Common grammar

Introduction

In this paper, I strive to explicate the grammar of Zekaisivarsi that is common to all peoples across dialects and to expound upon significant regional idiosyncrasies. This is written primarily for Indo-Europeans and thus uses linguistic terms peculiar to them.

Units of speech

A speech unit is an independent morpheme with a particular function in expressing a thought. The speech units belong to particular speech categories, including substantives, enumeratives, qualificatives, relatives, descriptives, essives, copulatives, factives, ideophones, and particles.

Substantives

A substantive is a speech unit that denotes an entity, that is, someone or something that does something or that has attributes. It is similar to the concepts of nouns and pronouns.

For example, examine the sentence rhahail ar.

rhahail	ar
Think-3s(PRES)	person
A person thinks.

In this sentence, ar is a substantive because s/he does something, namely, rhahail.

A substantive can also possess an attribute in a discourse rather than do something. This is typically expressed with essives or copulatives.

zu	pau	u
You-ABS	human-ABS	be­-2s(ESS)
You are human.

In this sentence, zu is the topic of this sentence and is stated to have an attribute, namely, pau. The topic is considered the substantive.

Inflection

A substantive may or may not be inflected depending on its class, sentence context, and discourse.

Conditions for inflection

A substantive is inflected if:                                                                                                                   

·         its number, gender, or standing is relevant to the discourse

·         it is used with an uninflected verb

·         it stands in place of another substantive, thus acting as a pronoun-like substantive

A substantive is uninflected if:

·         it precedes or follows an enumerative

·         its number, gender, and standing are irrelevant to the discourse

·         it indicates an attribute

What are substantives inflected for?

Substantives are inflected for class (animate vs. inanimate), gender (masculine vs. feminine vs. epicene vs. common), case (ergative, absolutive, accusative, etc.), standing (superior vs. common vs. inferior), clusivity (including you vs. excluding you), number (singular, dual, trial, pental, and plural), and possessedness (inherent vs. exherent).

Class

The class of a substantive is its categorization according to its semantic properties, its animacy. Animacy is the quality of igwai, often translated spirituality or soulishness. The class of a substantive affects its relation, or binding, with other words in a discourse. A higher-igwai substantive can have possessive or inherent relation with a lower-igwai substantive and is said to take precedence over the lower-igwai. However, a lower-igwai can only have inherent relation toward a higher-igwai.

Examine the phrases below.

ye	na	uikai
1st person singular ergative	Possessive particle	writing
My writing (that which I wrote)

                         

uikai	na	ye
writing	possessive particle	1st person singular ergative
My writing

Why do these phrases mean exactly the same thing, at least literally? This is because higher-igwai substantives are more salient then lower-igwai substantives. Salience, or primacy, is the significance of an entity to a discourse, relative to other entities in the discourse. A human, for example, is more salient than a book.

Gender

The gender of a substantive is its inflection and relation to other words in a discourse according to the natural gender of its class or of its associated class. The genders are masculine, feminine, epicene, and common.

Masculine gender comprises male animals, including humans, as well as male clothing and natural things associated with masculinity.

Feminine gender comprises female animals, including humans, as well as female clothing and natural things associated with femininity.

Epicene gender comprises mixed-gender groups and entities with qualities of both genders, including hermaphrodite.

Word		Class	Gender		Meaning
arh	animate			masculine	a male human, age not specified
wjih	animate			masculine	a male youth, boy
vrakvrakaq	Inanimate			masculine	lightning
ribajhah	inanimate			masculine	a full-body covering worn by males
arsau	animate			feminine	a female human, age unspecified
wjiah	animate			feminine	a female youth, girl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Standing

The standing of a substantive is the social position of its referent.

Enumeratives

An enumerative is a word that indicates quantity of a thing. It answers the question “How many?” Enumeratives comprise numerals and some modifiers.

Numerals

A numeral is an enumerative that indicates a specific amount. Because Zekaiseii use a base-5 counting system, most traditional numerals are based on the word paj, which literally means “hand”.

Functions of numerals

Numerals are used to count (skih, “to count, enumerate, measure, reckon”) entities of a particular kind.

Using numerals in discourse

Because numerals are based on words with literal bodily meanings (some of which are quite gruesome), numerals MUST be introduced with the enumerative particle ski when they are used to qualify substantives.

Binay ski paj ayri. I have five siblings.

When a numeral is used as a substantive, iei[i] is affixed to the final word of the numeral as a substantivizing particle.

Sijara jzail aur vigale? How many persons live here?

Paj ej ipi iei (jara jzail). Six (persons live here).

Numerals to 10

Numeral	Meaning (“Literal”)
ipi paj	one (“finger of the hand”)
usa paj	two (“couple of the hand”)
paj a waz ipi usa	three (“cut a couple of fingers from the hand”)
paj a waz ipiy	four (“cut one finger from the hand”)
paj	five (“the hand”)
paj ej ipi	six (“the hand and a finger”)
paj ej usa paj	seven (“hand and a couple of fingers”)
paj ej paj waz usa	eight (“hand and hand cut off a couple”)
paj ej paj waz ipiy	nine (“hand and hand cut off a finger”)
paj usa	ten (“couple of hands”)

 

Numerals after 10

The Zekaiseii numerical system is based on paj, “the hand”, which typically has five fingers (ipi). To form numerals after ten, Zekaiseii use addition and multiplication.

Paj usa ski paj usa one hundred

Notice that this uses the enumerative particle ski after the first numeral. This indicates that the quantities of ten are being counted and have been found to amount to ten tens, or one hundred.

Paj usa ej ipi eleven

This uses the conjunction ej, “and, plus”, which combines numerical quantities.

Quantifiers

Quantifiers are words that indicate a particular, but not precise, amount of an entity. The most common quantifiers are listed below.

fiel ar yefi. Every person breathes/all persons breathe.

ichiri ura uau ma? Why’d you eat all the rice?

araeii umba fieahjel. Most (the majority of) people want to survive.

vibaba iqa wiei. I am drinking a little alcohol.

yefi	all, every
ura	entire, complete, all (of one entity)
umba	most, (plural) majority of
iqa	some, a little (of one entity)
piqe	few, very little
zi/zit	none, not one, no, there is/are no
gal	much, (plural) many

Descriptives

A descriptive is a word that indicates the qualities of, or describes, a substantive or a factive.

Substantive-modifying descriptives

It typically indicates the character or appearance of a person or the use, style, or appearance of an object. It usually follows its substantive.

Ar	bele[ii]
person-ABS	virtuous
“a virtuous person”

Multiple descriptives (serial descriptive construction)

When two or more descriptives that modify a singular substantive exist in succession that are opposite, they act as a disjunctive phrase. When they are not opposite, they act as a conjunctive phrase.

ar	ajha	wji
Person-ABS[iii]	old	young
An old or young person
Ar ajha wji galmoupahi Gloss: Person-ABS old young love-1psg-CON Word-for-word: I love someone who is old or young.                     Sense-for-sense: I tend to love a person, whether old or young.

Because ajha and wji are antonyms to each other and they modify the same singular substantive, they are disjunctive                                                                                 

Comparison

To compare multiple instances of a substantive, one must alter the form of the descriptive and add a particle.

Positive comparison

To make positive comparisons of substantives from so-called regular[iv] descriptives, one reduplicates the first sound pair (NOT syllable). For example, say we have a descriptive ses[v] which means “happy”. To form the comparative degree, we add the first sound pair of ses which is se to form seses which means “happier”. To form the superlative, simply add se to seses to form seseses which means “happiest”. (123… stem; 12123... comparative; 1212123… superlative)

To explicitly compare one person or thing to another, one must use avaa “more than” without a comparative descriptive or a comparative descriptive alone.

Seses ye zui. I am happier than you.

Ses ye avaa zui. I am happier than you.

Yet, this is not the only way descriptives inflect for comparison.

Some descriptives change their stem vowel.

Factive-modifying descriptives

A descriptive is comparable to an adjective in that it can modify noun-like substantives; however, some descriptives modify factives. (Qualificatives also modify verbs, but in a different way.)

Factive-modifying descriptives are similar in principle to adverbs in English in that descriptives indicate the quality of an action.

Factives

Factives are speech units that indicate actions. They are similar to active and passive verbs.

Derivation

As a highly inflected language, Zekaisivarsi derives actives from various speech units such as substantives, descriptives, and ideophones. Here are some types of derivation.

Substantive derivation

Factives are often derived from substantives, especially body parts, to indicate an associated action of the substantives.

Substantive	Meaning	Derived actives	Meaning	Derivative method
isva	“eyes”	isvaih	“see”	Affixation
		isaveih	“look”	Sound shuffling
		uraisvaih	“investigate”	Affixation
ospia (yospi)	“nose; (dual) nostrils”	ospia	“smell; opine”	Alternate usage
		yospi	“smell well; breathe through nostrils”	Dual form, alternate usage
		yosfih	”smell like, give off scent”	Stem sound alteration
vaq	“mouth”	vaih	“talk; communicate”	Phonetic merge
irara	“ear”	iraraih

Inflection

In Zekaisivarsi, factives are inflected for several qualities, including person, tense, mood, and voice.

Voice

Voice is the quality of a sentence that indicates whether mentioned entities are agents or patients, active voice and passive voice, respectively.

Active voice

A factive in the active voice indicates that the first substantive bound to it is an agent, an entity who/that does the action specified by the factive.

A bivalent active voice factive takes its subject in the ergative case and its object in the absolutive case.

Eiy eiya dosil. (him/her he/she is killing; OSV) They is killing him/her.

A monovalent active voice factive takes its subject in the reflexive case.

 Eiy doseil. (Him/her is killing; O(iS)V) He/she kills himself/herself.

Passive voice                                                  

A factive in the passive voice promotes the patient to a subject and demotes the agent to an oblique or it indicates that its sole argument is a patient.

Eiy doxil pamhe zhe. (Him/her | died (“was killed”) | crook-OBLIQUE | by, due to action of) He was killed by a crook.

Eiy afviel. (Him/her | lives) He/she is alive.

Active-passive voice (“medioactive”)

The active-passive voice is a grammatical structure that fuses activity and passivity in order to indicate that an entity’s being acted upon or having a certain quality affects another entity.

The word yosfih, which means “to smell like” or “to give off scent”, is active-passive. Some of the meaning is passive (“to be smelled”) and some is active, specifically, causative (“to smell like, cause to be smelled”).

Tense

The tense of a factive is the morphological quality that indicates the time at which an act is performed. There are three simple morphological tenses, preterit, present, and future and various compound tenses.

Present tense

The present tense indicates actions or events that are happening right now, in the present. Unlike English and other Indo-European languages which use the present tense to indicate actions that tend to happen and the present progressive to indicate actions that are taking place right now (I eat vs. I am eating), Zekaisivarsi uses the present tense, also called the current tense, to denote actions that are happening or that apply at the time of the speech or writing; therefore, the current tense can be translated as simple present or present progressive according to the context. It tends to be the basic form of the word.

Zui ame. I love you.

This is not rendered I am loving you, as that would imply that love is a process with a set beginning and a set end. This expresses that the speaker has the feeling of love at the time that he/she says it.

Jifru zue ski. I find you not guilty.

This denotes that a judge or jury has just reached a decision that I relevant right now.

Riuai zwiei awai. I am making dinner.

This denotes that someone is making dinner currently. 

Habitual tense         

The habitual tense indicates actions or events that one tends to perform or that tend to occur up to the current time. It is used with dynamic and atelic actions, such as motion, communication, and thought. It typically involves a reduplication of the second syllable.

Ajaelav pamimiwi. I walk in the early morning.

Preterit tense

The preterit tense indicates actions or events that one performed or that occurred and were completed at a set point in the past. It tends to involve some form of internal stem change.

Zui ivasahi ajael zu pampamu. I saw you walking around early morning.

umura pamawil. S/he walked around the world.

Irregularity

Being more of a complex creole than a singular language, many grammatical features in Zekaisivarsi are not strictly established (though Rhajazekaisivar[vi] are trying to institute specific rules to standardize the language), which is particularly evident in the various inflections of the factives. Several factives inflect only for certain persons, tenses, and moods (i.e. they are defective), change meaning when inflected (especially between perfective and imperfective), alternate between using affixes and stem changes, or use suppletive forms.

Inflexion for specific categories

In Zekaisivarsi, factives tend to inflect for person[vii], tense[viii], and mood[ix]. However, some factives are restricted to certain categories.

Ai

This factive means “I decree, I order, I command” and that alone. It inflects only for first-person singular present indicative. The word for others’ commands is iauheih which does not inflect for the first person, or perhaps it just has not been attested yet

Factive combination

Some factives depend on other factives to complete their meaning. The factives that complete meaning are called complements or coverbs and the dependent factives are called heads.

pami wi factive I walk (to a place), I go (by walking)

Qualificatives                                                                                                

A qualificative is a word or morpheme that modifies a factive, substantive, or ideophone and is neither a descriptive nor an enumerative. Qualificatives typically intensify or diminish the meaning of a word. Common qualificatives indicate degree, frequency, intentionality, place, and time. Green indicates intentionality, red intensity, blue frequency, and yellow place and time.

wihaa	planned to (+factive)
haaua	in a fit of rage (+factive)
piqi	barely, almost not
uaa	really, a lot, extremely, very much
vwivwi	often, a lot, frequently; tends to
	vwivwiyi: too much, excessively
ave	sometimes; may
ziwi	never
jaraja	always (+statives/perfectives), forever (+imperfectives)
isavasa[x]	today (from isava, “seeing”; “the day that we are seeing”)
iva	yesterday (from ivasa, “saw”; “the day that we saw”)
isvasva	tomorrow (from isvasva, “will see”; “the day that we will see”

Dosil wihaa uryei. He intentionally killed them.

Some qualificatives also indicate obligation or requirement, somewhat like auxiliary verbs except that they’re not verbs.

duje	It is morally wrong for (agent) to (factive), (agent) should not (factive)
zija	It does not behoove (agent) to (factive), (agent) should not (factive)
ziha	Do not (factive)! It is against (ruler’s) command to (factive). You shall not (factive)!
zivu	(agent) does not have to (factive), to (factive) is not necessary for (agent) to survive or excel
belji	It is morally right for (agent) to (factive), should
yaja	It behooves (agent) to do (factive)
iha	Do! (agent) must (factive) per (ruler’s) command. You shall! (deprecated in most dialects by ai)
vu	(agent) has to (factive) to survive or excel

Dosiesu duje zu arya. It is wrong for you to kill anyone.                  

Ideophones

Ideophones are speech units that express basic ideas, such as emotions and bodily feelings. They are typically monosyllabic.

Au of pain

Je of joy

Particles

Particles are speech units that perform grammatical functions without carrying much independent meaning of their own. They are comparable to conjunctions and adpositions. Each particle is governed by distinct rules.

Case-marking particles These particles indicate the function of a substantive in a sentence, be it an agent, patient, experiencer, or instrument.
ee	by, with, on account of	indicates an object (can also be a person) used as a means of performing a specific action (wal ee skiu ma? – why do you judge by clothing?), typically follows the noun phrase	zia	without	indicates that one does not need a specific object to perform an action
au	topic marker	indicates the topic of a sentence
hazai	to, for	indicates the person who is intended to benefit from an action, often used with verbs of giving (uikai jerwi zui hazai – I give this book to you, I give this book for you), benefactive NOT dative	akai	against	indicates the person who is intended to suffer from an action, often used with verbs of fighting, attacking, cursing, etc.
haa	agent, doer	indicates the person who performs an action	ia	experience, bear	denotes the experiencer of a monovalent event (doxil ia eyyi – he/she died)
er	in, on	indicates location (jzai er jzai – I live in a house.)
nri	for, on behalf of	indicates for whom an action is done but is not the direct object (nri zu vai – I speak on your behalf, I vindicate you)	uraak	against, opposing	indicates against whom an action is done but is not the object
wi	(verb) go to, reach; (preposition) to	indicates indirect object, indicates that an action is performed in relation to an object but the object is not changed in state (jaijei wi isvai – I see the tree), also indicat
Relational particles These particles indicate specific kinds of relationships between two or more substantives.
na	of, ‘s	possessive, denotes real possession of a thing that is made or bought by one (uikai na ye – my writing; paj na ye – my hand, figuratively, my cup, container [as if translated literally, it implies that one bought or cut off a human hand], my five [of a specified thing])	aaj	(literally) with	denotes borrowing (iskiau aaj ye – the computer that I am borrowing), use but not primary ownership of a work (ibraa aaj zu – the artwork that you are borrowing), or custody (wji aaj ui – the children whom the people care for)
ei	(untranslatable)	used with body parts to indicate inalienable possession or urayi (“perfect tangling”) (ye ei paj ee zui eraai – with my hands, I caress you)	ya	of, on; from	indicates familial relation such as descent (yahabri – Abrahamite, Abrahamic person)

Sentences

A sentence is a word or set of words that expresses a complete thought. It can take the structure agent-verb-patient, patient-agent-verb, or ideophone. There are several classes of sentence.

Simple sentences

A simple sentence consists of a single clause, a subject and a predicate.

Efi. I am. I exist. (ye is the implied subject; efi is the predicate)   

Ame zui. I love you. (ye is the implied subject; ame zui is the predicate)   

Questions

When you need or want information from someone, you ask him or her questions.

How are you?

Several questions that are used in Zekaisivarsi can be translated to English as “How are you?”

·         Aja zu aabelei ma? (How-COMMENT you-TOPIC health-FOCUS QUESTION-MARKER) Inquires of one’s state of health

o   Belili ye aabelei. (Good-COMMENT I-TOPIC health-FOCUS) indicates that one is in good health.

o   Aqe ye aabelei. (Sick-COMMENT I-TOPIC health-FOCUS) indicates that one feels unwell

·         Aja zu ui ma? (How you with people INTERROGATIVE) Inquires of one’s relationships with people

o   Ayrigalmpi ye ui ha iharuie. (I know-I love | I | with another | the | intimate) I know someone and love him or her as a friend.

o   Uiakaak uiy. I am at enmity with people.

Ma      

Ma is a general question word that is added at the end of a sentence to make it interrogative. If it is the only question word in a sentence, it can be translated what or how, depending on context. If other question words are in a sentence (such as aja, ajara, viaii, viau, etc.), it is often left untranslated.

Zu avahaei ma? What/how should I call you? (NOT what is your name?)

Vaueqiu ma? How do you feel about this? (taste-you how?)

Viau zu il ma? Who are you?

Disjunctive questions         

Disjunctive questions seek one of two answers. They are introduced with mai.

Positive

Questions of positive quality

Mai afiu? Are you breathing?

Mai afid bele? Is life virtuous?

Answers

 

                                               

Conjunctive vs. disjunctive or in sentences

Zekaisivarsi distinguishes between conjunctive or and disjunctive or.

·         Conjunctive or means “at least one of the options, or maybe both.” It uses the word ba.

o   In questions, ba indicates that one is asking about whether or not a certain condition applies to at least one thing or person in a set, not for the specific person to whom the condition applies.

§  Eya ba eiy sail ma? Does he or she[xi] know?

o   In declarative statements, ba indicates that a certain condition applies to at least one member of a set.

§  Eya ba eiy sail. He or she knows.

§  Eya ba eiy zih sail. He or she does not know.

·         Disjunctive or, also called or of alternatives, means that a certain condition applies to only one or some (or is expected to apply to only one or some) members of a set, that is, “either A or B, but not A and B”.

o   In questions, the word zi is used between words of the same lexical category to indicate alternatives.

§  Ea zi eu vusu ma?  Do you want this or that?

·         To this question are two answers:

o   Ea vusi. I want this.

o   Eu vusi. I want that.

o   In statements, the word zi is used between words of the same lexical category to indicate that a condition or action applies to only one member of a set.

§  Janri zi Junri awjahi. I will accept/hire Jan or Jun.

o   In questions, the word zi is used between the same word written or spoken twice in order to ask “…A or not A”.

§  Beleue zi beleue zu? (“Well not well?”) Are you well or not well?

Being verbs and constructions

In English, one word is used to indicate essence, existence, location, state, condition, and action, be; however, Zekaisivarsi employs several verbs and constructions.

Essives

Essives are words that denote intrinsic characteristics or significant traits.

Identity, occupation

The verb used to indicate one’s identity or occupation is il. Both words are in the absolutive case.

Tyi il aijai. Tyi is a leader.

Ye i paar. I am a human.

An emotional-emphatic construction uses noun-noun without verb.

Aj ul awjahi. U zit.  We hire only adults. You are not an adult.

Aye aj. I am an adult!

Existence

The word for expressing existence is efi “to exist, be; to have”. The entity is in the stative case and the location of the entity is in the absolutive case. Entities do not always have to bind with a locative.

Efil Af. God exists. God is. There is God.

Ie! Ie! Efil jiwrisi! Come see! Come see! There is water!

Jzairueye efil galmoupeii. In my house, there is great love.

Although this verb can take a locative, it cannot simply be used to ask where someone or something is.

*Efi aabaeel ajarama? Where does the food exist? Where is food real?

Copulatives

Location

Location is indicated by several distinct verbs.

Jzaih     

Jzaih (literally, “that one lives, that one dwells”) denotes continuous stay in a place, that is, staying somewhere for a while. It is typically used with places of residence or obligation.

Ajara jzau ma? Where are you?

Jzair jzai. I am at home.

Ierhaur jzai. I am at school.

Zeih       

Zeih (literally, “that one stands”) denotes being somewhere for a certain amount of time for a certain purpose.

Eaih

Eaih (literally, “that one sits, lies, reclines”) is used of persons to denote staying somewhere to rest and of things to denote being situated somewhere.

Zurvischir eai. I am on my bed.

Ajara e’[xii] librarei eail ma? Where is the library?        

Jir e’ Bueliece eail e’ librarei. The library is on Bueliece Street.

Special uses of the word ar

Besides its meaning of “person”, the word ar fulfils other specific roles in a discourse such as indicating voice, saying that something happened without specifying who did it, signaling a relative clause, etc.

Indicating voice

The word ar is the Zekaisi quasi-equivalent to the English passive voice, which indicates an action without the actor.

iswae	ar	dosil
female	person	killed
Used as a pronoun for females, third-person singular feminine	Used as a general pronoun for people, third-person singular indefinite	Patientive, passive of doxil “dies”
She	By person	Kills.
She is killed.

Orthography

Real Zekaisivarsi does NOT use the Latin alphabet, and native Zekaiseii tend not to transliterate their language into a non-Zekaisei form, as Zekaisivarsi is a dialect continuum, not a language. .

Ifwai

In Zekaisivarsi, seemingly innocuous words can have quite nefarious meanings in certain contexts. This quality and the words that have it are called ifwai, which means “deep meaning” or “multifaceted”. Many of these words refer to body parts or bodily actions, and others of them refer to various entities or actions. These “secondary” meanings are not listed in formal dictionaries because of their offensiveness. Use them with caution. If possible, use a safe word instead.

Now, behold the two-faced words…

Word	Definition	Ifwai	Safe word(s)
Human body parts: Words that literally denote specific body parts but are figuratively used to denote other body parts or as words of offense
ipi	finger; fifth; tenth	(Uae pala) penis (ipi ijweijwe – playing with one’s penis, masturbating); (Kanjeii) gossiper, rabble-rouser; (Mizre) an incompetent person, as one who only has one finger (kaka wiuyefi ipi zji! – you are inept at any work, you incompetent (literally, you one-fingered person)!)	finger: epaj fifth: epaj tenth: epajusa
pam	foot	(Kanjei) villain, evil person, criminal, one whose feet run swiftly to evil
vaq	mouth	(Uae pala, Mizre) the Grave; (the Guardian of) Death
^uai	I eat, I devour, I consume	(Uae pala) I steal; I rape, I molest	eat: aabelai, I nourish, sustain, feed; I heal, make healthy/whole

Oh, and by the way, there exists a

taboo on those with whom you are not acquainted.

According to the Zekaiseii who live according to ui[xiii] rather than nations, to “invoke the Name of another is to strive to appeal to her essence”. The Name is considered a private thing, an intimate aspect of a person to be used only with their consent. A person’s parents made a person’s Name for the honor of their child, not to have it called and misappropriated by some ankwu[xiv]. Therefore, people who were not friends of the child or his/her family were forbidden to say the Name under penalty of faukraui[xv].

Relations

Zekaisivarseii use particular words and constructions to indicate various relations between substantives, broadly classed as association and possession.

Association

Association refers to relationships between persons, including familial relations (kinship), social relations (socialization), and professional relations (contract).

Ayrih

In Zekaisivarsi, to state that one has a specific relationship with someone, one uses the word ayrih. Ayrih literally means “sit together with” and conveys the meaning of “know intimately”.          When it is translated to English, it is often rendered “have”.

Binaiy ski paj e paj ayri. I have ten brothers. (I know ten brothers; brother COUNT-PARTICLE hand [“five”] and hand [“five”] I know)

Amiei ihar bele ayri. I have good close friends.

The Zekaiseii do indeed have a word (several words, actually) that can be rendered “have”, including saih, ihnaih, aiaih, and efi, but none of them actually make literal sense.

Binaiy ski paj e paj sai. I have ten brothers. This makes sense, right? Actually, no. Not at all. See, sai denotes a possessive having, a holding. So what I’m really saying is “I am holding ten brothers.” But couldn’t those brothers be mine, one may ask? No. One has to examine the semantics of the sentence. The “ten brothers” I “am holding” are brothers in relation to each other, not to me.

Binaiy ski paj e paj ihnai. I have ten brothers. This refers to a laying claim to a thing,

Possession

Possession refers to ownership or use of an inanimate thing. The structures used to indicate possession are called iyakai.

Ei/ya possession

The particles ei and ya denote inherent or inalienable possession, such as one’s relation to a body part or a mental aspect.

The prefix ei is usually used with body parts, personal aspects, living necessities, and things that are possessed but not owned, such as creative works[xvi].

Ye eimiens rhajai. I consider in (with) my head.  

Ye eijza jzai. I live in my house.

With the particle ei, the possessor is always in first position and the possessed thing is in second position in the possessive phrase. The possessor is always in the absolutive case and the possessed in the possessed case. As a phrase, this can be used as a topic, focus, subject, object, or adjunct. In the above sentences, it functions as an adjunct.

The prefix ya is used with intrinsic aspects of a person, especially the spiritual and mental aspects.

yazu iji duje. You are of bad character.

Na possession

The particle

Word formation

Due to the synthetic nature of Zekaiseivarsei, words are being created constantly through various processes.

Inflection

Inflection is the process of changing the grammatical state of a word by adding, removing, or altering morphemes. This is useful to creating new words in open classes.[xvii]

ame (factive) “I love” ® amai (substantive) “one who loves, lover, friend”

The word amai is derived from the lemma ame “I love” through affixation of the morpheme ai “a person who does”. The affix ai changes the grammatical state from action (factive) to actor (substantive).

Compounding

Compounding is the combination of two or more roots or independent morphemes to create a word. When compounding a factive and its object, the object precedes the factive. When compounding a substantive and its descriptive, the descriptive succeeds the substantive.

Consider the word aurwai. It is a substantive that is composed of a substantive (ar, “person”) and a factive (wai, “I make, form, develop, create [especially over time]”).

Ar wai	®	aurwai
Person-ABS[xviii] make-1psg[xix].PRES[xx]	®	Person=make
I am making a person. (clause)		Making a person (substantive)
I am making a person.		The collective acts by family, friends, and associates that cause a person to develop psychologically and socially

In the first stage, ar wai is a clause wherein ar and wai are distinct words and depend upon each other to convey the complete meaning. In the second stage, ar morphs to aur due to the VC-to-VVC sound change rule, which is that “whenever a vowel shall precede a consonant in a syllable and said syllable shall precede a syllable that begins with a consonant, the preceding syllable shall add a relative vowel after its vowel or shall stress its vowel (VC/CV… ® VVC/CV…)”. The object precedes the factive.

Consider the word dubel. It consists of two roots, du “evil” and bel “good”.

Radical lemmatization

Radical lemmatization is the process of making a root into a word. A root is a morpheme that carries significant meaning and can stand independently. A lemma is a basic word, uninflected save for essential inflections.

The root bel means “good, healthy, whole”. From this root come various words.

bel good, healthy, whole

bele virtuous

List of roots and their derivatives

Here is a list of the most common roots in the Zekaisivarsi.

Root	Meaning	Derivative(s)	Meaning
af	Holy, sacred	aif	Of God, on God’s behalf
		Af Enahi	The god of the Kanjeii religion
av	High, up, superior
bel	Morally good, whole, healthy, well	bel	(obsolete) virtuous, well
		bele	Upright, good, honest, virtuous; right in and of itself, intrinsically good, wholesome
		beli	Goodness, righteousness, virtue