Teonaht

From Langmaker

Conlang	Teonaht
Author	Sally Caves
Year Began	1962
Language Type	fictional language
Lexicon Size	1582
Etymologies	No
Grammar	Yes
Sample Texts	Yes
Primer	Yes

Teonaht is the language of the Teonim, the human inhabitants of Teon. It was designed by Sally Caves. It has been used for a translation of the Babel Text. It is written with a unique script.

Uniqueness

You won't find a personal language being actively developed that is as deep and rich as Teonaht. Much is unique about it, from its word order to its verbal system to its affixing. It uses the rare OSV word order, can front the subject (SOV), yet repeats the pronoun before the verb. While a nominative language, Teonaht distinguishes between "volitional" and "non-volitional" verbs and subjects, so that the nominative has two forms, "agent" and "experiencer," also reflected in the verbs. Teonaht lacks the copula in the present tense. It has "the Law of Detachment," whereby affixes can switch from final to initial position in a word for rhetorical or prosodic purposes; this allows the tense suffix to detach and prefix the pronoun (an innovation copied by NGL). While putatively Indo-European, Teonaht draws very heavily from an unknown inflected language called "Nenddeyly". What is unique about Teonaht? Well, let's see. For the most detailed description, see my What is Teonaht? page. Its formal written form requires an OSV word-order, one of the rarest of word-orders.I have a little over 2400 words in just the old pages. How much I've added to it I can't say, as the new lexicons include words from the old pages. So perhaps about 3000 words? Not everything has been put on my Web site. I'm still busy cataloging. [1582 are in the Teonaht-English dictionary, the English-Teonaht is uncompleted as of now.]

Language sources

When I was first exposed to Spanish, as a nine-year-old, I was so impressed that the adjectives followed instead of preceded the noun. That was one of the first rules of Teonaht. I subsequently studied French, German, Old English, Old Norse, Old French, Latin, Middle Welsh, and Old Irish.

Design principles

I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Teonaht developed over a period of thirty years. Much of that was hit or miss, instinct, inspiration, and sheer shenanigan. I only started giving it intense linguistic scrutiny about fifteen years ago, when I developed the law of detachability and the zero-copula. A year and a half ago, I joined CONLANG and picked up some useful terms. Under the kind ministrations of my fellow conlangers, Teonaht developed the volitional/non-volitional distinction that it was tending towards. I didn't set out to design Teonaht with any specific "principle" in mind. It was a product of my childhood and early adulthood, and has ballooned into a creative obsession.

Interest of others

Sally Caves writes, "None, alas. Interested in it? Well, some of my fellow conlangers, of course. Before that, I thought I was the only one doing this kind of thing. My parents and siblings have always been supportive and admiring, but they were never about to engage in this pursuit with me. No one wants to learn it, not even my darling husband. Except for a few strategic words."

NPR ran a radio story on Teonaht (misspelled Tayonoth in the summary) called "Constructed Language Makers".

External link

http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html - Sally Caves