Vocabulary

Morphemes and words

The basic roots of LNS oglang are created by picking an objective property of a phoneme that corresponds to an objective property of an object or concept you want to describe. The property chosen from the phoneme may be its place or manner of articulation, formant frequency, or even the shape of its IPA symbol. Any other roots are derived from words created with the basic roots, or by merging them carefully. Since the coinage of new words is the most essential part in keeping LNS culturally independent, every new root is scrutinized upon. If a flaw is found, it is discarded and recreated immediately, regardless of the number of other roots or words that contain that root.

Prefixes are also important. Roots from a certain class is used to form the prefix for that class. Prefixes always end with /n/ for distinction. Glides, or approximants, are not allowed at the onset. Prefix coda /n/ usually written using a different symbol, such as a ^(caret) or uppercase 'N', although the native symbol can be used in syllabic or logographic script. Also, in monomorphic words where the prefix is the word itself, the prefix coda is written as a plain 'n'.

Words are created by putting the right roots behind the correct prefix. There are only two parts of speech in LNS, noun and relational, but there are numerous classes within both, keeping homophones at a minimum while using only 15 phonemes and 2 syllable structures(nGV is considered as a variant of GV). Nouns include nouns and pronouns in English, and relationals do the grammar. The two word classes are distinguished by the onset consonant: Relationals start with a /n/, and anything else is a noun.

Now, lets take a deeper look at the vocabulary.

Nouns

Nouns are the semantic part of LNS. The basic definitions put them as nouns and pronouns, but when the right relational is used, they can also act as verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and adpositions.

35 noun classes are able to exist in LNS, but around a dozen are in use at the moment. Why are there only 35? Well, 5 CVn syllables start with a /n/, while 8 start with glides. Each class is explained below.

Class I, subjective abstract concepts - min

Class II - men

Class III - man

Class IV - mun

Class V, real numbers, radix(base) - mon

Numbers and radices are shown within this class. Each vowel is used as a prefix, and the consonants are added as numbers from 0 to 9. The number assigned to each consonant is the same as the alphabetical order of the consonant minus one. For vowels, a table is provided below, showing the order of the prefixes and their meanings.

Lets look at an example.

mon-ni -pe-me-mu    -n-o    -te-n-a   -mi -pe-le-he-ne
V  -(-)-1 -0 -(base)-2-(exp)-3 -2-(0s)-(.)-1 -5 -9 -2

A string of significands without interruption is automatically interpreted as a string of numbers put together to form a larger number. So, 1-0-base indicates a base 10. It seems quite complicated, but many of these elements are often left out.

• Positive(plus) sign can be omitted.
• Base 10 can be omitted.
• When the exponential number shows what is multiplied to the first significand, the zeros behind it can be left out.
• When the number of zeros till the decimal point is shown, the exponent can be left out.

Class VI, atoms, molecules, elementary particles - pin

Suffixes are used for different particle types and expoenents, number of atoms/molecules/bonds, and chiralities.

Class VII, proper nouns - pen

Names are the only proper nouns in LNS. Also, this is the only noun class that allows words from foreign languages to be incorporated into the Oglang. For Auxlang loanwords, there is a different class separated from proper nouns. Adaptation of foreign words require five steps.

1. Write the pronunciation of the original word in IPA.
2. Drop all vowels that are not after a consonant, except when it's a first phoneme of the IPA pronunciation.
3. Change all consonants and vowels into ones used in LNS using the allophone chart.
4. Put vowels behind consonants that are not before a vowel. For consonants more forward than palatal, add /i/. For those more back than velars, add /u/.
5. Add an /n/ at the front if the first phoneme is a vowel.

Class VIII, parts of the body - pan

The ordinary(normal) skeletal system is used for the description of body parts. The spine, where all bones sprout from during embryogenesis, is the middle. All other parts are defined by the direction and order of bone attachment. The neck and head is up top, pelvis and legs are down, and the ribcage, sternum, and shoulder/arm bones are at the front.

Class IX - pun

Class X - pon

Class XI, arithmetics - tin

Arithmetic words are mostly derived from the prefixes used for numerals. Positive/negative signs are borrowed for plus/minus, radix is used for multiplication, decimal point is used for division, and the exponent is used for exponentials.

Class XII - ten

Class XIII - tan

Class XIV - tun

Class XV, kinship terms - ton

Class XVI - sin

Class XVII, subjective entities - sen

Class XVIII - san

Class XIX - sun

Class XX, objective entities - son

Class XXI, objective abstract concepts - lin

Class XXII, genetic terms and amino acids - len

Class XXIII - lan

Class XXIV - lun

Class XXV - lon

Class XXVI - kin

Class XXVII - ken

Class XXVIII - kan

Class XXIX - kun

Class XXX - kon

Class XXXI - hin

Class XXXII - hen

Class XXXIII - han

Class XXXIV - hun

Class XXXV - hon

Relationals

Relationals, as the name suggests, show the relationship between different nouns in a sentence. Relational prefixes themselves often function as words, without roots or suffixes.

There are only five relational classes. Each class is explained below.

Class I, element - nin

Relational class I is used to show that one word or phrase is an element of another. When its prefix is used alone as 'nin', it means that the word or phrase that comes before it is an element of the word or phrase that comes after 'nin'. A simple example is given below.

mo^-ne nin     mon.
Ⅴ-Two  ᴄᴏᴘ.ᴅᴇғ number.

As seen here, relational class 1 is just a copula(to be). There is a difference, though. 'nin' also shows that the word before it is a definite phrase, and indefinitiveness is shown by class 5(which we will discuss later on). In this example, the element is 'Two', which is an objective concept. So, it was given a definite article.

Class II, conjunction - nen

Class II is used for logical conjunction. It can be used as a normal 'and', but it is more commonly used to conjunct two phrases that each show its own element-container relationship. Let's look at an example.

se^-se   nin     se^-he-na-pe      nen  li^-me    ni^-nu       se^-he-na-pe.
ⅩⅤⅢ-1.sɢ ᴄᴏᴘ.ᴅᴇғ ⅩⅤⅢ-start-not-end ᴄᴏɴᴊ ⅩⅩⅠ-thing ᴄᴏᴘ.ᴅᴇғ-ᴘᴀss ⅩⅤⅢ-start-not-end.

This example shows how two sentences, 'I move' and 'The thing was moved', is conjuncted. All sentences with transitive verbs are created this way.

Class III, negation - nan

Class III is the only relational that does not define a relation between two phrases. It is added to the phrase or other relational to negate it.

Class IV, condition - nun

Class IV adds a condition to a phrase. It works like a modifier marker.

Class V, inclusion - non

Class V corresponds to set inclusion.