Dictionary:About Besoh

This page documents the dictionary's practice for Besoh (Bëson, code YCQ-BE), the earliest attested language of the Andusian family and the first attested member of its South Andusian branch. Unlike its reconstructed ancestors, Besoh forms carry no asterisk.

Entry conventions

• Entries currently live at romanized titles. Besoh has its own script; once its type is prepared for the wiki, entries will move to native-script titles with romanized redirects, following the practice of Ancient Hertic.
• The spelling is conservative: Besoh is not pronounced as written. Each entry's Pronunciation section gives the estimated spoken form; the laws behind it are below.
• Nouns carry a Declension section ({{YCQ-BE-decl}}), verbs a Conjugation section ({{YCQ-BE-conj}}). The bare plural of a noun has its own entry (a non-lemma form, without etymology); other table forms do not.

Development from Proto-South-Andusian

The written language reflects five laws:

1. Low-mid merger: *ɛ, *ɔ > e, o — five vowel qualities, short and long.
2. Contraction: *h between identical vowels > a long vowel (*hehe > hë “grandmother”).
3. Gemination: an oral stop assimilated to a following obstruent (*biktu > bittu “fear”; *hɔkfo > hoffo “moon”).
4. *w > v (*hɛw > hev “weep”).
5. Lenition: intervocalic *f, *s > v, z (*asume > azume “other”).

Orthography

Plain letters have their expected values. Distinctive values: ś ź = ʃ ʒ · c j = ʦ ʣ · ñ = ɲ · n = ŋ (Besoh has no plain n) · ĥ ĝ = x ɣ · ǵ = ʁ · ' ' = ʔ · ä ë ï ö ü = the long vowels.

Pronunciation

Ten further developments are spoken but never written; entries' Pronunciation sections and the inflection tables apply them.

1. Stress falls on a heavy penult (long vowel or closed syllable), else the antepenult.
2. Final unstressed e, o > [əː] (medo [meðəː]).
3. b d g > [β ð ɣ] between vowels.
4. e o > [ɛ ɔ] in closed syllables — the old low-mids return as allophones.
5. ĥ > [ç] before front vowels (kovĥiu [kɔvçy]).
6. ǵ is [ʁ] throughout.
7. Final ' is a glottal catch on the vowel ([ˀ]); before a following vowel it revives as full [ʔ] (ña'on [ɲaʔõ]).
8. Final n survives only as nasality on the vowel (san [sã]; the [ŋ] returns under suffixation: sanu [saŋu]).
9. iu > [y].
10. Obstruents assimilate voicing regressively and devoice word-finally (gisbo [gizbə], hev [hɛf]).

Grammar

• SOV, postpositional. No gender or noun class; no person agreement.
• Nouns: plural -u, after vowels -'u (he'u “women”, śizu'u “villages”); locative -on / -'on; dative with the postposition bi; the plural locative collapses -'u'on to -'on, merging with the singular for vowel-final nouns. Genitive with the postposition jen (“of”), dependent first: konso jen ruve “the hunter's child”.
• Verbs: the stative in -va (also the passive: humva “be woven”); perfect with the preposed particle va' ; inchoative and future with ke; negation with so' before the verb, or before a noun to negate it alone.
• Adjectives are stative verbs: before the noun they attribute (agge śiześ “a big house”); clause-finally they predicate (śiześ agge “the house is big”).
• Example: Konso jen ruve ña'on vo' om. — “The hunter's child sees the crocodile in the river.”

Participles and subordinate clauses

• Active participle' in -so (the agent suffix in clausal duty): it stands before its noun and takes its own object to its left — korsu muqso bo “a man driving horses”. Passive participle in -va: humva humme “woven cloth”.
• Relative clauses are participial and prenominal; Besoh has no relativizer word.
• Privative' so'- (the negator itself, prefixed): soǵob “wool-less”, soǵob sagobbe “a llama that has no wool”.
• Converbs by nominalization and case: -me + locative for time (zo serme'on “having heard this”), -me + dative for purpose.
• Manner by a bare preverbal verb: koro ĝamso “carrying at a run”.
• “Make X into Y”: goal in the dative with keś — mamgo' hummebi keś “makes the hair into cloth”.
• Imperative: the bare verb, with a vocative before it — Sagobbe' ser! “Listen, llama!”
• Motion toward takes the dative (hononbi bonkoro “fled into the plain”); the locative is static position only.
• Body-part possession drops when the owner is the object: buf be jius “my heart pains me” — no genitive needed.
• There is no reflexive pronoun: the plain pronoun in the dative serves — hebi keś “makes for himself”.
• Comparative: the degree word rin (“more”, from “climb”) before the adjective, the standard in the locative: he'on rin gia “heavier than he”. Partitive superlative with jen: fe' jen gia “the stronger of the two”. “The more X, the more Y” is two parallel rin clauses; the prefix ro- intensifies a verb (rośen “blew all the harder”).
• Causative with the prefix bi- (the old “give”), causee in the dative: avsobi humme bivus “makes the traveler take off the garment” — etymologically a double bi: “gives him the taking”.
• Complement clauses are juxtaposed: the clause simply follows the verb of saying, thinking, or agreeing — mongö, San fe' jen rin gia “confessed that the Sun was the stronger”. Marking it as actual quoted speech is a stylistic option.
• kovĥiu “when” also serves as a temporal subordinator, beside the -me converbs.
• The locative of a pronoun is both plain location and comparative standard: he'on is “on him” or “than he” — context decides. The language's first recorded ambiguity, kept on purpose.
• Converb clauses are miniature sentences: the -me form closes its own clause, whose subject stands bare before it — avso keme'on “at the traveler's coming”.

Word formation

Compounds drop unstressed vowels at the seam, and the meeting consonants settle by rule:

seam	outcome	example
' + k	q	guqe “unlucky” (“left-happening”)
' + g	ǵ	soǵob “wool-less”
' + s	ź	vaźo “master” (“the holder”)
ś + r	rr	sarra “snare” (“game-net”)
ś + g	źg	saźgob “wool” (“beast-hair”)
b + v	pp	deppus “marry” (“wife-take”)
b + h	bb	sagobbe' “llama” (“wool-female”)
e + j + e	ë	komcën “wagon” (“barge of the land”)
' lost in prefixation	—	rośen (ro- + śen), bi- forms
' lost before a suffix consonant	—	eĝuva (eĝu + va' )
contraction of case endings	—	begun < be + gu'on “at one mouth”

The last is the contraction of law 2 reaching j: the two weakest consonants contract alike between vowels. The postposition jen “of” is itself wearing down to a suffix -en in such formations (vezen “gloom”, komcën), and the dative bi serves as a verbal applicative (huĝezbi “irrigate” — “flow-to”).

See also

• Dictionary:About Proto-South-Andusian
• Besoh language