Introduction

DjanZì is an analytic language, spoken by Zi people.

Phonology

Consonants

• Consonants are often labialized before /w/ and palatalized before /j/
• /nj/ is also sometimes realized as [ɲ] or [ɲj]
• /j/ is realized as [i] after /h/ and /c/
• Likewise, /w/ is realized as [u] after /h/, and other labial consonants

Vowels

• /e/ is realized as [ɛ̃] when nasalized and [ə] when preceded by /j/
• /o/ is realized as [ɔ̃] when nasalized

Tones

There are five tones:

• mid level [33]: a
• low falling [21]: à
• high rising [34]: á

Phonotactics

All syllables in DianZì follows C(W)V(N)T pattern, where:

• C is a consonant
• W is either /w/ or /j/ or /y/
• V is a vowel
• N is the vowel nasalization marker
• T is a tone

/w/ cannot precedes /u/ and /j/ not /i/

There are thus 3024 possible syllables.

Romanization

DjanZì is often written in CamelCase to disambiguate cases like /ng/ vs /ŋ/. Hyphenation is also often used as DjanZì words are often not too long, in which case capitalization is only mandatory for proper noun component.

J and W can be romanized as I and U for aesthetics, as there is no ambiguity there. Nasalization is often denoted with N, but sometimes also with NG.

Following spellings are thus all valid for DjanZì:

• DjanZì
• djan-Zì
• DiangZì
• djang Zì

(Derivational) Morphology

DjanZì is an analytic language, close to isolating. That means, DjanZì does not have grammatical morphemes to denote gender, case, tense, or number. However, it does have independent morphemes that can be used to derive new words.

Affixes

Prefixes

Affixes

Reduplication

Semantic

Semantic reduplication is reduplication where two words with similar meanings make up a compound. This often makes:

• generalization in case of nouns and verbs
• intensity increment in case of adjectives

Phonemic

Semantic reduplication is reduplication where two words with similar pronunciation make up a compound. This often:

• decreases intensity in case of adjectives
• denotes repetition in case of verbs
• denotes entirety in case of nouns
  • in case of kinship vocabulary, reduplication denotes endearment

Parts of speech

Nouns

Nominal phrases

1. Head noun
2. Totality
3. Quantifier/Number
4. Classifier
5. Attributive modifiers
6. Demonstrative
7. Prepositional phrase

Pronoun

Neutral

Neutral pronouns are similar to how they are in English. It is however mainly used in formal speech or formal writing. Using it on an one-on-one conversation implies either unfriendliness or distance.

Neutral pronouns can be pluralized by numerals and quantifiers as if they are nouns. Note that first plural personal pronoun is always exclusive.

Familiar

Gendered pronouns are chiefly used among people who are equal and close to one another, but not blood-related.

Hierarchical

There are not many non-familial hierarchies in Zì community, but the contrast in such relationships is showed clearly via pronouns. These pronouns lack third person pronoun. Hierarchical pronouns comes in pair, with one in the higher position and one in the lower:

• chieftain (kjá) - denizen (tò)
• teacher (se) - student (hin)
• leader (zi) - follower (hin)

One can be in several of these relationships at once. For example, one of the denizen can be the chieftain's teacher, in which case each party uses the lower pronoun for oneself and the higher for the other.

Kinship

• great-grandparent: sjà
• grandfather: fu
• grandmother: bu
• father: ba
  • father's elder brother: fa
    • father's elder brother's wife: nàn
  • father's elder sister: bá
    • father's elder sister's husband: gon
  • father's younger sibling: hju
    • father's younger sibling's spouse: tin
• mother: ma
  • mother's elder brother: fá
    • mother's elder brother's wife: nàn
  • mother's elder sister: sì
    • mother's elder sister's husband: gon
  • mother's younger sibling: vá
    • mother's younger sibling's spouse: mjé
• elder brother: kje
• elder sister: dje
• younger sibling: nen
• child: su
• niece/nephew: swá
• grandchild: gun
• great-grandchild: ngi

Note:

• Pronoun for parents' spouses who are not biological parents are the same as parents
• Pronoun for parent's elder brother's husband is lacked because homosexual relationships weren't acknowledged before, but he would use the same pronoun as the parent's elder brother. Likewise, the parent's elder sister's wife also use the same pronoun as her wife.
• Pronouns for father's elder brother, mother's elder sister, father's younger sibling, mother's younger sibling

Verbs

Adjective

Classifiers

• human: ngan
  • respectful: nga
  • derogatory: ngǐ
  • diminutive: ngí
• animal: man
  • four-legged: khú
  • winged: tǐ
• plant: ci
  • flower: khje
  • fruit-like (fruit, ball, egg): khwi
• thing: kí
  • book-like (dictionary, newspaper): hin
  • blade-like (knife, scissor, sword): zé
  • street-like (river, stream): lwin
  • yard-like (pond, lake): son
  • very large (sky, ocean, forest): lon
  • house-like: ngwo
  • clothes: bù
• food: bá
• abstract: tjen
• phenomenon: mwan

Numerals and Quantifiers

Numeral

DjanZi numerals is biquinary.

To refer to number zero (0), one use the negation particle khan.

10000 is a very big number already. In daily speech this number is synonymous with infinity. The next big word is cwé, 1000000000000 (trillion) if you really insist.

Quantifier

• several, few: ní
• many: fjè
• plenty: má má
• all: khá

Preposition

• at: zjà
• inside: tjǒ
• outside: ngà
• next to: nèn
• against: tá
• on, above: tan
• under, below: dú
• to: khá
• from: khè
• with: vjén
• of: kě
• between: nì

Conjunction

Conjunctions are words that connects two phrases to form some logical connection between them. Two conjunctions in a pair can switch place. Ones inside the parentheses in the below list can be omitted.

• because… so…: dà… so…
• though… but…: mà… nha…
• (either)… or…: (vo)… vo…
• (neither)… nor…: (cá)… cá…
• (both)… and…: (na)… na…
• … in order to…: ni… lun…

Particles

Modal

• imperative mood: ha
• interrogative mood: né
• possibility: sà
• acceptability: là
• admiration: san
• pity: ní

Adverbial

Adverbial particles indicates tenses and aspects.

• future: kja
• past: lwì
• continuous: can
• perfective: són
• perfect: ljě

Syntax

Being an analytic language, DjanZi depends heavily on positional syntax. Phrasal syntaxes are already discussed in the previous section. This section concerns sentence syntaxes.

Basic sentence

DjanZi sentences generally follows XSVO order, where X might be topic or an adverbial phrase (not consisting an SV pair).

Negation

Negative particle precedes what it negates.

Questions

Compound sentence

Dependent clause

Writing

DjanZi writing system is logographic. Simple words are purely pictograms, but more complex or abstract words are expressed with ideograms and phonograms, based on the pictograms, similar to how it's done in Chinese.

Pictograms

Pictograms are characters representing an object or idea by how it's visualized.

Ideograms

Ideograms are characters composing two or three pictograms to suggest a concept, usually hard to visualize. Each pictogram is called a radical.

The radicals are placed horizontally in ideograms with ratio 1:1, 1:2, or 1:1:2.

Phonograms

Phonograms are characters based on its synonyms. All phonograms are indicated with the character (mouth) on the left, with ratio 1:2.

Some phonograms also consists of semantic component. This semantic component occupy the top of the right part of the character (if this semantic component has one radical) or the bottom of the character (if this semantic component has two or more radicals)