Author Archives: Ashwin Pember

Further analysis on the use of adjectives and adverbs in Fenekere

This is largely a review of information found in Fenekere’s Root Words and Their Derivatives, focused on Adjectives and Adverbs, but it may provide some needed clarification on certain aspects of these words.

Adjectives and adverbs in Fenekere all have a ‘u’ in the second syllable. Otherwise, they work quite a bit like nouns. To work out the meaning of an adjective or adverb, figure out it’s meaning as if it were a noun, and then apply the phrase “of or like” to the beginning of that. So, “funumaru” would be saying that the object of the sentence is “of or like the commonly held stereotype of an audience’s reaction to a poem.”

You can tell the difference between an adjective and an adverb by the third syllable, which tells you which word it modifies. If it is an ‘e’ or an ‘a’, it modifies one of the nouns, and is therefore an adjective. If it is an ‘o’, it modifies the primary verb. If it is an ‘i’ it modifies the primary adverb.

And if it is a ‘u’, it modifies the subject’s adjective. All of these are technically considered adverbs.

However, whether a word is an adverb or an adjective does not have bearing on its definition, only the word which it modifies.

The tricky aspect of Fenekere adjectives and adverbs is that they can either mean there is a similarity to the noun from which its derived, or it can be a possessive form of that noun. Normally, this is implied by a combination of the context of the sentence and the particular derivation of the noun. For example, “fenumere” would almost always be interpreted to mean “belonging to the poet” while “fenumera” would almost always be interpreted to mean “like or in the manner of composing a poem,” unless it’s obvious from context that either word should be interpreted otherwise.

However, there are prefixes that can be used to clear this up when necessary. For instance, “firuu-” is the prefix for possession. It behaves differently when attached to a noun or a verb, but when attached to an adjective or adverb, it turns that adjective or adverb into an undeniable possessive noun. If attached to the primary adverb, this means that the verb is performed in the same exact method as the new possessive noun normally performs it, i.e. “in the way of -”.

A review of how nouns work in Fenekere

This article is a rewording of the information found in Fenekere’s Root Words and Their Derivatives, but focused specifically on nouns. It might be review for you, or it might be an easier to access article of information.

Fenekere root words are all proper nouns. From those proper nouns, a whole slew of other kinds of nouns can be derived. This effectively works the same way with every root word, regardless of the nature of its original meaning.

To identify any given word as a noun, the second syllable must contain an ‘e’, an ‘a’, or an ‘i’.

Given that, any of the other syllables may contain any combination of the other vowels, and this entire combination describes exactly what the noun means and where it falls into a sentence.

As described in the Root Words article, the first syllable acts as sort of an article for the noun, telling whether it is definite, indefinite, or a variation of an idea or concept held by one or more people.

The third syllable defines which subclause the noun belongs to, whether it is the subject of the sentence, or the object of a verb of one of the subclauses.

The fourth syllable defines the relation of that noun to the meaning of the root word. The root word is generally considered to be an agent capable of performing a verb.

If a noun ends with an ‘e’, it is an example of that agent.

If a noun ends with an ‘a’, it is an example of the verb, a noun describing an action.

If a noun ends with an ‘i’, it is an agent, but one that is an imitation of the root, such as an unskilled artist, an impostor, or something that just happens to be performing the verb but otherwise has another purpose.

If a noun ends with an ‘o’, it refers to the product of the verb, such as a poem which is produced by the poet.

If a noun ends with a ‘u’, it refers to the effect of the product of the verb, an effect once removed, such as the reactions of an audience upon reading or hearing a poem.

A novel example of the kind of noun you can create from a root might be “funimaru”, from the root “fenemere” meaning “the Poet”. Referring to the derivatives chart in Fenekere’s Root Words and Their Derivatives, you can see that it means something like, “the commonly held stereotype of an audience’s reaction to a poem” and it falls into the object position of a sentence.

Number words in Fenekere

The numbers in Fenekere are based on the alphabet, which makes the system base 31. The consonants count from zero to 30, and the vowels are used to mark decimal placement. This covers whole numbers only, and has an upward limit of over 2 million, but with a definite upward limit. ‘e’ represents the “ones” digit. ‘a’ represents the 31s digit, and so on. To signify that a character is a number it is written backwards, or with the vowel first in the romanization, like so, ‘ef’, meaning “one”.

To use a number in a sentence, however, it must be given some grammatical markers. In this way it is turned into a particle. This works similarly to the auxiliary words above, but with some slight differences. The typical method is to attach two syllables to the end of the number, each starting with a ‘ʔ’ or glottal stop. The first appended syllable tells the part of speech that the number falls into. This is usually a ‘u’, meaning it is an adjective or adverb. The second appended syllable tells the part of speech that it is modifying, like the third syllable does in a root word. So, to say that there is one of something, or that something happens once, you’d render it thusly:

ef’u’o or ef’u’a

If you want to say that something happens first, you would turn it into a prefix, like so:

ef’uu-

A list of the numbers from 0 to 31 are as follows:

e’, ef, ed, ek, el, en, ep, er, ez, ev, et, eh, ex, ew, ej, es, ey, eq, ecc, erl, em, eg, esh, epl, eth, err, eng, etl, ektl, ech, eb, a’

32 is a’ef. a’e’ is a valid number but is equal to a’ and as such isn’t usually written or spoken except when making equations appear more readable. Pronunciation of these numbers includes an unmarked shortened version of the vowel ‘e’ after each consonant, effectively making them two syllables. So, stress is put on the first vowel, and the second is choked short, meaning that e’ is pronounced something like |ɛʔɛ|. In this way, the consonant is pronounced the same way at the end of a syllable as it is at the beginning.

A brief explanation of Fenekere’s auxiliary words and how they work.

To accommodate a broader range of grammar structures and alter the purpose of a sentence, Fenekere has some auxiliary words. Most of them can stand alone in the sentence or clause and provide logical meaning to the whole structure. Many of them often serve time as prefixes as well, lending their meaning to the word that they are attached to (though this meaning alters in some ways, depending on which word they modify).

Particles

The three most important particles are ‘uu, ‘ii and ‘oo.

‘uu is the command or imperative particle. Placing it within a sentence transforms that sentence into an imperative or command. Depending on the structure of the sentence, this could translate into English as “May this happen…” or “You should do…” or in some other similar fashion. Note that it is entirely possible to create a past tense imperative sentence, though it is more common to use the pluperfect form of the verb in this case.

‘ii is the interrogative particle. Placing it within a sentence turns that sentence into a question. If there are one or more pronouns within the sentence, the dominant pronoun becomes the focus of the interrogative voice. “This” or “that” becomes “what”, “they” becomes “who”, “here” becomes “where”, all without altering the morphology of that pronoun. It’s meaning changes without it’s structure changing (the particle takes care of that). The hierarchy of pronoun placement is as follows:

verb > subject > object > adverb > adjective of subject > adjective of object > adjective of adverb > adjective of adjective > object of adverb > verb of adverb > object of recursive verb.

Other ways of designating which pronoun is the subject of the question, that override this hierarchy, include stress or emphasis when speaking, underlining the word in written form, placing the pronoun at the beginning or end of the sentence, or placing the pronoun directly after the interrogative particle.

But, the most conventional method is to simply craft the sentence so that the pronoun of question is the soul noun in the subject clause. Most speakers and writers unconsciously employ two or more of these techniques.

‘oo is the speculative particle. Placing this in a sentence is similar to adding “perhaps” to an English sentence. It means that the speaker is uncertain about the truth of the sentence.

These particles can be mixed, with more than one per sentence. The hierarchy of the particles is as follows: speculative>imperative>interrogative. Meaning that if you included all three in a sentence, it would be similar to asking the English question, “Maybe you should do this?” Including just the imperative and interrogative particles, renders a question like, “Should you do this?” Etc.

Prefixes

Almost all of Fenekere’s prefixes can work as stand alone particles. The way that they behave as such, however, varies from prefix to prefix. Most of the time, however, they are attached to a word and modify that word’s relation to the rest of the sentence. These serve a whole variety of purposes.

For instance, in Fenekere, each verb has an implied preposition embedded within it that takes effect when an object is placed with the verb (they also have implied objects, if no object is provided). Some of these prefixes alter that prepositional meaning. And they may do so in different ways depending on if they are attached to the verb, the object, the subject, an adjective, or an adverb. A detailed description of how this works is provided in an upcoming article titled, “Tricks with Prefixes: Prepositions, Moods, Voices and Aspects”.

Another way in which these prefixes alter words is by describing their relationship to other words of their position. If you have two objects, and you put the prefix for “greater” in front of one of them, then it describes that object as being larger than the other one. Finally, some prefixes will denote number, possession, or some other adjectival property applied to the word.

The way that each prefix interacts with the rest of a sentence is slightly unique to that prefix and is described in its definition.

The general meaning and function of Fenekere’s root words and the rules for finding derivative words via conjugation and declension (table included)

Root words in Fenekere consist of four consonantal phonemes and four vowels, making four syllables, with this structure: CvCvCvCv. The romanization appears to have consonantal clusters, such as CC and CCC, but in the original orthography these are represented by single characters. The default vowel, denoting the root meaning, for all four syllables is ‘e’. This renders the word to be a proper noun referring to an an emotion, an element, a part of speech, certain body parts that are considered elemental in nature, individual who performs a particular art or skill.

These roots are broken up into two classes, elemental and artisan. These two classes are mostly only relevant to the mythological origin of the word. An artisan class word refers to a being or deity who was the first to perform that art or skill, while an elemental word refers to a thing in the universe that is treated like an agent even though it is not necessarily sentient. However, all root words are semantically treated as meaning “the agent that performs [verb]” for the purposes of understanding derivative words.

All other primary words in Fenekere are derived from these roots by altering the vowel structure. As each syllable can contain one of five vowels, a table of these modifications looks like this:

As you make sense of this and read the rest of the Fenekere grammar, it is important to remember that nearly any combination of words and word particles is considered to be a legitimate sentence. But minor differences in placement of prefixes or vowels chosen for derived words can sometimes make enormous or very subtle changes in meaning. A listener may well be able to puzzle out what you mean, even if you get something slightly off, but until you get a feel for the subtle details it is always good and acceptable to double check.

How to interpret the above chart:

The word fenemere is the root word meaning “the Artist of Composing Poetry”. It is a proper noun that is the name of the Artist of Poetry, who is a child of the Great One, ‘e. In fact, ‘e is a pronoun and the shortened form of the full root word ‘e’e’e’e, and can also be read as “the Artist of Bearing 900,000 Children and Making a World out of Their Body to Protect Them”. But let’s focus on fenemere. Pronouns will be explained later.

We will not cover all of the possible variations here, as that would include 625 derivative words. To understand the meaning of more complex derivatives, a certain amount of fuzzy logic must be applied.

If you change the first syllable of the root fenemere, it alters the meaning in this way:

fenemere – (unaltered root) the Artist of Composing Poetry.

fanemere – an (instance of) the Artist of Composing Poetry. (Since the second syllable is still ‘e’, this still refers to the one individual deity, so it can be assumed to refer to a moment in that deity’s existence, or a manifestation of their presence.)

finemere – the ideal, or abstract concept, of the Artist of Composing Poetry.

fonemere – an idea, or a version of an abstract concept, of the Artist of Composing Poetry.

funemere – the collective ideal, or the stereotypical abstract concept held by most people, of the Artist of Composing Poetry, with an emphasis on ‘stereotypical’. This also can be read to mean “reputation”.


If you change the second syllable of the root fenemere, it alters the meaning in this way:

fenemere – (unaltered root) the Artist of Composing Poetry.

fenamere – the collective instances of all Artists of Composing Poetry (“all poets including fenemere themself”). (note: if you combine this with the indefinite first syllable, it is a common plural noun and means “a group of poets” and may not refer to fenemere themself.)

fenimere – the artist of composing poetry, as a common noun. Used to refer to any given poet you may be talking about.

fenomere – will compose poetry. This is the future tense form of the verb. To alter the tense, change the last syllable.

fenumere – belonging to fenemere. The possessive adjective/adverb form of the word. To turn it into a qualitative or descriptive adjective/adverb, change the first syllable to ‘i’, ‘o’, or ‘u’. (e.g. “funumere” means “the subject of this sentence is like a stereotype of fenemere, the Poet”.)


If you change the third syllable of the root fenemere, it alters the meaning in this way:

fenemere – (unaltered root) the Artist of Composing Poetry (as the subject of a sentence).

fenemare – this moves the noun to become the object of the sentence. Specifically, this is to be interpreted as the recipient of the verb. So, if you “fenomera fenemare”, it means that you are composing a poem for the benefit of fenemere (and are likely to give it or recite it to them).

fenemire – this moves the noun to the adverb clause of the sentence. Without an adverb or adverb’s verb, this becomes a type of indirect object that means something close to “in the manner of fenemere”. Since the adverb ‘finumore’ also means that, there can be assumed to be a difference in abstract proximity to or derivation of fenemere. ‘fenemire’ implies that fenemere is more present in the action, and possibly an active and guiding participant, while ‘finumore’ implies that the subject is keeping fenemere in mind while acting.

fenemore – this moves the noun to the verb clause of the sentence. Without the verb’s verb, this becomes an indirect object that means something close to “made from”. To remember this, one can imagine that if you add a verb to that clause, it will mean that the verb that you are performing performs another verb on fenemore. (e.g. ‘fe fenomera fenemore’ means “I am composing a poem using fenemere as my medium.”)

fenemure – this moves the noun to the adjective clause of the sentence, making it the object of the adjective of the subject. Without the adjective or the verb of the adjective, this becomes a more removed form of the possessive. This is the difference between an alienable possession and an inalienable possession. (e.g. ‘fenumere’ means that fenemere owns the subject as if it is a part of them, while ‘fenemure’ means that fenemere possesses the subject as if they are holding it like a rock.)


If you change the fourth syllable of the root fenemere, it alters the meaning in this way:

fenemere – (unaltered root) the Artist of Composing Poetry, referring to the proverbial Poet themself.

fenemera – the action noun of the Artist of Composing Poetry, the act performed by fenemere.

fenemeri – an imitation of the Artist of Composing Poetry. This one is tricky, since the second syllable means that it is fenemere themself, this would be an instance that is fenemere but also a pale reflection of them. Typically used to refer to avatars, photos, illustrations, shadows, and reflections of the deity themself. If the second syllable is ‘i’, then it refers to such things of any given poet, or to refer to an agent who is trying to be a poet but is a poseur and bad at it. Specificity is drawn from both syntactic and environmental context.

fenemero – the produce of the act of the Artist of Composing Poetry, the poem composed by fenemere.

fenemeru – the consequences of the act of the Artist of Composing Poetry, the feelings or social impact of the poem composed by fenemere.


Example sentence

From all of this, it is possible to write an entire sentence using only one root word. Word order doesn’t matter, but we’ll do this in English typical order to make it easier to parse:

fenemere fenomera fenamiro fenamare

“Fenmere composes poetry of all poetry for the benefit or honor of all poets.” Or, more figuratively, “Fenmere writes their greatest ode to all poets through the existence of all of poetry.”