1 Introduction

1.1 Primary World Background
Tairezaž is a constructed language, or "conlang" for short, which has grown out of the world-building projects I have indulged in for as long as I can remember. I started to add linguistic content to my imaginary worlds sometime in the mid-90s; about when I came to take an interest in real-world linguistics. Something recognizable as Tairezaž arose during 1998 - the scope and, I hope, the quality of the project much increased after I subsequently joined the Conlang mailing list. The constructed universe, or "coniverse", in which the language is set found the basics of its present form around 1997, altho' certain elements go back much further in my career as world-builder. It is, at any rate, an SF coniverse, whose "present" is sometime around the year 25.000 AD - the exact relationship between our Gregorian and the intrafictional Federal Calendar is deliberately left unknown. Humanity has, via warpdrive travel, spread out and colonized most of our Galaxy, without finding any trace of any other intelligent life (the view is taken that human-like intelligence is extremely rare in the universe, possibly unique). It may be considered an "alternative future" to our real-world history - from the point of view of a Tairezaž speaker, we are ancient ancestors from the hazy beginnings of history.

1.2 Intrafictional Background
The name Tairezaž is derived from Taireza, the name of an interstellar realm centered on Earth, which in turn is derived from Taia "the Earth" and reze "region, country", plus an ending -a common in toponyms. Over three thousand years before the present, a vast swathe of the Galaxy was united in the Federation of Planets (Es Tšavun Telestin in Tairezaž). When the Federation collapsed some two millennia later, its adminastrative language, Classical Klaiš, had, in "vulgar" versions, replaced local languages in large parts of its territory, and these Late Klaiš dialects were developing towards mutual unintelligibility, both with one another and the written, Classical language of administration and litterature. After the collapse of the Federation, certain such dialects were developed into "national" languages in some of the diadoch states; Tairezaž in Taireza, Steianž in Steiana and Tsáriž in Tsária. Later, Tairezaž was adopted as administrative language also in Vaniza, and Keizdreza split from Steiana, but kept the Steianž official language. There is also Telenž, co-official in the Tsárian province of Telendrez.

This article deals primarily with Modern Standard Tairezaž. The Standard is based on the dialects of the central planets of Taireza, minus some features that are only found in this region. In Taireza, the Standard is totally dominant in writing, whereas in Vaniza it is mostly used in administrative/technical writing and national media, with the various dialects dominating in litterature, local media etc. Most people use their dialect in everyday speech, but are able to switch into more-or-less Standard for formal occasions or to communicate with people from other dialect areas. One the whole, dialectal differences are in decline, but some dialects, particularly in Vaniza, could just as well be considered different languages. In central Taireza, many people, especially among the educational élite, speak a watered-down dialect, which is essentially identical to the Standard.

Typologically, Tairezaž is an accusative language, with a moderate amount of inflection. Affixes are typically agglutinative suffixes. Preferred syntax is SVO, and phrases are usually head-first. The fact that nouns inflect for case means that noun phrases can be moved around rather freely within the sentence for emphasis, but the lack of agreement means that syntax within a noun phrase is quite rigid.

NB: This page uses a number of weirdish characters that may not show up correctly on all systems. If they show up incorrectly, you may prefer the orthographically safe version of this page. The potential truble-causers are:

é e-acute
É E-acute
á a-acute
Á A-acute
ó o-acute
Ó O-acute
ð edh (lowercase)
Ð edh (uppercase)
θ theta (lowercase)
Θ theta (uppercase)
š s-caron
Š S-caron
ž z-caron
Ž Z-caron

Phonetic representations in brackets use the X-SAMPA system of ASCII-izing IPA signs.

2 Phonlogy

2.1 Stress
Tairezaž stress is almost always on the initial syllable of a non-compound word. The exceptions are mainly a few unstressed prefixes on adjectives and certain adverb froms, which are dealt with in the section on adjectives and adverbs. Compound words may either be stressed just like unitary words, or have secondary stress on the initial syllable and the primary stress on the first syllable of the second element of the compound (which will normally be its head). Which compounds take which kind of stress is unpredictable, but a good guideline is that the older and more common a compound is the more likely it is to be stressed as an unitary word.

2.2 Vowels
Tairezaž has five short vowel phonemes, three long and five diphthongs. The short vowels are written i e a o u, typically pronounced [I E a O U] - a fairly classical five-vowel scheme. Originally, all these had long counterparts, but the long high vowels has disappeared during the language's development, leaving a somewhat loopsided inventory of long vowels; é á ó [e: A: o:]. The diphthongs are written ei ai au oi ou, typical values are [eI aI aU oI oU].

(Certain dialects has raised [e:] and [o:] to [i:] and [u:], creating a somewhat more "balanced" inventory of long vowels. This pronunciation is not considered acceptable in Standard Tairezaž, but will, if adopted by an outsider, hardly cause any problems of understanding.)

Long vowels cannot stand before consonant clusters (within the same word), so when inflection or derivation would cause a such combination, the vowel is shortened. In addition, it changes its exact PoA to that of the corresponding short vowel (ie [E a O] respectively). Eg tév "sing(s)" but tevg "sang, has sung". For this purpose, the diphthong ou behaves as the long counterpart of u. Eg touš "kiss(es)" (present tense verb) but tušk "kissed" with the past tense suffix -k creating a consonant cluster. The reason is that ou historically was [u:], and could indeed still be considered phonemically /u:/. The situation with ei and i is similar, but less clear-cut; some instances of ei become i before a consonant cluster, while others don't. Moreover, some instances of ei remains in certain forms before consonant clusters, while turning to i in other forms of the same stem! Eg tšei "love(s)" gives both tšeint "loving" (verbal noun) and tšist "will love". Historically, this is because modern ei derives from a variety of sources; long /i:/, diphthongal /ei/, and various hiatic combinations.

There are certain instances of final ei, ai or oi, particularly in the present tense forms of verbs, that derives from a monophthong plus a -jV ending which has lost its final vowel. In these cases the -i of the diphthong disappears when another ending is added, leaving a monophthong behind. Eg melai "fight(s)", but melak "fought".

In unstressed positions, especially when epenthetic, e tends to [@]. Eg taner [tan@r] "us (dative)"

2.3 Consonants
Tairezaž has 22 consonant phonemes. It is heavy on fricatives, poor on nasals and entirely lacking semivowels.

Stops: p b t d k g. Note that t and d are properly dental, not alveolar like in English.

Fricatives: f v θ ð s z š ž. The latter six are X-SAMPA [T D s_d z_d S Z].

Affricates: ts dz tš dž.

Liquids: l r. Trilled or approximant alveolar r. "Light" (ie non-velarized) l.

Nasals: m n. These only contrast in initial position. In other positions, there is only one nasal phoneme, written n, which is [n] before vowels and finally, and before consonants assimilate in PoA with the following consonant. (NB: ng is always /ng/ [Ng].)

Most dialects of Tairezaž has syllabic variants of all or some of l n r, largely occuring where the Standard has unstressed el en er. A few also distinguishes syllabic m from syllabic n. In the Maidžen Klaiš these may be indicated by a breve-like sign, known as terkel, above the consonant. When indicating an dialectal pronunciation here, an underlined consonant will be used instead. Eg dialectal mestn "spaceships", Standard mesten. In Taireza, dialectal spellings are usually avoided (unless dialectal differences are the subject under discussion!), whereas they are frequenly found in Vaniza, where a number of dialects even has established standardized orthographies. This article, however, concentrates on the Standard language.

2.4 Phonotactics
Due to historical loss of vowels in initial unstressed syllables, Tairezaž features some quite monsterous initial consonant clusters. Eg kstrol "son", zgzang "tetragon". But, it should perhaps be stressed, we're not quite talking Georgian clusters here; more than four initial consonants is extremely rare. Medial and final clusters are very rarely more than three consonants long. Hiatic vowel combinations exist, but are quite rare. An example is seen in ðékian ['De:.kI.an] "fellow traveller".

A very strong constraint on consonant strings is that they must have uniform voicing. The normally voiced l m n r have voiceless allophones that automatically occur next to a voiceless stop, fricative or affricate. When inflection or derivation brings a voiced and voiceless consonant into contact voice assimilation invariably occurs. Normally the voicing of the consonant nearest to the word's stressed vowel determines the voicing of the string, except that l m n r lacks the power to make other consonants voiced, becoming themselves voiceless instead. Eg zgzang "tetragon" plus the accusative ending -s yields zgzangz, not **zgzanks. The accusative plural is, however, zgzangens (with voiceless n in the second syllable).

It should be noted that this kind of assimilation tends to stretch outside the individual word. For instance, the phrase zaz tsin "must construct" is, normally, pronounced as if "zaz dzin". This is not normally recognized in spelling, except for the various forms of the definite article, which are dealt with in the section on the article. A related phenomenon is the deletion of the first of two identical, or differing only in voicing, consonants. Thus, tšeint dzatš "first love" is rendered as "tšein tsatš", featuring voicing assimilation caused by consonant that is subsequently deleted(!).

(For this purpose, the affricates are treated like sequences of stop+fricative. However, for the purposes of syllabification they are treated as unitary consonants, eg itseθ "happiness" syllabifies as ['I.tsET].)

The consonants l n r can only occur next to a vowel. Loss of final vowels has created words with underlying -Cl, -Cn and -Cr. This is resolved by inserting a schwa into the cluster, but only in cases where the cluster is actually final. Eg kezl- "hawk" has nominative singular kezel ['kEz@l], but nominative plural kezlen. Presumably, m, had behaved the same way, weren't it for the fact that it only occurs as a lone initial. It may here be stressed that this feature of the Standard is is absent in a great number of dialects, which would instead make the consonant syllabic; kezl, pl kezln, but genitive kezli, pl kezlin.

When the adding of a prefix, or compounding, causes an m to be non-initial, it shifts to n, and this is recognized orthographically. Eg mauž "seen", inauž "unseen".

3 The Article

Tairezaž has a definite article ez, which does not change for case or number. It immediately preceeds its noun. There is no indefinite article.

By a quirk of Tairezan orthography, the various assimilated forms of the definite article are indicated in writing. Before a word beginning in a voiceless consonant, it becomes es. Before s z š or ž, the -z disappears altogether, but its theoretical presence is indicated with a "stopgap" sign, or in romanization an apostrophe; e'. Eg ez dréko "the boy", es keitent "the search", e' zdrákel "the avenger".

4 Nouns

4.1 Overview
The Tairezaž noun infects for two numbers (singular and plural) and four cases (nominative, accusative, dative and genitive). The endings are largely agglutinative, and there is only one declension. With the exception of a few poorly digested loanwords, there are really no "irregular" nouns, but there is a number of special classes and cases that has to be memorized.

4.2 The Nominative
The nominative singular is for most nouns identical to the noun stem. Its main function is to mark (or rather leave unmarked) the subject of a verb and, in defiance of a certain language universal, the object of a preposition. It is also used as vocative, and is the form quoted in dictionaries.

The nominative plural is formed with the ending -n, or on nouns ending in a consonant (the majority) -en (-n in many dialects). Eg stelza "girl", stelzan "girls", kstrol "son", kstrolen "sons".

4.3 The Accusative
The accusative marks the direct object of a verb. It is formed with the ending -s - the plural accusative is formed by adding this ending to the nominative plural form. After s z š ž θ or ð an -e- is inserted before the -s. Eg meiza "woman (nominative)", meizas "woman (accusative)". After a voiced stop, or v, the ending assimilates to -z. Eg kab "ridge (nomintative)", kabz "ridge (accusative)". Adding this ending can cause vowel shortening in stem; eg dák "sorrow (nominative)", daks "sorrow (accusative)", deil "nest, den (nominative)", dils "nest, den (accusative)."

The accusative also marks the direct objects of verbs that been turned into gerunds or agental nouns. Eg raig "eat" and tsek "person" give such constructions as raigent tsekens "eating (of) people", raigel tsekens "people eater".

4.4 The Dative
The dative marks the indirect object of a verb. It also marks beneficiaries. It is formed with the suffix -r after vowels, -er after consonants. In the plural, the dative ending is added to the nominative singular just like for the accusative.

Note the potential ambiguity between the dative and benefactive uses of this case. Telko tsaik sens Θárar "Telko gave it to Thára" could, in an appropriate context, mean "Telko gave it for Thára", ie to somebody else for Thára's benefit. Having both an indirect object and a beneficiary is usually avoided, except when the indirect object is a noun and the "beneficiary" is the interogative pronoun fer "for what cause, why".

4.5 The Genitive
The genitive has a number of related uses, including possessive, compositive and subject genitive. The genitive singular is from with the ending -i. Added to a noun stem ending in a vowel, it normally forms a diphthong with the preceeding vowel. The exceptions are the three diphthongs already ending in -i. What would be *-ui, *-aui and *-oui all merge as oi. What would be *-ii becomes -ei. The genitive plural is formed by adding -n to the genitive singular. Note that this means that while the sequence of endings is number-case for the accusative and the dative, it is case-number for the genitive. The genitive always follows its head noun.

The genitive's use as possessive should require little explanation. If a man, dazr-, has a house, daive, then it's the man's house: daive ez dazri. Note that a noun governed by a "possessive" genitive never takes a definite article itself - the fact that it governed by the genitive is enough to mark it as definite.

The genitive can also function as compositive, ie indicate what something is made of. Eg ez mest θauki "the metal spaceship, the spaceship of metal". Note that in this use, the genitive attribute does not make its head definite, which therefore can take the article. Note that this very often used figuratively; eg gron blasti "a time of war".

With the gerund, the genitive functions as subject genitive. Eg raigent zaves ez dazrin "the men's eating of bread". Note the accusative ending on zave "bread".

4.6 Noun Tables
To summarize a bit, here shall be given all the forms for two perfectly regular nouns, namely mest "spaceship" and reze "region":

		Singular	Plural		Singular	Plural
Nominative		mest	mesten		reze	rezen
Accusative		mests	mestens		rezes	rezens
Dative		mester	mestener		rezer	rezener
Genitive		mesti	mestin		rezei	rezein

4.7 A-Nouns
The so-called "a-nouns" are category of noun stems that historically ended in a short -a, that subsequently was lost in the nominative singular, but remains in other forms, except for the genitive, where it for historical reasons, that shall not here be detailed, never occured. A good example is tšenpa- "forest":

		Singular	Plural
Nominative		tšenp	tšenpan
Accusative		tšenpas	tšenpans
Dative		tšenpar	tšenpaner
Genitive		tšenpi	tšenpin

In lexica, were nouns are listed under their nominative singular form, a-nouns are indicated by adding the nominative plural in paranthesis. Eg tšenp (tšenpan), or simply tšenp (-an).

4.8 Other Special Cases
Noun stems like kezl- "hawk", dazr- "man" that end in an illegal final cluster has, as has been mentioned in the Phontactics section, an e inserted into the cluster in the nominative singular, giving for instance dazer "man" but dazren "men". These are not natively considered irregular, but in order to be able to refer easily to this class, I shall call them NI-stems, for "Nominative Infix", quite regardless of that the -e- is not, technically, a nominative marker at all. In dictionaries they are indicated similarly to a-nouns; eg dazer (dazren).

A few words manage to be a-nouns and NI-stems simultaneously. An example is tenra- "field (for agriculture)", which is declined as follows:

		Singular	Plural
Nominative		tener	tenran
Accusative		tenras	tenrans
Dative		tenrar	tenraner
Genitive		tenri	tenrin

A very few nouns originally ended in -i have potentially confusing behaviour - in particular their nominative plural looks like the genitive plural of a normal noun. The commonest of these so-called "i-nouns" is tšiks "loved one, close associate/relative". It is declined as follows:

		Singular	Plural
Nominative		tšiks	tšiksin
Accusative		tšiksis	tšiksins
Dative		tšiksir	tšiksiner
Genitive		tšiksei	tšiksein

To examplify what happens when adding the genitive -i to nouns ending in -au, -ou or -u, we may take zau "star, sun":

		Singular	Plural
Nominative		zau	zaun
Accusative		zaus	zauns
Dative		zaur	zauner
Genitive		zoi	zoin

5 Pronouns

5.1 Overview
The Tairezaž personal pronoun system is very regular, sports a fairly large number of forms and is very reminicent of nouns. Other parts of the pronoun system are less regular, and commonly show holes in declension charts.

5.2 Personal Pronouns
Most noteworthy about the personal pronouns is that the plural ones are simply the corresponding singular one with the plural endind -n.

The first person pronominal stem is ta "I". "Me", "us", "our" etc are derived simply by adding the relevant nominal case and number endings, giving this declension chart:

		Singular	Plural
Nominative		ta	tan
Accusative		tas	tans
Dative		tar	taner
Genitive		tai	tain

The second person pronouns are derived similarly from the stem ša "you":

		Singular	Plural
Nominative		ša	šan
Accusative		šas	šans
Dative		šar	šaner
Genitive		šai	šain

In the third person, the stem is sen "he, she, it". By its own it covers both "it" and "he/she" when refering to a human being of unknown sex, and in the plural it is used of groups of mixed sex. For "he" and "she", and for "they" refering to a single-sex group, the gender-specific forms sena (feminine) and seno (masculine) are normally used. Thus, there is full set of 24 forms of the third person pronoun:

		Singular	Plural		Singular (f)	Plural (f)		Singular (m)	Plural (m)
Nominative		sen	senen		sena	senan		seno	senon
Accusative		sens	senens		senas	senans		senos	senons
Dative		sener	senener		senor	senoner		senar	senaner
Genitive		seni	senin		senai	senain		senoi	senoin

There is a tendency to restrict the use of senan and senon to relatively small, concrete groups. A "they" refering to, say, all female inhabitants of a given city, may better be translated with senen. For groups which are single-sex entirely by accident, say all the winners at a certain lottery a certain week, senen may also be prefered.

The gender-specific forms are not normally applied to non-humans. A bull is "sen", not "seno", for instance. The exception to this is fables and similar stories, where animals essentially are humans in animal form; in such cases pronouns are applied as for humans.

5.3 The Relative Pronoun
The relative pronomial stem is ki. It, like the personal pronouns, inflects like a noun:

		Singular	Plural
Nominative		ki	kin
Accusative		kis	kins
Dative		kir	kiner
Genitive		kei	kein

Note ei for **ii in the genitive forms. The relative pronoun is normally initial in the relative clause, except for the genitive, which is preceeded by the word it governs.

5.4 The Reflexive Pronoun
Tairezaž has a reflexive pronomial stem ste- which refers back to the subject of the sentence. Eg Seno staksek stes "He killed himself". It only occurs in the accusative and the dative, but agrees in number with the word it refers to. Declension:

		Singular	Plural
Accusative		stes	stens
Dative		ster	stener

Some dialects sport archaic genitive forms of this pronon, singular stá and plural stná (sic - not **stán!), used in constructions like Ta žél mentens stá "I wash my hands". The Standard use a dative construction instead; Ta žél ez mentens ster "I wash the hands for me".

5.5 The Reciprocal Pronoun
The reciprocal pronoun is used when mulitple subjects does something to one another or for one another. It has also a nominative form used after prepositions, and a genitive one for when the subjects do something to one another's something. The forms are:

Nominative		vér
Accusative		vers
Dative		vérer
genitive		véri

Eg E' zaun ai kil vér "The stars are in orbit around one another" (notice the preposition kil "in orbit around" - thousands of years of space travel does such things to a language), Senen tušk vers "They kissed one another", Tan tsaik tsaistens dins vérer "We gave little gifts to one another", Ez kaiken ðunsulk tatons véri "The children bad-mouthed one another's dads".

Note the form telvér "with one another"="together", which is written as one word, but still has the stress on the second syllable.

5.6 Indefinite Pronouns
Tairezaž does not really have any indefinite pronoun like English "some", "someone". The nouns tsek "a person", plural tseken "people" and rek "a thing" are frequently used which very vague reference for this sort of meanings. Eg Tse tsek teš senos, sular tar "If some person sees him, tell me".

For "everyone" one finds tsekeneið, which is simply tseken eið "people all" written as one word. Notice that infectional endings turn up inside this word; eg tsekenereið "for everybody". Similarly rekeneið "evevything", tedeneið "everywhere" (lit "places all"), méveneið, lit "days all", frequently used to mean "always". It may be noted that this two later are not accompanied by any preposition meaning "in" or similar.

For "nobody" etc one finds a parallel series in -nik; tseknik "nobody", reknik "nothing", tednik "nowhere", mevnik "no day, never".

(This may be compared to the expressions anév and linév (both stressed on the second syllable). These are originally simply a mév "this day" and li mév "that day", but now means simply "now" and "then", respectively).

Besides eið "all" and nik "no, none", there are also seið "both" (haplology for sei eið "all two"), dzón "many" and uzgen "a few". These primarily acts as quantifiers for nouns; they may appear to act as independent pronouns when the noun is left out, but they never take inflectional endings. Eg Vaufen dzón ai ated. - Ze, ta tešk (vaufens) uzgen "Many dogs are here. - Yes, I have seen a few (dogs)". As seen, these always after go after the word they quantify.

5.7 Interogative pronouns
The interogative pronouns are formed with the element fe-, which also marks the interogative mood (see section 6 on verbs). Unlike all other pronouns, they fail to make a singular vs plural distinction, but instead make an sentient vs non-sentient distinction. The following forms are found:

		Sentient	Non-Sentient
Nominative		fend	fel
Accusative		fendz	fels
Dative		fer	fer
Genitive		vda	fla
Compositive		fei	fei

The dative form fer does not only cover both sentient "to whom" and non-sentient "to what", but also translates "why". This reflects the benefactive use of the dative case; "for the benefit of what cause?". The genitive forms generally only cover the possessive use of genitive - "whose" - so "a ship (made) of what?" cannot be translated mest fla?, which can only mean "whose ship?". Instead, the special "compositive" form fei "of what, with what" is used for the compositive sense; mest fei? "a ship of what?". As the astute reader has doubtlessly already concluded, it is the "compositive", not the "genitive", that connects formally and etymologically with the nominal genitive, and it might be argued that it would make more sense to refer to fei as "genitive" and vda, fla as, say, "possessive". That would, however, be at variance with native practice.

There are also feted "where" and fenév "when". An alternative to the later is fedren, which avoids the association with mév "day", but sounds archaic and/or pedantic to many speakers.

5.8 Demonstrative Pronouns and Demonstratives
The demonstrative pronouns are based on the two stems a- "this" and li- "that". Like the personal pronoun, they are inflected just like nouns:

		Singular	Plural		Singular	Plural
Nominative		a	an		li	lin
Accusative		as	ans		lis	lins
Dative		ar	aner		lir	liner
Genitive		ai	ain		lei	lein

Notice ei for **ii in the genitive forms of li-. As a curiosity, it may also be pointed out that that lein "of those" is a homophone of the adjective lein "mortal, perishable", and ain "of these" of the infinitive ain "to be".

These stems also function as demonstratives used together with a noun, but takes no case or number endings then. Eg a meiza "this woman", a meizaner "to/for these women".

6 Verbs

6.1 Overview
The Tairezaž verb has four finite forms - present, past, future and imperative- and a number of infinite ones - infinitive, gerund, active and passive participle. Mood is generally indicated by adverbs (see section 7 Adjectives and Adverbs). There is no markers for aspect, person or number. There are rather few outrightly irregular verbs, but a couple of special classes, whose members has to be memorized.

6.2 The Present Tense
The present is normally identical to the verb stem. Eg teš-, the stem for "to see", yields unchanged teš "see(s)". Exceptions are chiefly verbs which end in illegal consonant clusters, which gets broken up by an -e- in the present (cf the nominal NI-stems), and the so-called "i-verbs", on which see below. Note that the present tense is the dictionary form of verbs.

Besides actions that are currently ongoing, the present tense is also used for "timeless" assertations (eg stšaken ai dair "eagles are beautiful").

6.3 The Past Tense
The past tense is formed by the ending -k, or -ek. The former is used after vowels, and usually after f l n r š, and in assimilated form -g after v ž. A resultant consonant cluster will cause shortening of a preceeding long vowel, trigger ou>u, and usually ei>i. The longer form -ek is found after other consonants, and after l n r that are preceeded by another that consonant.

6.4 The Future Tense
The future tense is formed by the ending -st, -est. The former is used after vowels, and after postvocalic l n r, the later in all other cases.

Apart from describing events that will more or less inevitably occur, the future tense is also used as a kind of imperative. The use of the imperative form of a verb implies asking the addressed party to comply, wherefore commands that cannot be legitimately disobeyed are given in plain indicative future tense. Eg, an officer ordering his troops to open fire would say taurst "(you) will fire", not taurar "(please) fire!".

6.5 The Imperative
The imperative is, of course, not a tense, but it is in Tairezaž formally treated much like a such, and not like other moods which are indicated by adverbs (see section 7) and freely combine with past, present and future tense. The imperative is formed by the ending -ar. For certain common verb stems ending in a vowel, the ending is shortened to -r, but this is neither predictible or productive. Such verbs will be indicated in a dictionary.

The use of the imperative implies that the addressed party may legitimately decline - it's used for politely asking people to do as one wishes, not commands, which are handled by the future tense as described above.

6.6 The Infinitive
The infinitive is formed by the ending -n after vowels, -en after consonants. It is inflected for accusative or dative case when the verbal phrase the infinitive is part of functions as direct object or indirect object/beneficiary respectively. Eg Sena tšei stanens "She loves to dance", Seno ðek mauner e' zoifs "He went (in order) to see the tower".

6.7 The Gerund
The gerund is a verbal noun, capable of taking both direct and indirect objects. It is formed with the ending -ent after consonants, -nt after vowels. It will be noted that it does never cause ei>i; eg tšei "love(s)", tšeint "loving". The gerund takes case endings just like any noun.

6.8 The Passive Participle
The passive participle describes the state of an object after having been the direct object of a transitive verb (from which follows that intransitive verbs don't form passive participles). It, just like normal adjectives, follows the noun it describes. It is formed by the ending -ž, except after the consonants θ ð s z š ž and after postconsonantal l n r, where the ending is expanded to -ež. The ending is, of course, assimilated to -š after f p t k.

6.9 The Active Participle
The active participle describes the state of an object as it is carrying out the action of a verb. It is formed by the ending -ð after vowels, -eð after consonants.

An active participle of a transitive verb is capable of taking objects. Eg Ez dazren tsaið tsaists ez meizar "The man giving a gift to the woman" (tsai "give(s)").

6.10 Verb Tables
To summarize a bit again, here are given all the above-mentioned forms of two perfectly regular verb stems teš- "to see" and tsai- "to give":

Present		teš		Infinitive		tešen		Present		tsai		Infinitive		tsain
Past		tešk		Gerund		tešent		Past		tsaik		Gerund		tsaint
Future		tešest		Passive Part.		tešež		Future		tsaist		Passive Part.		tsaiž
Imperative		tešar		Active Part.		tešeð		Imperative		tsaiar		Active Part.		tsaið

6.11 Zerovalent Verbs
A Tairezaž verb does not require a subject. Subjectless sentences typically correspond to passive constructions (eg tešk senos "saw him" for "he was seen"). Moreover, there is a number of "zerovalent" verbs that cannot take any subject or object. They refer to actions that are perceived to happen "by themselves", eg weather phenomena; eg krešt "(it) rains", andž "(it) storms".

(There are no transitive verbs that cannot take a subject, possibly because the passive counterpart of a such verb, being a normal intransitive verb, would arise instead.)

6.12 I-Verbs
The rather few verb stems ending in a monophthong or au or ou form a class called "i-verbs" after the "empty" morpheme -i- that shows up in the present tense, the imperative and the gerund. A good example is zla- "to create":

Present		zlai		Infinitive		zlan
Past		zlak		Gerund		zlaint
Future		zlast		Passive Part.		zlaž
Imperative		zlaiar		Active Part.		zlað

Since the present tense is the dictionary form, i-verbs are distinguished from verb stems that actually end in -ai, -ei etc (eg tsai-, tšei-) by also giving the past tense: zlai (zlak).

(Historically, the origin of this -i- is a hiatus-preventing glide -j- in the case of the present tense (which has lost an ending -e) and the imperative, whereas for the gerund it is the result of -ajent>-aint - originally the gerund ending was -ent everywhere, and the -j- is again to prevent hiatus.)

6.13 The Copula
The copula verb ai "am/are/is" behaves like a mix of a "normal" stem ai- and an i-verb a-, with an extra irregularity in the imperative (which is however shared by a few other verbs). The forms are:

Present		ai		Infinitive		ain
Past		ak		Gerund		aint
Future		ast		Passive Part.		-
Imperative		air		Active Part.		aið

The active participle of the copula allows relative clauses to be turned into adjectival attributes; eg Ez dazer, ki ai zazel, raigek "The man, who is an engineer, ate" may be turned into Ez dazer aið zazel raigek "The being an engineer man ate". This is an somewhat formal construction, primarily but not exlusively used in written language.

6.14 Special Cases
Just like there are nominal NI-stems, there are a number of verb stems that behave much the same way. A good example is tazl- "to drink", which has present tense tazel. Similarly to i-verbs, these are indicated in dictionaries by giving the past tense in parenthesis; eg tazel (tazlek). I shall refer to this class as PI-stems, for "Present Tense Infix", in analogy with "NI-stems".

The behaviour of ei in verb stems is not entirely predictible, but the main rule is that it >i when inflection places immediately before an consonant cluster, except that it always remains before the -nt of the gerund. It may be enlighting to look at one stem where the ei is stem-final, and one where it is followed by a consonant; tšei- "to love" and feir- "to carry":

Present		tšei		Infinitive		tšein		Present		feir		Infinitive		feiren
Past		tšeik		Gerund		tšeint		Past		firk		Gerund		feirent
Future		tšist		Passive Part.		tšeiž		Future		first		Passive Part.		firž
Imperative		tšeir		Active Part.		tšeið		Imperative		feirar		Active Part.		feireð

Adding the accusative -s to the infinitive tšein gives, perfectly regularly, tšins.

It will also be noted that the imperative tšeir is irregular. This shortened imperative in -r is shared by a few common verb stems ending in a vowel; tšei- "to love", ai- "to be", tsélai- "to sit down" (imperative tsélair "please sit down, be seated") and mau- "to look at" (which has imperative maur, but otherwise is a perfectly regular i-verb with present tense moi etc). It does not, however, change the point regarding the behaviour of ei.

(It may be noted that mau- is a transitive verb which takes an direct object, eg maur lis "look at that")

Quite irregularly, they ei of peil- "to hazard" remains intact in all forms; eg past tense peilk.

( This is because instance of ei is from earlier /-eji-/, not from earlier /-i:-/, which would have been shortened to /-i-/ before a cluster and therefore missed in the /i:/>/ei/ change. The /i:/>/ei/ change belongs to well after Tairezaž's adoption as an official language, and is recognized in writing thanks to a spelling revision. Much earlier, in Late Klaiš, there was a change /ei/>/i:/, wherefore original Klaiš /ei/ and /i:/ come out the same in Tairezaž - as i before consonant clusters and ei otherwise. Where ei occurs before consonant clusters in the modern Standard language, it is either due to borrowing, or has arisen from collapses of /-eje-/ or /-eji-/, as here.)

The verb stem glou- "to float (in the air or other relevant gas)", despite being a perfectly regular i-verb, manages to have one of the scarier conjugations of the language:

Present		gloi		Infinitive		gloun
Past		glouk		Gerund		gloint
Future		glust		Passive Part.		-
Imperative		gloiar		Active Part.		glouð

... and let's not forget the infinitive accusative gluns ...

The verb ðék "travel(s), go(es)" may be conjugated in two different ways in Standard Tairezaž; either perfectly regularly with past ðékek and future ðékest, or irregularly with past ðek and future ðekst. In writing, the regular conjugation may give a more formal impression than the irregular. In speech, native speakers usually follow their dialect on this point even when speaking their best Standard as benefits a formal occasion or to ease an outsider's understanding. The small segment of the population which essentially speaks Standard as their native 'lect typically use the irregular forms, wherefore this use may be recommended for non-native speakers - either is however fully acceptable.

The very common verb daš "have/has, possess(es)" has irregular future dašt, passive participle daž and active participle dað. The verb mein- "to lead" has an irregular gerund meint "leading", otherwise it behaves similarly to feir above - notice past mink and passive participle minž. It is also the source of the somewhat oddly formed noun meineg "leadership" (both abstract and in the sense "leading group"). The verb veil "walks" irregularly adds an -e- the past and future tenses; veilek "walked" and veilest "will walk". All other forms are as expected; veilar, veilen, veilent, veileð.

7 Adjectives and Adverbs

7.1 Overview
Tairezaž does not distinguish formally between adjectives and adverbs, and very many words can function as either, eg món "swift" or "swiftly". The distinction made in native analysis is rather between closed-class, grammatical adverbs on one hand, and open-class adverbs and adjectives on the other. Since writing (and reading) "adjectives and adverbs" over and over again is rather dull, it can be assumed that anything said about adjectives here apply also to (open-class) adverbs, unless otherwise is indicated.

Adjectives and adverbs modifying a single word always follow that word (though possibly with other adjectives/-verbs in between); adverbs modifying an entire clause are typically clause-final.

Adjectives only inflect for degree of comparision. Noteworthily, there are "negative" degrees of comparision corresponding to "less" and "least", and degree of comparision is indicated by a prefix. There is no agreement in case, number or similar. Open-class adverbs behave the same, and grammatical adverbs do not inflect at all.

7.2 Degrees of Comparation
The basic, or "positive", form of an adjective is simply the bare, uninflected stem. The comparative is formed wby the prefix da- "more, -er" and the superlative by tše- "most, -est". The negative comparative is formed by the prefix me- "less" and the negative superlative by sis- "least". These prefixes are normally unstressed (see below for the exceptions). Using dair "beautiful" as example, we get:

Superlative		tšedair		"most beautiful"
Comparative		dadair		"more beautiful"
Positive		dair		"beautiful"
Neg. Comparative		medair		"less beautiful"
Neg. Superlative		sizdair		"least beautiful"

Note the assimilation s>z in sizdair.

Things become a little more complex with adjectives beginning with a vowel, apart from with the negative superlative prefix. Generally, an initial i-, e- or ei- will merge with the preceeding vowel to produce -ai- (with da-) or -ei- (with tše- and me-). Adding da- to an adjective beginning in u or ou will produce an initial dau-. The resultant diphthong will carry the word's stress. Eg its "happy", meits "less happy", ouk "often", dauk "more often". Other vowel pairings remain, exept for **aa, which is simplified to a eg andžes "stormy", dandžes "stormier". The negative superlative sis- will lose its final s before following s z š and ž, and have it voiced before v ð or voiced stop. An initial θ or ð will turn to t or d respectively after this prefix. Eg ðekren "mobile", sizdekren "least mobile". Notice that all prefixes cause an initial m to become n, eg món "swift", tšenón "swiftest".

7.3 Modal Adverbs
Moods, other than the (unmarked) indicative and the imperative are indicated by an adverb following the verb. It is placed after any "descriptive", open-class adverbs modifying the same verb. Eg ðék món gez "should go swiftly", not **ðék gez món. These adverbs combine freely with past, present and future tense. The set of moods with adverbs is:

Interogative; marker fe; turns the verb's sentence into a yes-or-no question; eg Seno ðek fe? "Did he go?".
Potential; marker fiks; indicates ablitity of carrying out the verb's action; eg Seno ðék fiks "He can go, he is able of going".
Debitive; marker gez; indicates that the subject should do something; eg Senen ðék gez "They should go".
Obligative; marker koi; indicates that the subject needs to do something; eg Seno ðék koi "He needs to go".
Subjunctive; marker lep; indicates irrealis or hypotheticality; eg Tse sena ak lep ated "If she were here".
Permissive; marker skei; indicates that the subject is allowed to carry out an action; eg Ša raig skei "You may eat".
Necessitive; marker tsin; indicates that the subject must do something; eg Sena ðék tsin "She must go".
Desiderative; marker zent; indicates a wish to carry out the verb's action; eg Sena ak zent ated "She want to be here".

The difference between koi and tsin is, simply put, that the former indicates a need to do something from within the subject, the later that external forces force the subject to do something. The difference may be examplified as follows; ta raig koi "I must eat (because otherwise I starve)" vs ta raig tsin "I must eat (because someone forces me)".

The subjunctive lep is mainly used in if-then constructions like Tse sena ai lep, tanen ai lep its "If she were here, we were happy (= ... we would be happy)".

7.4 Adverbs of Time and Place
Adverbs indicating spatial or temporal location are often frozen but easily analyzable phrases, much reminicent of pseudo-pronouns like tsekeneið "all people, everyone".

Of time, the most common are anév "now" (lit "this day"), linév "then" (lit "that day"), méveneið "always" (lit "days all") and mevnik "never" (lit "no day"). These all include mév "day" - a dwindling number of pedants maintain that anév can only mean "today", and linév only "in that day". Instead, they prefer, when refering to points in time within a single day, to use adren "now" and lidren "then", based on the otherwise obsolete word dren "moment, point in time". There are also the forms groneið "time all, always" and gronik "time no, never" - they are essentially slightly more formal synonyms of méveneið and mevnik. Yet another useful derivative of mév is glenév "yesterday".

(Speaking of pedanticism, it should perhaps be pointed out that mév means "day" in the senses "24h period" and "rotational period of a planet". "Day" as opposed to "night", is nain as opposed to spikron, which later is a semitransparent compound of speik "dark" and gron "time".)

Of space, there is the corresponding series ated "this place, here", lited "that place, there", tedeneið "places all, eveywhere" and tednik "no place, nowhere". Cf the noun ted "place, location".

There are also a pair of interogatives formed the same way; fenév "what day, when" and feted "what place, where". The pedantically minded prefer fedren for "when" when it is not equivalent to "what day". Note that these, and all the words in a- "this" and li- "that", are stressed on the second syllable.

7.5 Miscellanea
The Tairezaž words for "large" and "small" are taiks and dins, respectively. From the same stems are the adverbs taik "greatly, to a high degree, much" and dein "to a low degree, a little". Having a formally different adverb derived from the same stem as an adjective is otherwise quite rare.

The normal negation for verbs is eš "not"; eg Ta teš eš sens "I see it not, I do not see it". It is placed after any other adverbs modifying the same verb; eg Ta teš fiks eš sens "I cannot see it".

The words draz and vuzd both translates into English as "old". They are however not synonymous; draz is the opposite of veið "new, modern", vuzd of zail "young". Vuzd may also be applied to things, then meaning "worn (out), decayed, fit for replacement" (when applied to humans, it implies being many years old - not necessarily bent with age and senile!). Draz often, but not always, denotes something that has been replaced or superseded. An old house, that is still in use and not decayed, would be draz. Nominalized, they also mean quite different things; ez vuzden "the elderly" and ez drazen "the Ancients" (that'd include us ...).

8 Prepositions

Tairezaž prepositions are, as already mentioned, followed by the nominative form of nouns and pronouns. Otherwise, they are quite unremarkable. A prepositional phrase standing as attribute always follows its noun, one standing as clause adverbial is typically clause-final.

Common prepositions include: at "in, inside", ek "at", kil "in orbit around", sous "to (in the spatial sense)" θak "through", vod "than", zó "during", zreθ "from". Atsous "into" is, of course, a compound of at and sous.

There are no less than three prepositions that corresponds to different uses of English "with"; dvai is "with"="using", eg Sena dzork sens dvai menten senai "She shook it with her hands"; tel is "with"="together with", eg Sena stanst tel Tazio "She will dance with Tazio"; dži is "with"="accompanied by, having along", eg E' zdakian skenk dži tsaist "The minister came with a gift".

9 Conjunctions

9.1 Coordinating Conjuntions
The commonest coordinating conjunction is ne "and", used for coordinating both individual phrases and entire clauses. Note that is never used between multiple adjectives (adverbs) modifying a noun (verb/adjective/adverb). This is possibly because that in the nominative, a phrase like daive taiks ne sašt would be interpreted as a compound subject "a big house and a red thing/person" rather than as unitary subject "a big and red house", since adjectives are very often nominalized without change of form; eg, sašt can mean either "red" or "a red one". Other coordinating conjunctions include zgir "or" and ó "and also".

9.2 Subordinating Conjunctions
These include gu "but", lai "because (of), due to" and tse "if". The conjunction šu corresponds to English "that" in indirect speech, eg Sena sulk šu sena ak eš lited "She said that she was not there", and in constructions like Ta tešk šu sena ak lited "I saw that she was there" and Seno srát šu sens zol fiks eš "He knows that it cannot be done". Note that simple "He knows that" translates as simply Seno srát sens, or more forcibly Li reks seno srát! "He knows that thing!".

10 Numerals

Tairezaž employs a base-ten system of numerals, wherein a smaller number placed before a larger indicates multiplication and a smaller placed after a larger addition. The basic cardinals are:

0		ðaig
1		dza
2		sei
3		vef
4		sag
5		zvou
6		šar
7		tren
8		ašt
9		trav
10		θel
100		ksád
10,000		tsfail
100,000,000		gžour

From these come compound cardinals like θel-tren "ten-seven"="seventeen", and trenθel "seventen"="seventy". Notice that unlike the system in modern European languages, where there are new words for every third power of ten, the Tairezaž system provides for the first, second, fourth, eight etc power. "One thousand" is expressed as θelksád "ten hundred", "one million" as θelksátsfail "ten houndred ten-thousand". "2,308" becomes seiθel-vefksád-ašt "two ten three hundred eight". Notice how a multiplier is added directly but an addend is separated by a hyphen (or a connector character in the native writing system).

Higher numbers exist, but does in practice rarely turn up outside mathematics. Note that the largest number expressible using these numerals is trafθel-trafksád-trafθel-traftsfail-trafθel-trafksád-trafθel-travgžour-trafθel-trafksád-trafθel-traftsfail-trafθel-trafksád-trafθel-trav, or in arabic numbers 9,999,999,999,999,999, also known as 10^16-1.

The words for "first" and "second" are respectively dzatš and seiž. The higher ordinals are formed with the suffix -k, with some irregular assimilations and changes: vefk sak zvuk šark trenk aštek trafk θelk tsfailk gžurk. Ordinals from compound cardinals are simply formed changing the last piece of the cardinal to the corresponding ordinal; eg vefksád-dzatš "301st". There is also an ordinal ðaik "zeroth", which, hardly surprisingly, is not much used in ordinary speech. The Federal Calendar does, however, contain a zeroth year.

11 Syntax

11.1 Phrasal Syntax
The syntax of a noun phrase is quite rigid. It may be schematized as