Silvinian

Silvinian Nyilvö
Pronounced:	[ɲil.ʋə˦˨]
Writing system:	Latin
Typology
Morphological type:	Agglutinative
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Nominative
Basic word order:	VOS default, but free word order
Credits
Creator:	Koyeniru
Created:	2025

Silvinian (autoglossonym: Nyilvö, Silvinian: [ɲil.ʋə˦˨]) is a personal conlang. Therefore, this language was made to express her creator's ideas and thoughts as truthfully and accurately as possible, as well as encompassing as few negative ideas as possible, most of them lacking a separate word, instead mostly relying on particles to express those meanings. Furthermore, this language has no intention of being fully naturalistic, even though some naturalist thinking has been done during the conception of this language.

Grammatically and morphologically speaking, Silvinian is an agglutinative, mostly suffixing VOS language, which makes use of postpositions, and lacks "true" adjectives, a function that is fulfilled by verbs. Verbs in this language have a very strict valency distinction, especially for ambitransitives, that may have two or more forms depending on their valency in-context.

Phonology

Silvinian distinguishes between 16 to 25 consonants, depending on whether allophones are counted or not, though the standard is to consider that there are 18 consonants. Similarly for vowels, Silvinian can be analysed as having between 6 and 8 vowels, where the maximum range (8 vowels) is considered to be the standard analysis.

Consonants

	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal	Glottal
Dental	Alveolar	Palatal[1]	Velar
Nasal	m	n̪~n		(ɲ)	ŋ
Plosive	p	t̪~t, d̪~d		(c, ɟ)	k	ʔ
Fricative	ɸ	(θ, ð)[2]	s, z	(ʃ, ʒ)	x	h
Approximant	ʋ~w	l̪~l		(ʎ), j
Rhotic		r̪~r

1. ^a  Palatal consonants (except /j/) are only allophones of coronals (except for [θ] and [ð]) followed by /j/.

2. ^a  [θ] and [ð] are allophones of intervocalic /t/ and /d/.

Further notes

• Syllable-final "n" might be dropped, nasalizing the preceding vowel, as in "hatyön", which is pronounced anywhere between [ha.ˈcɵn] and [ha.ˈcɵ̃].
• Nasal consonants assimilate in place of articulation with the following consonants, and precedes nasalization in rule order, like in "ándyas", pronounced [æːɲ.ɟas], and not *[æ̃ː.ɟas].
  • The cluster [ɲɟ] (or any nasal-plosive cluster) can also be pronounced as a pre-nasalised stop like [^ɲɟ].
• Intervocalic non-geminated plosives lenite into fricatives (see §Consonant lenition for more).

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i, (ɪ)[1]		u, (ʊ)[1]
Mid	e	(ə)[2], ɵ	o
Low	(æ)[3]	a	(ɒ)[4]

1. ^{a  b}  Short [i] and [u] can be pronounced as [ɪ] and [ʊ]

2. ^a  [ə] is considered as an alternate realization of short [ɵ], but is also used to "break" some consonant clusters.

3. ^a  [æ] is considered as an alternate realization of long [a].

4. ^a  [ɒ] does not exist outside of diphthongs (see §Diphthongs for more).

Vowel length

In Silvinian, every vowel can be long, with length being written with an acute, or with a double acute in the case of "ö".

Furthermore, vowel length is contrastive, meaning that the meaning of a word changes whether a vowel is short or long (this table does not indicate pitch accent):

Minimal pairs

Vowel	Short vowel			Long vowel
	Word	IPA	Meaning	Word	IPA	Meaning
[a~æ]	sar	[sar]	(living) fish	sár	[sæːr]
[e]	cyern	[kjern]		cyérn	[kjeːrn]
[ɪ~i]	mit	[mɪt]~[mɪθ][1]		mít	[miːt]~[miːθ][1]
[o]	ryon	[rjon]~[rjõ]	circle	ryón	[rjoːn]~[rjõ]
[ʊ~u]	u	[ʊ]		ú	[uː]
[ə~ɵ]	sönt	[səⁿt]~[sə̃θ][1]		sőnt	[sɵːⁿt]~[sɵ̃ːθ][1]

1. ^a b c d  The second pronunciation for each of those words correspond to the way they are pronounced before vowels.

Diphthongs

In theory, Silvinian has 8 diphthongs, which are:

• /aj/~/aɪ̯/
• /ej/~/eɪ̯/
• /oj/~/oɪ̯/
• /ɵj/~/ɵɪ̯/
• /aw/~/aʊ̯/
• /ew/~/eʊ̯/
• /ow/~/oʊ̯/
• /ɵw/~/ɵʊ̯/

In non-careful speech, however, some distinctions are loss, and some diphthongs even monophthongize.

Diphthongs in careful and non-careful speech

Careful speech	Non-careful speech
/aj/~/aɪ̯/
/ej/~/eɪ̯/	[eː]
/oj/~/oɪ̯/	[ɒj]~[ɒɪ̯] > [aj]~[aɪ̯]
/ɵj/~/ɵɪ̯/
/aw/~/aʊ̯/
/ew/~/eʊ̯/
/ow/~/oʊ̯/	[oː]
/ɵw/~/ɵʊ̯/

Consonant lenition

Vowel-triggered lenition

In most cases, between vowels, plosives lenite and become fricatives, whether within a word (internal lenition) or across word boundaries (external lenition)

Initial	Lenited
/p/	[ɸ]
/t/	[θ]
/d/	[ð]
/k/	[x]

Internal

Internal lenition can almost never be blocked, unless adding a "dyerá" just after the consonant, written as an apostrophe. The "dyerá", in this case, acts as an ultrashort schwa, which may or may not be pronounced.

Just like vowel length, lenition also creates minimal pairs, such as with "cadá" (pronounced [kaðæː]) and "cad'á" (pronounced [kad(ə̆)æː]), although those are very much rarer.

External

External lenition (a type of external sandhi) happens when a word ends in VP, and the following word starts with V where:

• V is a vowel
• P is a plosive

It can never be blocked, except in very rare cases involving certain particles.

Consonant-triggered lenition

In addition to intervocalic lenition, some consonant-initial words can cause lenition, which, in this case, is very similar to assimilation, and follow the same patterns as intervocalic lenition.

In this case, consonant lenition happens when the word ends in "iP" and the following word starts with "F", where F is a fricative. One very good example of a lenition trigger is the particle "sá", with "fáid sa" being pronounced as [ɸæːjð‿sa]

Phonotactics

Syllable structure

The maximum syllable structure is CSVVC, where:

• C is a consonant (it can be any sound, as long it doesn't break the following rule)
• S is an approximant, nasal, plosive (if the previous consonant is a fricative) or rhotic (the only restriction to this is that 2 consonants with the same manner of articulation can't follow each other, so "svei" is valid, but *"mnis" isn't)
• V is a vowel (the second vowel in a syllable can only be /ɪ/ or /ʊ/ and their long equivalents /iː/ and /uː/)

Word-finally, an additional fricative can be added if the last consonant is a plosive

Pitch accent

Silvinian has a rather complex system of accentuation, with words taking one of 3 tones:

• Falling tone or dyinás spinyas (litt. tone falling), corresponding to [V˦˨] and written with a grave in tonal orthography (or as a caron if the vowel is long).
• Rising tone or dyinás kőrisyas (litt. tone standing or tone rising), corresponding to [V˨˦] and written with an underdot in tonal orthography.
• Creaking tone or dyinás plúyas (litt. tone moving), corresponding to [V̰˦] and written with a tilde in tonal orthography.

Additionally, pitch accent is influenced by a moraic system, with the accent falling on the 4th mora from the start of the word:

• Syllables with a short vowel count as 1 mora.
• Syllables with a long vowel or a short diphthong (short vowel + semivowel) count as 2 morae.
• Syllables with a long diphthong (long vowel + semivowel) count as 3 morae.

If a word has less than 4 morae, however, the accent falls on the last mora of the word.

Pitch accent can also help to differentiate homophones:

Word	Tone	IPA	Meaning
dyócs/dyǒcs	Falling	[ɟoks˦˨]	stone
dyócs/dyó͏̣cs	Rising	[ɟoks˨˦]	fir tree
dyócs/dyṍcs	Creaking	[ɟo͏̰ks˦]	stealth

Furthermore, pitch accent mostly sticks to the root. This means that the pitch accent remains on the root at all costs, even if prefixes might otherwise shift the accent.

Orthography

Letter charts

Silvinian uses 30 letters, with 13 of them representing vowels and 17 letters representing consonants:

Consonants

Letter	Name	Sound	Letter	Name	Sound
c	cás	[k]	p	pás	[p]
d	dás	[d]	q	qás	[ʔ]
f	fí	[ɸ]	r	rái	[r]
h	hí	[h]	s	sí	[s]
j	jí	[x]	t	tás	[t]
l	lái	[l]	v	vái	[w]
m	mí	[m]	y	yái	[j]
n	ní	[n]	z	zí	[z]
ŋ	ŋí	[ŋ]

Short vowels

Letter	Name	Sound
a	a	[a]
e	e	[e]
i	i	[ɪ]
o	o	[o]
ö	ö	[ə]
u	u	[ʊ]
'	dyerá	[ə̆~∅]

Long vowels

Letter	Name	Sound
á	a táus	[æː]
é	e táus	[eː]
í	i táus	[iː]
ó	o táus	[oː]
ő	ö táus	[ɵː]
ú	u táus	[uː]

Tonal orthography

Pitch accent is generally not marked when using the base orthography.

However, a special orthography called the tonal orthography is used only to mark pitch accent, and keeps all the other letters from the base orthography.

As stated in §Pitch accent, the tones are written as such:

• Grave for the "falling tone" (or a caron if the vowel is long).
• Underdot for the "rising tone".
• Tilde for the "creaking tone".

Capitalization

Silvinian has a very minimal capitalization system. Uppercase letters only appear at the beginning of proper nouns.

Morphology

As stated in the introduction, Silvinian is an agglutinative language, which primarily makes use of suffixes, although circumfixes are also used, especially for valency operations and derivation. The language makes a clear distinction between transitive, intransitive and ditransitive verbs, with verbs having different forms depending on the number of objects the verb takes in-context. Furthermore, Silvinian makes a difference between roots and affixes, with a system of root-bound accent.

Nouns

Silvinian has 3 genders (animate, inanimate and abstract), although none of them actually influence the declension patterns (some differences may however appear, but there are no major differences). Nouns have a rich morphology, inflecting for 8 cases and 3 numbers, and can also take multiple possession markers.

Inflection

Cases

Silvinian nouns can inflect for one of 8 cases, each of them having a different role.

Nominative

The nominative case is the base, unmarked case of any Silvinian noun. This case marks the subject of most verbs, as well as the predicate of copular constructions.

Accusative

The accusative case is used to mark count nouns as direct objects, although it can also be used for mass nouns.

Partitive

The partitive case is used to express partialness, and can also be used to mark mass nouns as direct objects, though the accusative can sometimes be used for that.

Genitive

The genitive case marks possessors of nouns. It can also be used with nominatives and accusatives to form non-verbal subjective and objective genitives.

Dative

The dative case is used to mark the indirect object, as well as in dative constructions for verbs of feeling.

Adpositional

The adpositional or compound case is used to mark objects of adpositions, and is as well used for compounding .

Essive

The essive case is a multiuse case. It can be used to mark:

• States of being
• Comparisons (with the particle "ái")
• Temporality (with nouns related to time)

Abessive

The abessive case is used to mark a lack of an object or an absence

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Numbers

Noun numbers in Silvinian are highly dependant on the countability of said noun. For instance, the numbers a count noun can inflect for are different from the ones a mass noun can inflect for:

	Count noun	Mass noun	Collective noun
Singulative	Can inflect
Duative/Dual	Can inflect	Can not inflect
Plurative	Can inflect
Collective	Can not inflect	Can inflect