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:

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

Stress falls on a heavy penult (long vowel or closed syllable), else the antepenult.
Final unstressed e, o > [əː] (medo [meðəː]).
b d g > [β ð ɣ] between vowels.
e o > [ɛ ɔ] in closed syllables — the old low-mids return as allophones.
ĥ > [ç] before front vowels (kovĥiu [kɔvçy]).
ǵ is [ʁ] throughout.
Final ' is a glottal catch on the vowel ([ˀ]); before a following vowel it revives as full [ʔ] (ña'on [ɲaʔõ]).
Final n survives only as nasality on the vowel (san [sã]; the [ŋ] returns under suffixation: sanu [saŋu]).
iu > [y].
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 — gob 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 quotative: where other languages embed (“agreed that…”, “asked which…”), Besoh quotes directly — Begun: “…” “they agreed: “…””.
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”).