowels followed by a nasal or liquid consonant underwent shortening. Nasal stems have variant dative and genitive endings, in which the final nasal consonant is dropped entirely and replaced with the nasal consonant of the case ending—these variant forms originate in word-final geminates which were later simplified, e.g. cuannam ‘of the votive gift’ < IF: cuandamm ‘of the votive gift’. However, the most common forms are the syllabic suffixes -en and -em.

The example words are domal ‘slope, incline’, bōndar ‘herald’, feron ‘first, foremost, ruler, chieftain’, cuannam ‘votive offering’.

Prepositions

Adverbs

Conjunctions

Particles

Interjections

Chrestomathy

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