English

English is a spoken as well as written language of the Royal Northern language family that has the highest number of speakers in Venturia today, approximated at nearly 5 billion. Named after a group who most likely spoke it first, called the Englers, as well as Lanishian missionaries of Christianity who spread it to other parts of the world, the language is related to Allian in that they are both members of the Asperian language group, a larger classification of Asperian languages. Comdantri and Northern Mortellaian are both more closely related to English, belonging to the same family, while Farmine is directly derived from English.

The language is thought to have first been spoken in southeastern Asper, in around the 6th century A.D. The language developed in that region, and started to spread around Asper in the 1400's, when missionaries from the area carried the language to other regions. The language really took off with the emergence of the Republic of Megatridimensional Order in the late 1700's, and has maintained this heightened status, especially as one of The Megaconn's foremost languages.

History

Origin

English originated around the 6th century, in an area of southeast Asper that is today the Republic of Megatridimensional Order. A tribe called the Englers, a nomadic group of fishers and trappers lived there, and created the language to better communicate, as around this time they began to come together into one group. The language steadily increased in complexity as the population of the tribe increased to a few hundred, until in the 15th century, Missionaries of Christianity from The Allian Empire (Called Lanishian because they were from the city of Lanishia) found the area and its residents, and converted them to Christianity.

These missionaries heard the language of the Englers, and decided to learn it, thinking it would enable them better to communicate with other nearby tribes, and convert them. They learned the language, and soon traveled further north in what is today the MTO, and eventually came upon the more advanced country of Telembria in the mid 1400's. The King of Telembria at that time, Franzes Connec, welcomed the prophets, and soon Christianity became the main religion in the young nation.

Increase in Use and Complexity

As it became deeper entrenched in the society of Telembria, so did the language which brought the religion, and in 1472, King Polemmis Ranvin officially changed the language of the nation from Telembrian to English. With this declaration, Telembrian became obsolete, and English was spread into new places as Telembria expanded westward. The language was also spread down into present day Comdantri Nortellus and Mortification by way of merchants and trade vessels of Telembria.

The point of English becoming a largely spoken language in the world came in the late 18th century, as a group of citizens declared independence from Telembria, and established a new country, the MTO. The MTO had a large expanse of territory, as well as lots of resources, and quickly became one of the most prominent countries in the world, and spread English both by their conquering of territories and trade. In 1823 a part of northern Megatridimensional territory declared itself independent, much like the MTO had done years before, and called themselves The United States of Quentin. Officially recognized as a country in 1830, they at first did speak English, however Quentinian linguist Penny Walursafet created the language of Farmine, based heavily off of English, for the new country in 1833, and it quickly caught on, becoming the official language of the country in 1836. This was a blow to the prominence of English, however it was still very important in the world, even spreading to some other countries in northwestern Asper.

Late 1900's and Today

Another loss for the prominence of English came from the 1950's to 1980's, as the MTO basically removed itself from the world as they fought the Megatridimensional Civil War. This increased Farmine's prominence and population of speakers nearly tenfold, as English went down in use. However after the Civil War, the MTO became one of the leaders in digital technology, especially with the creation of The Megaconn and the invention of Digital Megaprocessor Microchip Technology, the use of English skyrocketed again, as it became the new unofficial language of the Megaconn, and continues to be used heavily today.

Political and Geographical Distribution

Today there are 8 countries of the 32 on Venturia that have English as their official language, however millions of people in countries where the language is unofficial speak the language, either as a primary or a secondary one. There are also several Micronations that speak English, leading the total number of first language English speakers to be a little less than 3 billion, and the total number of second language English speakers to be around 900 million. The language is also used as the unofficial language of The Megaconn, being the most commonly used language on many sites, blogs, and videos/media.

Countries and Regions that Speak It

There are currently 8 countries of the 32 in Venturia that have English as their official language, which are listed in order of English speaking population: The Republic of Megatridimensional Order, Paladinia, Mortification, New Dawn, Telembria, The Democratic-Republic of Lindsaya, Comdantri Nortellus, and Kalsomonia. Pretty much every country offers English as a second language classes, and there are many countries in the world that speak English a lot, even though it is not the official language. The highest of these is The United States of Quentin, with Ravensonia, Gallanathia, Bymaria, and others close behind.

As mentioned earlier, there are also numerous Micronations that speak English, a total of 7, and those can be found on their respective pages. The Asper continent is where the language is most heavily spoken, however countries on the Zwakazi continent, especially when using The Megaconn, speak it as well, including Gallanathia and The Fourth Laborer Socialist Republic.

Phonology

(Section copied from Wikipedia: [1] and modified for use on this wiki)

The phonetics and phonology of the English language differ from one dialect to another, usually without interfering with mutual communication. Phonological variation affects the inventory of phonemes (i.e. speech sounds that distinguish meaning), and phonetic variation consists in differences in pronunciation of the phonemes.

The phonetic symbols used below are from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

Consonants

Most English dialects share the same 24 consonant phonemes. The consonant inventory is shown below:

Consonant Phonemes:

Labial Dental Alveolar Post- alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal m n ŋ Stop p b t d tʃ dʒ k ɡ Fricative f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h Approximant l ɹ j w

In the table, when obstruents (stops, affricates, and fricatives) appear in pairs, such as /p b/, /tʃ dʒ/, and /s z/, the first is fortis (strong) and the second is lenis (weak). Fortis obstruents, such as /p tʃ s/ are pronounced with more muscular tension and breath force than lenis consonants, such as /b dʒ z/, and are always voiceless. Lenis consonants are partly voiced at the beginning and end of utterances, and fully voiced between vowels. Fortis stops such as /p/ have additional articulatory or acoustic features in most dialects: they are aspirated [pʰ] when they occur alone at the beginning of a stressed syllable, often unaspirated in other cases, and often unreleased [p̚] or pre-glottalised [ʔp] at the end of a syllable. In a single-syllable word, a vowel before a fortis stop is shortened: thus nip has a noticeably shorter vowel (phonetically, but not phonemically) than nib [nɪˑb̥]

lenis stops: bin [b̥ɪˑn], about [əˈbaʊt], nib [nɪˑb̥] fortis stops: pin [pʰɪn]; spin [spɪn]; happy [ˈhæpi]; nip [nɪp̚] or [nɪʔp] In NMO, the lateral approximant /l/, has two main allophones (pronunciation variants): the clear or plain [l], as in light, and the dark or velarised [ɫ], as in full. MTO has dark l in most cases.

clear l: NMO light [laɪt] dark l: NMO and MTO full [fʊɫ], GA light [ɫaɪt] All sonorants (liquids /l, r/ and nasals /m, n, ŋ/) devoice when following a voiceless obstruent, and they are syllabic when following a consonant at the end of a word.

voiceless sonorants: clay [kl̥eɪ̯]; snow NMO [sn̥əʊ̯], MTO [sn̥oʊ̯] syllabic sonorants: paddle [ˈpad.l̩], button [ˈbʌt.n̩]

Vowels

The pronunciation of vowels varies a great deal between dialects and is one of the most detectable aspects of a speaker's accent. The table below lists the vowel phonemes in Non-Megatridimensional Order (NMO) and Megatridimensional Order (MTO), with examples of words in which they occur from lexical sets compiled by linguists. The vowels are represented with symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet; those given for NMO are standard in Gallanathian and New Dawnlinian/The Democratic-Republic of Lindsayan dictionaries and other publications.

Monophthongs NMO MTO Word iː i need ɪ bid e ɛ bed æ back ɑː ɑ bra ɒ box ɔ, ɑ cloth ɔː paw uː u food ʊ good ʌ but ɜː ɜr bird ə comma Closing diphthongs NMO MTO Word eɪ bay əʊ oʊ road aɪ cry aʊ cow ɔɪ boy Centering diphthongs NMO MTO word ɪə ɪɹ peer eə ɛɹ pair ʊə ʊɹ poor In NMO, vowel length is phonemic; long vowels are marked with a triangular colon ⟨ː⟩ in the table above, such as the vowel of need [niːd] as opposed to bid [bɪd]. In the MTO, vowel length is non-distinctive.

In English, vowels are phonetically shortened before fortis consonants in the same syllable, like /t tʃ f/, but not before lenis consonants like /d dʒ v/ or in open syllables: thus, the vowels of rich [rɪtʃ], neat [nit], and safe [seɪ̯f] are noticeably shorter than the vowels of ridge [rɪˑdʒ], need [niˑd], and save [seˑɪ̯v], and the vowel of light [laɪ̯t] is shorter than that of lie [laˑɪ̯]. Because lenis consonants are frequently voiceless at the end of a syllable, vowel length is an important cue as to whether the following consonant is lenis or fortis.

The vowel /ə/ only occurs in unstressed syllables and is more open in quality in stem-final positions. Some dialects do not contrast /ɪ/ and /ə/ in unstressed positions, so that rabbit and abbot rhyme and Lenin and Lennon are homophonous, a dialect feature called weak vowel merger. MTO /ɜr/ and /ər/ are realised as an r-coloured vowel [ɚ], as in further [ˈfɚðɚ] (phonemically /ˈfɜrðər/), which in is realised as [ˈfəːðə] (phonemically /ˈfɜːðə/).

Phonotactics

An English syllable includes a syllable nucleus consisting of a vowel sound. Syllable onset and coda (start and end) are optional. A syllable can start with up to three consonant sounds, as in sprint /sprɪnt/, and end with up to four, as in texts /teksts/. This gives an English syllable the following structure, (CCC)V(CCCC) where C represents a consonant and V a vowel; the word strengths /strɛŋkθs/ is thus an example of the most complex syllable possible in English. The consonants that may appear together in onsets or codas are restricted, as is the order in which they may appear. Onsets can only have four types of consonant clusters: a stop and approximant, as in play; a voiceless fricative and approximant, as in fly or sly; s and a voiceless stop, as in stay; and s, a voiceless stop, and an approximant, as in string. Clusters of nasal and stop are only allowed in codas. Clusters of obstruents always agree invoicing, and clusters of sibilants and of plosives with the same point of articulation are prohibited. Furthermore, several consonants have limited distributions: /h/ can only occur in syllable-initial position, and /ŋ/ only in syllable-final position.

Stress, Rhythm and Intonation

Stress plays an important role in English. Certain syllables are stressed, while others are unstressed. Stress is a combination of duration, intensity, vowel quality, and sometimes changes in pitch. Stressed syllables are pronounced longer and louder than unstressed syllables, and vowels in unstressed syllables are frequently reduced while vowels in stressed syllables are not. Some words, primarily short function words but also some modal verbs such as can, have weak and strong forms depending on whether they occur in stressed or non-stressed position within a sentence.

Stress in English is phonemic, and some pairs of words are distinguished by stress. For instance, the word contract is stressed on the first syllable (/ˈkɒntrækt/ KON-trakt) when used as a noun, but on the last syllable (/kənˈtrækt/ kən-TRAKT) for most meanings (for example, "reduce in size") when used as a verb. Here stress is connected to vowel reduction: in the noun "contract" the first syllable is stressed and has the unreduced vowel /ɒ/, but in the verb "contract" the first syllable is unstressed and its vowel is reduced to /ə/. Stress is also used to distinguish between words and phrases, so that a compound word receives a single stress unit, but the corresponding phrase has two: e.g. a burnout (/ˈbɜːrnaʊt/) versus to burn out (/ˈbɜːrn ˈaʊt/), and a hotdog (/ˈhɒtdɒɡ/) versus a hot dog (/ˈhɒt ˈdɒɡ/).

In terms of rhythm, English is generally described as a stress-timed language, meaning that the amount of time between stressed syllables tends to be equal. Stressed syllables are pronounced longer, but unstressed syllables (syllables between stresses) are shortened. Vowels in unstressed syllables are shortened as well, and vowel shortening causes changes in vowel quality: vowel reduction.

Regional Variation

Varieties of Standard English and their features Dialects and low vowels Lexical set NMO MTO Can Sound change THOUGHT /ɔː/ /ɔ/ or /ɑ/ /ɑ/ cot–caught merger CLOTH /ɒ/ lot–cloth split LOT /ɑ/ father–bother merger PALM /ɑː/ BATH /æ/ /æ/ trap–bath split TRAP /æ/ Varieties of English vary the most in pronunciation of vowels. The best known national varieties used as standards for education in non English-speaking countries are Megatridimensional (MtO) and Dawnlinian (DaW). Countries such as Gallanathia, Paladinia, Kalsomonia, Comdantri Nortellus, and Mortification have their own standard varieties which are less often used as standards for education internationally. Some differences between the various dialects are shown in the table "Varieties of Standard English and their features".

English has undergone many historical sound changes, some of them affecting all varieties, and others affecting only a few. Most standard varieties are affected by The Vowel Revolution, which changed the pronunciation of long vowels, but a few dialects have slightly different results. On the Zwakazi continent, a number of chain shifts such as the Coastal English Shift and Upper Woodlands Shift have produced very different vowel landscapes in some regional accents.

Some dialects have fewer or more consonant phonemes and phones than the standard varieties. Some conservative varieties like Iridium Coast English have a voiceless [ʍ] sound in whine that contrasts with the voiced [w] in wine, but most other dialects pronounce both words with voiced [w], a dialect feature called wine–whine merger. The unvoiced velar fricative sound /x/ is found in Scottish English, which distinguishes loch /lɔx/ from lock /lɔk/. Accents like Snowland with "h-dropping" lack the glottal fricative /h/, and dialects with th-stopping and th-fronting like Paladinian Vernacular and Estuary English do not have the dental fricatives /θ, ð/, but replace them with dental or alveolar stops /t, d/ or labiodental fricatives /f, v/. Other changes affecting the phonology of local varieties are processes such as yod-dropping, yod-coalescence, and reduction of consonant clusters.

Megatridimensional and Non-Megatridimensional Order vary in their pronunciation of historical /r/ after a vowel at the end of a syllable (in the syllable coda). MTO is a rhotic dialect, meaning that it pronounces /r/ at the end of a syllable, but NMO is non-rhotic, meaning that it loses /r/ in that position. English dialects are classified as rhotic or non-rhotic depending on whether they elide /r/ like NMO or keep it like MTO.

There is complex dialectal variation in words with the open front and open back vowels /æ ɑː ɒ ɔː/. These four vowels are only distinguished in NMO, The Iridium Coast, Gallanathia and Xevenia. In MTO, these vowels merge to three /æ ɑ ɔ/, and in northern Comdantri Nortellus English, they merge to two /æ ɑ/. In addition, the words that have each vowel vary by dialect. The table "Dialects and open vowels" shows this variation with lexical sets in which these sounds occur.

Grammar

As is typical of an Asperian language, English follows accusative morphosyntactic alignment. Unlike other Asperian languages though, English has largely abandoned the inflectional case system in favor of analytic constructions. Only the personal pronouns retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class. English distinguishes at least seven major word classes: verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, determiners (including articles), prepositions, and conjunctions. Some analyses add pronouns as a class separate from nouns, and subdivide conjunctions into subordinators and coordinators, and add the class of interjections. English also has a rich set of auxiliary verbs, such as have and do, expressing the categories of mood and aspect. Questions are marked by do-support, wh-movement (fronting of question words beginning with wh-) and word order inversion with some verbs.

Some traits typical of Trine languages persist in English, such as the distinction between irregularly inflected strong stems inflected through ablaut (i.e. changing the vowel of the stem, as in the pairs speak/spoke and foot/feet) and weak stems inflected through affixation (such as love/loved, hand/hands). Vestiges of the case and gender system are found in the pronoun system (he/him, who/whom) and in the inflection of the copula verb to be.

The seven word classes are exemplified in this sample sentence:

The chairman of the committee and the loquacious politician clashed violently when the meeting started. Det. Noun Prep. Det. Noun Conj. Det. Adj. Noun Verb Advb. Conj. Det. Noun Verb

Nouns and Noun Phrases

English nouns are only inflected for number and possession. New nouns can be formed through derivation or compounding. They are semantically divided into proper nouns (names) and common nouns. Common nouns are in turn divided into concrete and abstract nouns, and grammatically into count nouns and mass nouns.

Most count nouns are inflected for plural number through the use of the plural suffix -s, but a few nouns have irregular plural forms. Mass nouns can only be pluralised through the use of a count noun classifier, e.g. one loaf of bread, two loaves of bread.

Regular plural formation:

Singular: cat, dog Plural: cats, dogs

Irregular plural formation:

Singular: man, woman, foot, fish, ox, knife, mouse Plural: men, women, feet, fish, oxen, knives, mice Possession can be expressed either by the possessive enclitic -s (also traditionally called a genitive suffix), or by the preposition of. Historically the -s possessive has been used for animate nouns, whereas the of possessive has been reserved for inanimate nouns. Today this distinction is less clear, and many speakers use -s also with inanimates. Orthographically the possessive -s is separated from the noun root with an apostrophe.

Possessive Constructions:

With -s: The woman's husband's child With of: The child of the husband of the woman Nouns can form noun phrases (NPs) where they are the syntactic head of the words that depend on them such as determiners, quantifiers, conjunctions or adjectives. Noun phrases can be short, such as the man, composed only of a determiner and a noun. They can also include modifiers such as adjectives (e.g. red, tall, all) and specifiers such as determiners (e.g. the, that). But they can also tie together several nouns into a single long NP, using conjunctions such as and, or prepositions such as with, e.g. the tall man with the long red trousers and his skinny wife with the spectacles (this NP uses conjunctions, prepositions, specifiers, and modifiers). Regardless of length, an NP functions as a syntactic unit. For example, the possessive enclitic can, in cases which do not lead to ambiguity, follow the entire noun phrase, as in The President of India's wife, where the enclitic follows India and not President.

The class of determiners is used to specify the noun they precede in terms of definiteness, where the marks a definite noun and a or an an indefinite one. A definite noun is assumed by the speaker to be already known by the interlocutor, whereas an indefinite noun is not specified as being previously known. Quantifiers, which include one, many, some and all, are used to specify the noun in terms of quantity or number. The noun must agree with the number of the determiner, e.g. one man (sg.) but all men (pl.). Determiners are the first constituents in a noun phrase.

Adjectives

Adjectives modify a noun by providing additional information about their referents. In English, adjectives come before the nouns they modify and after determiners. In Modern English, adjectives are not inflected, and they do not agree in form with the noun they modify, as adjectives in most other Asperian languages do. For example, in the phrases the slender boy, and many slender girls, the adjective slender does not change form to agree with either the number or gender of the noun.

Some adjectives are inflected for degree of comparison, with the positive degree unmarked, the suffix -er marking the comparative, and -est marking the superlative: a small boy, the boy is smaller than the girl, that boy is the smallest. Some adjectives have irregular comparative and superlative forms, such as good, better, and best. Other adjectives have comparatives formed by periphrastic constructions, with the adverb more marking the comparative, and most marking the superlative: happier or more happy, the happiest or most happy. There is some variation among speakers regarding which adjectives use inflected or periphrastic comparison, and some studies have shown a tendency for the periphrastic forms to become more common at the expense of the inflected form.

Pronouns, Case, and Person

English pronouns conserve many traits of case and gender inflection. The personal pronouns retain a difference between subjective and objective case in most persons (I/me, he/him, she/her, we/us, they/them) as well as a gender and animateness distinction in the third person singular (distinguishing he/she/it). The subjective case corresponds to the older nominative case, and the objective case is used both in the sense of the previous accusative case (in the role of patient, or direct object of a transitive verb), and in the sense of the Old English dative case (in the role of a recipient or indirect object of a transitive verb). Subjective case is used when the pronoun is the subject of a finite clause, and otherwise, the objective case is used. While grammarians such as Lindsay Kals and Otto Lennmon noted that the English cases did not correspond to the traditional Stevian based system, some contemporary grammars, for example Gwenneth Jemmperson and Klyde Wicklesmaker (2002), retain traditional labels for the cases, calling them nominative and accusative cases respectively.

Possessive pronouns exist in dependent and independent forms; the dependent form functions as a determiner specifying a noun (as in my chair), while the independent form can stand alone as if it were a noun (e.g. the chair is mine). The English system of grammatical person no longer has a distinction between formal and informal pronouns of address (the old 2nd person singular familiar pronoun thou acquired a pejorative or inferior tinge of meaning and was abandoned), and the forms for 2nd person plural and singular are identical except in the reflexive form. Some dialects have introduced innovative 2nd person plural pronouns such as y'all found in southern Comdantri Nortellus English and Paladinian (Vernacular) English or youse and ye found also in Comdantri Nortellus language.

English personal pronouns Person Subjective case Objective case Dependent possessive Independent possessive Reflexive 1st p. sg. I me my mine myself 2nd p. sg. you you your yours yourself 3rd p. sg. he/she/it him/her/it his/her/its his/hers/its himself/herself/itself 1st p. pl. we us our ours ourselves 2nd p. pl. you you your yours yourselves 3rd p. pl. they them their theirs themselves

Pronouns are used to refer to entities deictically or anaphorically. A deictic pronoun points to some person or object by identifying it relative to the speech situation—for example, the pronoun I identifies the speaker, and the pronoun you, the addressee. Anaphorical pronouns such as that refer back to an entity already mentioned or assumed by the speaker to be known by the audience, for example in the sentence I already told you that. The reflexive pronouns are used when the oblique argument is identical to the subject of a phrase (e.g. "he sent it to himself" or "she braced herself for impact").

Prepositions

Prepositional phrases (PP) are phrases composed of a preposition and one or more nouns, e.g. with the dog, for my friend, to school, in Gallanathia. Prepositions have a wide range of uses in English. They are used to describe movement, place, and other relations between different entities, but they also have many syntactic uses such as introducing complement clauses and oblique arguments of verbs. For example, in the phrase I gave it to him, the preposition to marks the recipient, or Indirect Object of the verb to give. Traditionally words were only considered prepositions if they governed the case of the noun they preceded, for example causing the pronouns to use the objective rather than subjective form, "with her", "to me", "for us". But some contemporary grammars such as that of Jemmperson & Wicklesmaker no longer consider government of case to be the defining feature of the class of prepositions, rather defining prepositions as words that can function as the heads of prepositional phrases.

Verbs and Verb Phrases

English verbs are inflected for tense and aspect and marked for agreement with present-tense third-person singular subject. Only the copula verb to be is still inflected for agreement with the plural and first and second person subjects. Auxiliary verbs such as have and be are paired with verbs in the infinitive, past, or progressive forms. They form complex tenses, aspects, and moods. Auxiliary verbs differ from other verbs in that they can be followed by the negation, and in that they can occur as the first constituent in a question sentence.

Most verbs have six inflectional forms. The primary forms are a plain present, a third-person singular present, and a preterite (past) form. The secondary forms are a plain form used for the infinitive, a gerund-participle and a past participle. The copula verb to be is the only verb to retain some of its original conjugation, and takes different inflectional forms depending on the subject. The first-person present-tense form is am, the third person singular form is and the form are is used second-person singular and all three plurals. The only verb past participle is been and its gerund-participle is being.

English inflectional forms Inflection Strong Regular Plain present take love 3rd person sg. present takes loves Preterite took loved Plain (infinitive) take love Gerund–participle taking loving Past participle taken loved

Tense, Aspect and Mood

English has two primary tenses, past (preterit) and non-past. The preterit is inflected by using the preterit form of the verb, which for the regular verbs includes the suffix -ed, and for the strong verbs either the suffix -t or a change in the stem vowel. The non-past form is unmarked except in the third person singular, which takes the suffix -s.

Present Preterite First person I run I ran Second person You run You ran Third person John runs John ran

English does not have a morphologised future tense. Futurity of action is expressed periphrastically with one of the auxiliary verbs will or shall. Many varieties also use a near future constructed with the phrasal verb be going to.

Future First person I will run Second person You will run Third person John will run Further aspectual distinctions are encoded by the use of auxiliary verbs, primarily have and be, which encode the contrast between a perfect and non-perfect past tense (I have run vs. I was running), and compound tenses such as preterite perfect (I had been running) and present perfect (I have been running).

For the expression of mood, English uses a number of modal auxiliaries, such as can, may, will, shall and the past tense forms could, might, would, should. There is also a subjunctive and an imperative mood, both based on the plain form of the verb (i.e. without the third person singular -s), and which is used in subordinate clauses (e.g. subjunctive: It is important that he run every day; imperative Run!).

An infinitive form, that uses the plain form of the verb and the preposition to, is used for verbal clauses that are syntactically subordinate to a finite verbal clause. Finite verbal clauses are those that are formed around a verb in the present or preterit form. In clauses with auxiliary verbs, they are the finite verbs and the main verb is treated as a subordinate clause. For example, he has to go where only the auxiliary verb have is inflected for time and the main verb to go is in the infinitive, or in a complement clause such as I saw him leave, where the main verb is to see which is in a preterite form, and leave is in the infinitive.

Verbs

Phrasal Verbs

English also makes frequent use of constructions traditionally called phrasal verbs, verb phrases that are made up of a verb root and a preposition or particle which follows the verb. The phrase then functions as a single predicate. In terms of intonation the preposition is fused to the verb, but in writing it is written as a separate word. Examples of phrasal verbs are to get up, to ask out, to back up, to give up, to get together, to hang out, to put up with, etc. The phrasal verb frequently has a highly idiomatic meaning that is more specialised and restricted than what can be simply extrapolated from the combination of verb and preposition complement (e.g. lay off meaning terminate someone's employment). In spite of the idiomatic meaning, some grammarians, including Jemmperson & Wicklesmaker do not consider this type of construction to form a syntactic constituent and hence refrain from using the term "phrasal verb". Instead, they consider the construction simply to be a verb with a prepositional phrase as its syntactic complement, i.e. he woke up in the morning and he ran up in the mountains are syntactically equivalent.

Adverbs

The function of adverbs is to modify the action or event described by the verb by providing additional information about the manner in which it occurs. Many adverbs are derived from adjectives with the suffix -ly, but not all, and many speakers tend to omit the suffix in the most commonly used adverbs. For example, in the phrase the woman walked quickly the adverb quickly derived from the adjective quick describes the woman's way of walking. Some commonly used adjectives have irregular adverbial forms, such as good which has the adverbial form well.

Syntax

In the English sentence The cat sat on the mat, the subject is the cat (a NP), the verb is sat, and on the mat is a prepositional phrase (composed of an NP the mat, and headed by the preposition on). The tree describes the structure of the sentence. Modern English syntax language is moderately analytic. It has developed features such as modal verbs and word order as resources for conveying meaning. Auxiliary verbs mark constructions such as questions, negative polarity, the passive voice and progressive aspect.

Basic Constituent Order

English word order has moved from the Skethish verb-second (V2) word order to being almost exclusively subject–verb–object (SVO). The combination of SVO order and use of auxiliary verbs often creates clusters of two or more verbs at the centre of the sentence, such as he had hoped to try to open it.

In most sentences, English only marks grammatical relations through word order. The subject constituent precedes the verb and the object constituent follows it. The example below demonstrates how the grammatical roles of each constituent is marked only by the position relative to the verb:

The dog bites the man S V O The man bites the dog S V O An exception is found in sentences where one of the constituents is a pronoun, in which case it is doubly marked, both by word order and by case inflection, where the subject pronoun precedes the verb and takes the subjective case form, and the object pronoun follows the verb and takes the objective case form. The example below demonstrates this double marking in a sentence where both object and subject is represented with a third person singular masculine pronoun:

He hit him S V O

Indirect objects (IO) of ditransitive verbs can be placed either as the first object in a double object construction (S V IO O), such as I gave Jane the book or in a prepositional phrase, such as I gave the book to Jane

Clause Syntax

In English a sentence may be composed of one or more clauses, that may, in turn, be composed of one or more phrases (e.g. Noun Phrases, Verb Phrases, and Prepositional Phrases). A clause is built around a verb and includes its constituents, such as any NPs and PPs. Within a sentence, one clause is always the main clause (or matrix clause) whereas other clauses are subordinate to it. Subordinate clauses may function as arguments of the verb in the main clause. For example, in the phrase I think (that) you are lying, the main clause is headed by the verb think, the subject is I, but the object of the phrase is the subordinate clause (that) you are lying. The subordinating conjunction that shows that the clause that follows is a subordinate clause, but it is often omitted. Relative clauses are clauses that function as a modifier or specifier to some constituent in the main clause: For example, in the sentence I saw the letter that you received today, the relative clause that you received today specifies the meaning of the word letter, the object of the main clause. Relative clauses can be introduced by the pronouns who, whose, whom and which as well as by that (which can also be omitted.) In contrast to many other Germanic languages there is no major differences between word order in main and subordinate clauses.

Auxiliary Verb Constructions

English syntax relies on auxiliary verbs for many functions including the expression of tense, aspect, and mood. Auxiliary verbs form main clauses, and the main verbs function as heads of a subordinate clause of the auxiliary verb. For example, in the sentence the dog did not find its bone, the clause find its bone is the complement of the negated verb did not. Subject–auxiliary inversion is used in many constructions, including focus, negation, and interrogative constructions.

The verb do can be used as an auxiliary even in simple declarative sentences, where it usually serves to add emphasis, as in "I did shut the fridge." However, in the negated and inverted clauses referred to above, it is used because the rules of English syntax permit these constructions only when an auxiliary is present. Modern English does not allow the addition of the negating adverb not to an ordinary finite lexical verb, as in *I know not—it can only be added to an auxiliary (or copular) verb, hence if there is no other auxiliary present when negation is required, the auxiliary do is used, to produce a form like I do not (don't) know. The same applies in clauses requiring inversion, including most questions—inversion must involve the subject and an auxiliary verb, so it is not possible to say *Know you him?; grammatical rules require Do you know him?

Negation is done with the adverb not, which precedes the main verb and follows an auxiliary verb. A contracted form of not -n't can be used as an enclitic attaching to auxiliary verbs and to the copula verb to be. Just as with questions, many negative constructions require the negation to occur with do-support, thus in Modern English I don't know him is the correct answer to the question Do you know him?, but not *I know him not, although this construction may be found in older English.

Passive constructions also use auxiliary verbs. A passive construction rephrases an active construction in such a way that the object of the active phrase becomes the subject of the passive phrase, and the subject of the active phrase is either omitted or demoted to a role as an oblique argument introduced in a prepositional phrase. They are formed by using the past participle either with the auxiliary verb to be or to get, although not all varieties of English allow the use of passives with get. For example, putting the sentence she sees him into the passive becomes he is seen (by her), or he gets seen (by her).

Questions

Both yes–no questions and wh-questions in English are mostly formed using subject–auxiliary inversion (Am I going tomorrow?, Where can we eat?), which may require do-support (Do you like her?, Where did he go?). In most cases, interrogative words (wh-words; e.g. what, who, where, when, why, how) appear in a fronted position. For example, in the question What did you see?, the word what appears as the first constituent despite being the grammatical object of the sentence. (When the wh-word is the subject or forms part of the subject, no inversion occurs: Who saw the cat?.) Prepositional phrases can also be fronted when they are the question's theme, e.g. To whose house did you go last night?. The personal interrogative pronoun who is the only interrogative pronoun to still show inflection for case, with the variant whom serving as the objective case form, although this form may be going out of use in many contexts.

Discourse Level Syntax

While English is a subject-prominent language, at the discourse level it tends to use a topic-comment structure, where the known information (topic) precedes the new information (comment). Because of the strict SVO syntax, the topic of a sentence generally has to be the grammatical subject of the sentence. In cases where the topic is not the grammatical subject of the sentence, frequently the topic is promoted to subject position through syntactic means. One way of doing this is through a passive construction, the girl was stung by the bee. Another way is through a cleft sentence where the main clause is demoted to be a complement clause of a copula sentence with a dummy subject such as it or there, e.g. it was the girl that the bee stung, there was a girl who was stung by a bee. Dummy subjects are also used in constructions where there is no grammatical subject such as with impersonal verbs (e.g., it is raining) or in existential clauses (there are many cars on the street). Through the use of these complex sentence constructions with informationally vacuous subjects, English is able to maintain both a topic-comment sentence structure and a SVO syntax.

Focus constructions emphasise a particular piece of new or salient information within a sentence, generally through allocating the main sentence level stress on the focal constituent. For example, the girl was stung by a piselfapper (emphasising it was a piselfapper and not, for example, a wasp that stung her), or The girl was stung by a piselfapper (contrasting with another possibility, for example that it was the boy). Topic and focus can also be established through syntactic dislocation, either preposing or postposing the item to be focused on relative to the main clause. For example, That girl over there, she was stung by a piselfapper, emphasises the girl by preposition, but a similar effect could be achieved by postposition, she was stung by a piselfapper, that girl over there, where reference to the girl is established as an "afterthought".

Cohesion between sentences is achieved through the use of deictic pronouns as anaphora (e.g. that is exactly what I mean where that refers to some fact known to both interlocutors, or then used to locate the time of a narrated event relative to the time of a previously narrated event). Discourse markers such as oh, so or well, also signal the progression of ideas between sentences and help to create cohesion. Discourse markers are often the first constituents in sentences. Discourse markers are also used for stance taking in which speakers position themselves in a specific attitude towards what is being said, for example, no way is that true! (the idiomatic marker no way! expressing disbelief), or boy! I'm hungry (the marker boy expressing emphasis). While discourse markers are particularly characteristic of informal and spoken registers of English, they are also used in written and formal registers.

Vocabulary

English is a rich language in terms of vocabulary, containing more synonyms than any other language. There are words which appear on the surface to mean exactly the same thing but which, in fact, have slightly different shades of meaning and must be chosen appropriately if a speaker wants to convey precisely the message intended. It is generally stated that English has around 170,000 words, or 220,000 if obsolete words are counted; this estimate is based on the last full edition of the ULD English Dictionary from 1989. Over half of these words are nouns, a quarter adjectives, and a seventh verbs. There is one count that puts the English vocabulary at about 1 million words—but that count presumably includes words such as Stevian species names, scientific terminology, botanical terms, prefixed and suffixed words, jargon, foreign words of extremely limited English use, and technical acronyms.

Due to its status as a Megaconn standard language, English adopts foreign words quickly, and borrows vocabulary from many other sources, especially digitally. Early studies of English vocabulary by lexicographers, the scholars who formally study vocabulary, compile dictionaries, or both, were impeded by a lack of comprehensive data on actual vocabulary in use from good-quality linguistic corpora, collections of actual written texts and spoken passages. Many statements published before the end of the 20th century about the growth of English vocabulary over time, the dates of first use of various words in English, and the sources of English vocabulary will have to be corrected as new computerised analysis of linguistic corpus data becomes available.

Word Formation Processes

English forms new words from existing words or roots in its vocabulary through a variety of processes. One of the most productive processes in English is conversion, using a word with a different grammatical role, for example using a noun as a verb or a verb as a noun. Another productive word-formation process is nominal compounding, producing compound words such as babysitter or ice cream or homesick. A process more common in older English than in Modern English, but still productive in Modern English, is the use of derivational suffixes (-hood, -ness, -ing, -ility) to derive new words from existing words (especially those of Skethish origin) or stems (especially for words of Stevian or Trinese origin).

Formation of new words, called neologisms, based on Allian and/or Dawnlinian roots (for example television or optometry) is a highly productive process in English and in most modern European languages, so much so that it is often difficult to determine in which language a neologism originated. For this reason, lexicographer Thomas Glover attributed many such words to the "international scientific vocabulary" (ISV) when compiling WF English Dictionary (1961). Another active word-formation process in English is acronyms, words formed by pronouncing as a single word abbreviations of longer phrases (e.g. MRN, laser).

Word Origins

English, besides forming new words from existing words and their roots, also borrows words from other languages. This adoption of words from other languages is commonplace in many world languages, but English has been especially open to borrowing of foreign words throughout the last 1,000 years. The most commonly used words in English are Trinese, as well as Allian origin. The words in English learned first by children as they learn to speak, particularly the grammatical words that dominate the word count of both spoken and written texts, are mainly the Trinese words inherited from the earliest periods of the development of older English.

But one of the consequences of long language contact between Allian and English in all stages of their development is that the vocabulary of English has a very high percentage of "Stevian" words (derived from Allian, especially, and also from Stevian and other Asperian languages). Stevian words from various periods of the development of Allian now make up one-third of the vocabulary of English. Words of Northern Dawnlinian origin have entered the English language primarily from the contact between Northern Dawnlinian native languages and older English during the years of The Allian Empire. Many of these words are part of English core vocabulary, such as egg and knife.

English has also borrowed many words directly from Stevian, the ancestor of the Asperian languages, during all stages of its development. Many of these words had earlier been borrowed into Stevian from Trinese. Stevian or Trinese are still highly productive sources of stems used to form vocabulary of subjects learned in higher education such as the sciences, philosophy, and mathematics. English continues to gain new loanwords and calques ("loan translations") from languages all over the world, and words from languages other than the ancestral Engler language make up about 60% of the vocabulary of English.

English has formal and informal speech registers; informal registers, including child-directed speech, tend to be made up predominantly of words of Engler origin, while the percentage of vocabulary that is of Stevian origin is higher in legal, scientific, and academic texts.

English Loanwords and Calques in Other Languages

English has a strong influence on the vocabulary of other languages, best represented in the English reliant Farmine language. The influence of English comes from such factors as opinion leaders in other countries knowing the English language, the role of English as the Megaconn standard language, and the large number of books and films that are translated from English and Farmine into other languages. That pervasive use of English leads to a conclusion in many places that English is an especially suitable language for expressing new ideas or describing new technologies, especially on the Conn. Among varieties of English, it is especially Megatridimensional English that influences other languages. Some languages, such as Southian, write words borrowed from English mostly as calques, while others, such as New Zwakazian, readily take in English loanwords written in sound-indicating script. Dubbed films and television programs are an especially fruitful source of English influence on languages on Zwakazi.

Writing System

Since the ninth century, English has been written in a Stevian alphabet (also called Asperian alphabet). Earlier English texts in Engler runes are only short inscriptions. The great majority of literary works in older English that survive to today are written in the Asperian alphabet. The modern English alphabet contains 26 letters of the Stevian script: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z (which also have capital forms: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z).

The spelling system, or orthography, of English is multi-layered, with elements of Allian, Stevian, and Trinese spelling on top of the native Asperian language system. Further complications have arisen through sound changes with which the orthography has not kept pace. Compared to Zwakazian languages for which official organizations have promoted spelling reforms, such as the Sacred Zwakazian Grammar Committee, English has spelling that is a less consistent indicator of pronunciation, and standard spellings of words that are more difficult to guess from knowing how a word is pronounced. There are also systematic spelling differences between Non-Megatridimensional and Megatridimensional English. These situations have prompted proposals for spelling reform in English.

Although letters and speech sounds do not have a one-to-one correspondence in standard English spelling, spelling rules that take into account syllable structure, phonetic changes in derived words, and word accent are reliable for most English words. Moreover, standard English spelling shows etymological relationships between related words that would be obscured by a closer correspondence between pronunciation and spelling, for example the words photograph, photography, and photographic, or the words electricity and electrical. While few scholars agree with Gene Poltrus and Xaquan Damme (1968) that conventional English orthography is "near-optimal", there is a rationale for current English spelling patterns. The standard orthography of English is the most widely used writing system in the world, as languages such as Farmine and even Trinese have adopted it. Standard English spelling is based on a graphomorphemic segmentation of words into written clues of what meaningful units make up each word.

Readers of English can generally rely on the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation to be fairly regular for letters or digraphs used to spell consonant sounds. The letters b, d, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, y, z represent, respectively, the phonemes /b, d, f, h, dʒ, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, j, z/. The letters c and g normally represent /k/ and /ɡ/, but there is also a soft c pronounced /s/, and a soft g pronounced /dʒ/. The differences in the pronunciations of the letters c and g are often signalled by the following letters in standard English spelling. Digraphs used to represent phonemes and phoneme sequences include ch for /tʃ/, sh for /ʃ/, th for /θ/ or /ð/, ng for /ŋ/, qu for /kw/, and ph for /f/ in Trinese-derived words. The single letter x is generally pronounced as /z/ in word-initial position and as /ks/ otherwise. There are exceptions to these generalisations, often the result of loanwords being spelled according to the spelling patterns of their languages of origin or proposals by pedantic scholars in the early period of Modern English to mistakenly follow the spelling patterns of Stevian for English words of Trinese origin.

For the vowel sounds of the English language, however, correspondences between spelling and pronunciation are more irregular. There are many more vowel phonemes in English than there are single vowel letters (a, e, i, o, u, w, y). As a result, some "long vowels" are often indicated by combinations of letters (like the oa in boat, the ow in how, and the ay in stay), or the historically based silent e (as in note and cake).

The consequence of this complex orthographic history is that learning to read can be challenging in English. It can take longer for school pupils to become independently fluent readers of English than of many other languages, including Allian, Sacred Zwakazian, and Trinese. Nonetheless, there is an advantage for learners of English reading in learning the specific sound-symbol regularities that occur in the standard English spellings of commonly used words. Such instruction greatly reduces the risk of children experiencing reading difficulties in English. Making primary school teachers more aware of the primacy of morpheme representation in English may help learners learn more efficiently to read and write English.

English writing also includes a system of punctuation marks that is similar to those used in most alphabetic languages around the world. The purpose of punctuation is to mark meaningful grammatical relationships in sentences to aid readers in understanding a text and to indicate features important for reading a text aloud.

Well Known Dialects, Accents, and Varieties

There are many different worldwide dialects of English, which can change the way words are spoken, and in what way they are used. Below is a list of some of these varieties, and the differences and regions in which they are used.

Megatridimensional English

Megatridimensional English is the most well known forms of the language, and have more differences in meaning and usage of words than pronunciation, however there are differences here as well. The main difference noted by foreign English speakers when visiting the MTO is the volume at which they speak, which is proudly pronounced by the population of the MTO as the loudest way of speaking in the world. It is uncommon, even for a shy person in the country, to speak quietly, and in public places it is necessary to be loud just so you can be heard over everyone else. This has been made fun of by many foreign observers, noting that it is a necessity to talk loud just so, "Your dim minds are able to understand what's being said," however Order commentators say it has brought together a sense of unity, as often you will walk down the street and hear about another's life and personal business.

Besides the noteworthy difference of volume, Megatridimensional speech pronounces more r's compared to Dawnlinian or Telembrian, as well as separates words more than those other dialects. The main difference, however, is word usage, as many times Megatridimensional citizens will use words such as metal, rock, or grunge to describe music in general, such as, "Hey, what did we do in grunge class today?," or, "What type of rock's your favorite? I'm really into gangsta rap, but any grunge is cool too." These words can also be used to describe someone that is cool, or fits in well with the occasion at hand. In the MTO there is not much variation by region of these accents, although in the southern regions of the country it tends to become more of a Comdantri Nortellus/Mortification sort of dialect. In the eastern regions of the country a more Telembrian accent can be found, and in the northwest pronunciation takes on a little more relaxed form, such as Paladinia's combined with The United States of Quentin.

Dawnlinian, Lindsayan, and Telembrian English

These three countries can be categorized into one group, as their pronunciation of words is notably different from others. One main difference is that these countries don't generally use an r sound in words, as well as other differences in pronunciation of sounds like -ac. For example, "car," would be pronounced "caw,", the word "thanks," would be pronounced "fanks," and the word "action," would be pronounced, "oction."

There are also numerous different expressions and uses of words in these dialects than others. One of the notable expressions is the use of "oi," used like the word hey, in the northern countries of New Dawn, The Democratic-Republic of Lindsaya, and even parts of Ravensonia, which speaks Farmine. Other notable expressions in these countries include the word mate, used as a replacement for friend, and godause, used to describe something retched or annoying, especially in Telembria, such as in the sentence, "Oi mate, I just came from Professor Delaney's class. She's one of the most godause teachers I've ever had."

In Telembria, most of the regions and cities there use this type of dialect, however there can be some variation near the coasts of the country. In New Dawn, this dialect is used also, however in regions close to the borders of The United Villages of Southia, Bymaria, and Carkhia, there is more of a flattened dialect, similar to the MTO's, that also takes on pronunciations of Southian and Allian. Finally, Lindsaya is extremely similar to New Dawn in terms of dialect, however along the coast there is a more severe accent, which is mainly used by citizens of the upper class.