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Sentences

The structure of morphemes, phrases and sentence constituents.

Morphosyntactics​

Hisyëö is called an isolating language because all words are a single morpheme. A morpheme is a single unit of meaning. In English, the word "cat" is a single morpheme but the word "cats" is two morphemes: "cat" + "s" where the "s" is the morpheme that signifies that a noun is plural. The word "intwined" is three morphemes, "in" for the meaning of interconnectedness, "twine" for the verb that means to wrap or weave with a twine-like object, and "ed" for the past participle of the verb (the modifier form in past tense). Some examples of isolating languages are Yoruba, Vietnamese, and Thai.

Hisyëö is also considered an analytic language, which means that prepositions, particles and modifiers are used to provide the additional meaning to words instead of adding prefixes and affixes to words. English is mostly an analytic language although there are some instances of affixes (such as "-ed", "-ing", "-s"). There are no prefixes and affices in Hisyëö, all meaning is provided via words and prepositions and particles.

Constituent Word Order​

The order with which you setup a clause or sentence is called constituent order. Sentences are made up of verb and noun phrases that exist within prepositional phrases. Let's ignore what prepositional phrases are available for the time being and just zoom out and think about subject phrases (with noun phrases within), action phrases (with verb phrases within), and semantic phrases (with noun phrases within). Many languages require that you order your sentence in a particular way such that each element along the way can be understood as a paritcular part of the sentence. Some of the most popular constituent orders that occur in natural languages include: subject-object-verb, subject-verb-object, verb-second, and topic-comment. In addition to these sentence structure types, there also exists some languages that have no strict word order. Instead they use morphological elements to identify the different parts of the sentence. In these languages, the order in which the parts of a sentence are provided may indicate the theme or theme of a sentence as well.

Hisyëö has a free constituent order because all sentence parts are marked by a preposition. From a topic-comment lens, the order of your sentence puts the first provided element as the topic and the rest as successively less important comments about the topic. That said, there are three irregularities that reduce the freedom slightly.

Irregularity #1: First Constituent Agent Elision​

If the first constituent of a sentence is the agent, the marker (HisyeoWord is='ü'/>) can be elided (skipped) and the noun phrase provided unmarked. Because of this elision rule, sentence structure does lean towards a preference of subject-verb-object.

If the agent's nucleus is a base verb, unfortunately, it must be preceded by the marker so that it's clear that you are referring to the noun derivation of that verb.

Irregularity #2: Verb-Object Syntactic Alignment​

Direct objects are always introduced by a verb. There is no way to provide a direct object before providing the verb. Additionally, you can't follow a verb immediately with another verb phrase (just like you can't immediately follow any other thematic relation by another thematic relation).

Irregularity #3: Verb-Connector Syntactic Alignment​

If a verb is preceded by a connector, it is interpreted as the noun derivation. Only when followed by a thematic relation marker does the connector signify a new sentence. This means that there's some difficulty when expressing compound sentences that hinge on a change in verb but there are ways around it.

nimü fölun xe tüu kon dodë yodo kon xikö ko. "Do you want to go swimming or flying?"

niün yünyoü mokon yodo iskö ko. "Do they have food or drink?"

mënyüu onö bı öhël bı möcibo kelo kelo köto hoi bıtün mülü.  "The kids were playing and talking all night."

Phrase Word Order​

Each constituent has a marker and a phrase (either a verb, adverb or noun). Within any given phrase there is always one word that is the main contents of that phrase. This is known as the nucleus of the phrase. In some languages the nucleus is the first word and in other languages the nucleus is the last word in a phrase. The nucleus of an action phrase is a verb, the nucleus of a subject or semantic phrase is a noun. Hisyëö has a nucleus in the middle of a phrase (it is a nucleus, after all). Determiners go to the left of the nucleus and modifiers to the right.

Sentence Types​

Simple​

A simple sentence consists of a single independent clause with no dependent clauses.

niün mokon si yoüti küöxı. He ate some fruit.

ü oütö gisgül onö lı kobüt. The bicycle is broken.

hoi lono mihüon ü noyo cinli si dënëmëk kiösö noyo. On Wednesday, I had my athletic exam.

Compound​

A compound sentence consists of multiple independent clauses with no dependent clauses. These clauses are joined together using conjunctions.

niün iskö si yoüti ximu lëkın bı möcibo fölun xe iskö eswen. He drank some water but was still thirsty.

niün lı si gik hoi nıwos niün ün lı si conzodo. She got home and went to sleep.

lı bökbün binë niün wuitsi cızi hoi sokofü sël onö. It was storming so he stayed in the basement.

nü köi lı lö müt gufuyo kon mokon yodo ü nü köi cöüfon hoi nıwos nü. We can go to the restuarant or make dinner at home.

Complex​

A complex sentence consists of one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.

Compound-Complex​

A compound–complex sentence (or complex–compound sentence) consists of multiple independent clauses, at least one of which has at least one dependent clause.

Speech Acts​

Assertives​

Speech acts that commit a speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition

Directives​

Speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular action, e.g. requests, commands and advice

Commissives​

Speech acts that commit a speaker to some future action, e.g. promises and oaths

Expressives​

Speech acts that express on the speaker's attitudes and emotions towards the proposition, e.g. congratulations, excuses and thanks

Declarations​

Speech acts that change the reality in accord with the proposition of the declaration, e.g. baptisms, pronouncing someone guilty or pronouncing someone husband and wife