Ladic Caliprian

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Ladic Caliprian, so named for the Lada (Λαδῑ́ Ladī́) river that runs through what is now the Caliprian capital city of Ficrios, was the form of classical Caliprian as spoken on the largest of the Caliprian islands in the era around 1000-400BC.

By the end of the classical period Ladic Caliprian in particular had gained a prestige dialect status due to the role of Ficrios in Caliprian politics and the language was still kept in both legal and liturgical use despite the spoken vernacular beginning to evolve further into what became Middle Caliprian.

Compared to Pre-Caliprian, Ladic is grammatically rather conservative, with most change coming in the form of distinctive phonological differences from both Pre-Caliprian and other contemporary dialects.

Contents

Orthography

Stress in both orthographies may be marked via an acute accent, e.g nístos / νίστος “lord”

Stem changes

Ladic Caliprian relies on suffixation to attach grammatical meaning to a root, though there are many rules that govern this attachment.

• Two identical vowels merge into a long vowel of that kind, for example dré- (from dráus “tree”) becomes drḗs with the nominative plural ending -es.
• g+s or k+s → sk
• d+t or or g+t or k+t → st (e.g fóida “I know” has 2nd person singular active indicative fóista from fóid- + -ta)
• t + k → t
• e+o or e+ō → ē (e.g mḗs “my” = thematic s-stem mé-os)
• e+a → ia (e.g dría “tree (dual nom.)” = root stem dré-a)
• a+e or a+ei → ai
• o+e or ō+e → ō
• u+a or u+ā or o+a or o+ā → āu

There are also some stems in Caliprian that have pre-consonantal and pre-vowel forms, such as génira “I shall beget”, which has the stem [génir/s-], and has a 3rd person singular active indicative form of génist (génir/s- + -t). This is most commonly in the form of r/s alteration like the previous example.

Nouns

Changes from Pre-Caliprian

• Due to sound changes involving final -s after a consonant, the root stem paradigm was split in two based on being consonant-final or not.
• Many accusative plural declensions merged with nominative plural.

Declensions

Root stem · kóts “foot” [kód-, ked-]

Notes

1. Some nouns have a distinct nominative singular form. Often this is from natural voicing assimilation (e.g kóts “foot”, with stems kod-, ked-). However, some irregular nominative singulars are formed from the stem as would be expected but with a lengthened final vowel and a null ending (e.g astḗr “star”, with stems astér-, astr-)
2. This form is -m after a vowel (e.g accusative singular dráum from dráus “tree”, with stems dráu-/dé-, dar/dr-)

Other examples of consonant root stem nouns

• astḗr “star” [astér-, astr-] · gen·sg astrés · nom·pl astéres
• áith “sacred fire” [áith- ith-] · gen·sg ithés · nom·pl áithes
• dráus “tree” [dráu-/dé-, dar/dr-] · gen·sg drés · nom·pl drḗs

Thematic s-stem · khóimos “citizen” [khóim-]

Other examples of thematic s-stem nouns

• áblos “apple” [ábl-] · gen·sg ábloria
• hā́pos “juice” [hā́p-] · gen·sg hā́poria

Athematic s-stem · kéros “penis” [kér-]

Other examples of athematic s-stem nouns

• génios “race, lineage” [gén-] · gen·sg génieros
• xrī́mos “people” [xrī́m-] · gen·sg xrī́meros

Athematic u-stem · ártus “time” [árt-]

Other examples of athematic u-stem nouns

• nékus “mortal, human” [nék-] · gen·sg nékaus

Athematic i-stem · dáutis “setting, sinking” [dáut-]

Other examples of athematic i-stem nouns

• sístis “sieve, filter” [síst-] · gen·sg sísteis
• kā́lais “field” [kā́la-] · gen·sg kā́lais

Thematic m-stem · hiórom “crop” [hiór-]

Other examples of thematic m-stem nouns

• sóitom “shield” [sóit-] · gen·sg sóitoria
• sathlóm “guesthouse” [sathl-] · gen·sg sathlória

Thematic a-stem · térsa “land” [térs-]

Other examples of thematic ā-stem nouns

• mā́ra “place, location” [mā́r-] · gen·sg mā́ras
• apovóstia “armpit, underarm” [apovósti-] · gen·sg apovóstias

Thematic ī-stem · iránī “flowing blood” [irán-]

Other examples of thematic ī-stem nouns

• mā́trī “mother” [mā́tr-] · gen·sg mātrias
• viménī “winter” [vimén-] · gen·sg viménias

Adjectives

Changes from Pre-Caliprian

• Adjectives ending in -áus in Pre-Caliprian were levelled to end -ós, for example holós “safe, healthy” from Pre-Caliprian holáus.

Verbs

Changes from Pre-Caliprian

• Various sound changes involving consonant clusters ending in s caused a large amount of levelling in the perfective verb paradigm, with some words lexicalising the s that was frequently found in the Pre-Caliprian perfective paradigm regardless of whether they originated from the PIE *-st perfective derivation or not.
• Subjunctive and optative conjugations had a novel prefix a- attached that is thought to originate in the preposition ad “at, to” and served to disambiguate between the subjunctive forms of certain verbs and the similar indicative forms of completely different verbs, often ones that correlate in meaning but differ in lexical aspect. Before verbs that already begin with a vowel, h- is prefixed instead.
• In imperfective and perfective verbs, a new imperative form was created from the subjunctive, with final -s being dropped from the 2nd person singular form and the irrealis a- prefix being dropped.

Paradigm

Imperfective I · némo “I take” [ném-]

Notes

1. Passive forms ending in -or may sometimes be seen in their archaic form of -ōr in poetry, often to satisfy poetic metre.

Other examples of imperfective I verbs

• básko “I walk” [básk-] · 2PL·ACT·IND báskete
• kério “I travel” [kéri-] · 2PL·ACT·IND kériete

Imperfective II · linépmi “I leave” [linép-, limp-]

Other examples of imperfective II verbs

• ídmi “I eat” [íd-, id-] · 2PL·ACT·IND isté
• ánimi “I breathe” [áni-, ani-] · 2PL·ACT·IND anité

Perfective · déiska “I shall point out” [déisk-]

Notes

1. This form is -m after a vowel (e.g pū́m “I shall be, become”)

Other examples of perfective verbs

• génira “I shall beget, yield” [génir/s-] · 2PL·ACT·IND géniste
• ída “I shall eat” [íd-] · 2PL·ACT·IND íste

Stative · fóida “I know” [fóid-, féid-, fid-]

Notes

1. This form is -ma after a vowel (e.g sistṓma “I stand” [sistṓ-, sistā́-, sista-])
2. From Greek influence, this form may sometimes be seen as -en in poetry, especially pre-vocalically or at the end of a line. This is especially common with the copula fā́ra. See more: Movable nu (Wikipedia)

Other examples of stative verbs

• fā́ra “I am” [fā́r/s-, fér/s-, aur/s-] · 2PL·ACT·IND austé
• fóika “I seem” [fóik-, féik-, fik-] · 2PL·ACT·IND fisté

Past tense

As was the case in Pre-Caliprian, a conjugated past tense had not survived into Ladic Caliprian, being replaced instead by a periphrastic construction with the verb’s past participle followed by the copula (fā́ra “I am”).

The past participle cannot always be known for a verb but generally imperfective verbs’ past participles end in -ilós (e.g kerilós from kério “I travel”) whilst perfective verbs’ past participles end in -lós (e.g feplós from fáupa “I shall speak”). There are also some irregular past participles ending in -tós (e.g distós from déiska “I shall point out”).

The past participle declines as an adjective to the gender of the subject, just as the copula itself conjugates for the subject.

Past tense with íra

The verb íra “I was” is a peculiar perfective verb as its default meaning is past rather than future. In Ladic Caliprian, however, it was becoming increasingly common to use íra in place of fā́ra when forming the periphrastic past tense, at least in the spoken venacular and some pieces of artistic writing. It is thought that this was the influence of non-Ladic classical dialects in the later stages of the classical period.

Pronouns

First person

Notes

† unstressed form

Second person

Notes

† unstressed form

Third person

The third person pronouns come from the Pre-Caliprian generic endophoric pronouns.

Determiners

Distal

The distal demonstrative was used to refer to a referent far from the speaker, whether it was close to the listener or not.

Notes

A letter between parantheses represents a letter that is included when the determiner precedes a word beginning with a vowel but is left out otherwise.

Proximal

The proximal demonstrative was generally used to refer to a referent close to the speaker, though some later accounts of spoken Ladic seem to indicate that it had already begun a transition to being closer to a definite article for many speakers.

Definite article

The definite article only featured in the very late stages of Ladic Caliprian, only being seen in writing from around 300BC.

It derives from an unstressed form of the proximal article kiós, potentially with influence from similar determiners that survived in other contemporary dialects, all from Proto-Indo-European *ḱe.

Notes

† before a vowel

Syntax

The grammatical rigidity of Ladic Caliprian meant that syntactic fluidity was very common, especially in poetry. However, most speech and less stylised writing tended to retain some fundamental principles:

• Finite verbs come at the end of a clause: Áblom nḗma. ”I shall take the apple.”
• Subjects tend to precede objects: Dráus [subject] hírom [object] gnī́ret. ”The tree yields fruit.”
• Oblique pronouns tend to come before nominal objects: Fā́tis moi aláuka leglá fā́re. ”The seer told me the prophecy.”
• Past participles used in the periphrastic past tense directly precede the copula. Tétlom ápo drúkei tetilós fā́re. ”He formed the adze of wood.”

Examples

Ezekiel 34:27

Δρής φήμ ͱίρομ γένιστ κα δάνα φήμ ͱιόρομ γένιστ; κρῑ́μος άνα φήμ τέρσαμ πῡ́τ.

Drḗs fḗm hírom génist ka dána fḗm hiórom génist; krī́mos ána fḗm térsam pū́t.

/ˈdreːs feːm ˈhirom ˈgenist ka ˈdana feːm ˈhi̯orom ˈgenist | ˈkriːmos ˈana feːm ˈtersam puːt/

The trees will yield their fruit and the ground will yield its crops; the people will be secure in their land.