Fith
| Fith | |
| Spoken in: | Planet Fithia |
| Conworld: | |
| Total speakers: | |
| Genealogical classification: | Fithian
|
| Basic word order: | stack-based |
| Morphological type: | isolating |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | |
| Created by: | |
| Jeffrey Henning | 1997-2005 |
Fith is a stack-based alien language invented by Jeffrey Henning. It is spoken by centauroid sapient marsupials on the planet Fithia.
LIFO Grammar
The grammar of Fith is based on a stack, which operates by the LIFO principle: last in, first out. Like, for instance, a stack of cards on which you can put a card on the top, or remove a card from the top.
Consider the sentence hong zhong lin lo rumn shkrung e 'The loyal man of the nation deactivates the robot'. The first word, the noun hong, is pushed onto the stack:
| hong | 'man' |
The second is also a noun which is likewise pushed onto the stack:
| hong | 'man' |
| zhong | 'nation' |
The next word, lin, is an adjective. This results in the top item being modified:
| hong lin | 'loyal man' |
| zhong | 'nation' |
The fourth word, lo 'of', is a postposition which pops the two top elements from the stack and pushes a modified noun phrase onto it:
| zhong hong lin lo | 'loyal man of the nation' |
The next word is a noun which is pushed onto the stack:
| rumn | 'robot' |
| zhong hong lin lo | 'loyal man of the nation' |
This is followed by a verb, in this case a transitive one, which takes two arguments and combines them into a clause that is placed on the stack:
| zhong hong lin lo rumn shkrung | 'The loyal man of the nation deactivates the robot' |
Finally, the stack conjunction e finishes the sentence and pops it from the stack. As long as the e is not uttered, the sentence is still "under construction".
Stack conjunctions
But that is not all. There are numerous stack conjunctions by which a Fith speaker can manipulate the stack.
| Form | Meaning |
|---|---|
| nyun | Placeholder, used with several stack conjunctions. |
| drumh | Combines everything above the last nyun into an 'and' series ('X, Y, and Z'). |
| tuumnh | Combines everything above the last nyun into an 'either-or' series ('one of X, Y, and Z'). |
| dwoumnh | Combines everything above the last nyun into an 'neither-nor' series ('none of X, Y, and Z'). |
| du | Duplicates the top stack item. |
| kuu | Duplicates the top two stack items. |
| voi | Copies the item below the top stack item to the top. |
| dzhi | Copies the stack item above nyun to the top of the stack. |
| shen | Swaps the top two stack items. |
| ronh | Rotates the top three stack items, with the third-from-top item moving to the top. |
| lonh | Rotates the top three stack items in the opposite direction. |
| frong | Drops the top stack item. |
| bom | Removes the second-from-top stack item. |
| skuunh | Clears the whole stack. |
| e | Removes the top item as a sentence. |
| i | Removes the top item as a sentence introducing detail (':'). |
| o | Removes the top item as a question. |
| u | Removes the top item as an exclamation. |
| strunh | Reminds the listener of how deep his stack should be. (The top item must be a numeral.) |
External link
Fith: The Alien Language With A LIFO Grammar (archived)
