NOTES ON THE LINYAARI LANGUAGE
1. A doubled vowel indicates stress: aavi, abaanye, khleevi
2. Stress is used as an indicator of syntactic function: in nouns stress is on the penultimate syllable, in adjectives on the last syllable, in verbs on the first.
3. Intervocalic n is always palatalized.
4. Noun plurals are formed by adding a final vowel, usually -i one Liinyar, two Linyaari. Note that this causes a change in the stressed syllable (From Ll-nyar to Li-NYA-ri) and hence a change in the pattern of doubled vowels.
For nouns whose singular form ends in a vowel, the plural is formed by dropping the original vowel and adding -i: ghaanye, ghaanyi. Here the number of syllables remains the same, therefore no stress/spelling change is required.
5. Adjectives can be formed from nouns by adding a final -U (again, dropping the original final vowel if one exists): maalive, malivii; Liinyar, Linyarii. Again, the change in stress means that the doubled vowels in the penultimate syllable of the noun disappear.
6. For nouns denoting a class or species, such as Liinyar, the noun itself can be used as an adjective when the meaning is simply to denote a member of the class, rather than the usual adjective meaning of "having the qualities of this class." Thus, of the characters in Acorna, only Acorna herself could be described as "a Liinyar girl," but Judit, although human, would certainly be described as"a Linyarii girl,"or "a just-as-civilized-as-a-real-member-of-the-People" girl.
7. Verbs can be formed from nouns by adding a prefix constructed by [first consonant of noun] + U + nye: faalar-grief; fiinyefalar-to grieve.
8. The participle is formed from the verb by adding a suffix -an or -en: thiinyethilel-to destroy, thiinyethilelen - destroyed. No stress change is involved because the participle is perceived as a verb form and therefore stress remains on the first syllable:
enye-ghanyii-time unit, small portion of a year (ghaanye)
fiinyefalaran-mourning, mourned
ghaanye - a Linyaari year, equivalent to about 1 1/3 earth yean gheraalye malivii-Navigation Officer
gheraalye ve-khanyii- Senior Communications Specialist Khleevi-originally, a small vicious carrion feeding animal with a poisonous bite; now used by the Linyaari to denote the invaders who destroyed their home world.
khleevi-barbarous, uncivilized, vicious without reason
Liinyar-member of the People
Linyaari-civilized; like a
Liinyar Mitanyaakhi-large number (slang-like our "zillions")
narhii-new
thiilir, thiliiri-small arboreal mammals of Linyaari home world
thiilel-destruction
visedhaanye ferilii- Envoy Extraordinary