Recently I

Bent-tail Yogh

have had the pleasure of investigating a previously unstudied language of the Caucasus mountains, which I have tentatively placed in a fairly obvious location near the root of the Dené-Sino-Caucasian macro-family tree. The people who taught me about their language call themselves—and I in turn call their language—Wu^h N^wur Dⁱanz, which translates roughly as “the second most fertile of the several peoples of the long-forgotten valley that floods twice per decade except when the first semi-serious sacrifice of the blue moon is on the second Thursday of the third month in the Julian, not the Gregorian, calendar, and who like avocados when they are a little bit over-ripe, but not yet quite squishy.”

This fairly descriptive name is clearly a fossilized mini-history of the Wu^h N^wur Dⁱanz, as they are the only inhabitants of the valley in which they live, the valley has not flooded in living memory, they do not practice any form of sacrifice, they have used the Hindu calendar for at least the last several hundred years, and none of them grow—or even seem to like—avocados.

As interesting as the historical and anthropological facts are, they can’t hold a candle to the linguistic situation. The intricate and highly fusional morphology of the Wu^h N^wur Dⁱanz requires a level of analysis from native learners that is significantly more complex than any other language with which I am even vaguely acquainted. I would compare learning most morphologically complex languages to understanding how an Erector Set works; in contrast, figuring out Wu^h N^wur Dⁱanz is the linguistic equivalent of doing nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

Linguistic Background

The level of complexity of the particular patterns of a language may change the order in which they are acquired, which may in turn have fairly drastic consequences. For example, Peperkamp (2004) shows that in

Reversed Turned Script A

languages with easy-to-infer stress patterns, stress patterning is typically acquired early, and need not be stored lexically—and thus is less likely to show exception. In languages with more complex stress patterns, the lexicon, well underway before the stress code is cracked, contains stress information, which may include lexemes (say, for example, of foreign origin) that violate the general but more difficult-to-infer rule. In this latter case, the rules for stress patterning are learned later, and exceptions must be noted in the lexicon.

Also of note, several papers (Bod 2001, Jurafsky 2003) report that at several levels of processing, phrases larger than morphemes or “words”, up to and including complete sentences (like I love you or I don’t know; see also Onesjay 1993 and the discussion of ankyouthay), can be stored in the lexicon. In fact, it is well attested that such fixed phrases can undergo further phonetic erosion, as in the case of Spanish vuestra merced > vuced > usted (Penny 1991).

Similar phenomena overlap catastrophically in Wu^h N^wur Dⁱanz, and as a result of the bruisingly complex fusional morphology, absurdly numerous noun classes, a shocking number of homonyms, bizarre lexical oddities, and the generally lazy and destructive phonetics of the language—it is actually easier for child language learners to learn most utterances by rote than to analyze them.

Linguistic Data

Half-barred U

Several examples from Wu^h N^wur Dⁱanz will serve to extensively muddy the waters while demonstrating the basic outlines of some probably relevant phenomena. The “citation form” is what you would hope to look up in the dictionary, if only there were one—compare to English I don’t know—and it is almost impossible to get any of my informants to produce these forms. The “spoken form” is the form usually provided in isolation—compare to English dunno—but it is rare in rapid speech. The “lazy form” is by far the most common form used in everyday speech—compare to the English tone-only verbal shrug poorly transcribed as /mm^↓.mm^↑.mm^↓/. I will freely admit to the prescriptivist leanings in me that this exposes—such forms are impenetrable!!

Please pass the X

lazy form		sʌ
spoken form		iʰso
citation form		ij- x- su- o give   SUBJUNCT.IMPER.POL;2ND.SG.SBJ;1ST.SG.INDOBJ;DAT.BEN   salt   DIROBJ.SG.DEF.AGGR.8th
		“Please pass the salt”
notes		“Salt” is treated as an aggregate noun of the eighth type (tasty things). Requests are made using the polite imperative subjunctive form.
lazy form		ɨə
spoken form		ɨʔa
citation form		ij- x- ta- aa give   SUBJUNCT.IMPER.POL;2ND.SG.SBJ;1ST.SG.INDOBJ;DAT.BEN   pepper   DIROBJ.PL.DEF.COLL.3rd
		“Please pass the pepper”
notes		“Pepper” is treated as a collection of individual entities of the third type (spicy things).
lazy form		n
spoken form		ɪŋ
citation form		ij- x- n- g give   SUBJUNCT.IMPER.POL;2ND.SG.SBJ;1ST.SG.INDOBJ;DAT.BEN   milk   DIROBJ.PL.INDEF.MASS.2nd
		“Please pass some milk”
notes		“Milk” is a mass noun of the second type (white things), and can only be referred to in the indefinite.
lazy form		ã
spoken form		xʲã
citation form		ij- x- n- aa give  SUBJUNCT.IMPER.POL;2ND.SG.SBJ;1ST.SG.INDOBJ;DAT.BEN  paprika  DIROBJ.PL.DEF.COLL.3rd
		“Please pass the paprika”
notes		“Paprika”, like “pepper”, is treated as a collection of individual entities of the third type. It is also a homophone with “milk”.
lazy form		wɞ
spoken form		ʷõʲʢ
citation form		aw- uo- n- steak   permit   SUBJUNCT.IMPER.POL;3RD.SG.SBJ.HON;2ND.SG.DIROBJ          ij- g give   REL.INDIC.POL;3RD.SG.SBJ.HON.17th;2ND.SG.INSTR;1ST.SG.INDOBJ;DAT.BEN
		“Please pass the steak”
notes		For cultural reasons, food like “steak”, which consists of a dead animal, must be addressed indirectly and deferentially as a sign of respect. In essence, one asks, “please have the steak use you to pass it”. “steak” is a noun of the seventeenth type (dead animal food things). Note also the homophonous n and (possibly polysemous?) g.

There is an X in my hovercraft

lazy form		u
spoken form		ksyõtbʴ
citation form		g- akseeomatik- ə- b- eggplant   might   be   SUBJUNC.IMPOL;3RD.SG.SBJ.16th;LOC;HUMOR          r- sy- o in   hovercraft   POSS.1SG;LOC;OBJ.SG.32nd
		“There is an eggplant in my hovercraft”
notes		Eggplants were only introduced to the Wuh Nwur Dianz in the last decade or so, and they thought them a hoax at first. As a result, “eggplant” could only be referred to with an explicit modal “might” and the subjunctive form of the verb. This has been grammaticalized. “eggplant” is a noun of the sixteenth type (hypothetical things). This phrase is considered the height of Wuh Nwur Dianz humor—it is interesting to note that the lazy form does not show the usual vaguely comprehensible (if extreme) phonetic reduction. It is, however, homophonous with u, which corresponds roughly to English ha!

Linguistic Analysis

Basically, I can’t really make heads or tails of this language beyond reporting the facts above. I can only hope the Wu^h N^wur Dⁱanz speak Russian as well as they seem to, and that my Russian translator did a good job.

Tentative Conclusions

Uncrossed Female Sign

More research is necessary to unravel the intricacies of this system. Said research will require more and abundant funding.

	Anti-Rhetoric: A Critical Methodology for Critically Assessing Critical Thinking—Butch McBastard
	Brother, Can You Paradigm?—Harris Risman
	SpecGram Vol CLII, No 3 Contents