A Grammar of Mesh

Introduction

Scope and Purpose

This grammar provides a systematic description of the Mesh language (the 2021st one produced by the Language Creator), outlining its sound system, word formation and syntactic structure, with the aim of presenting a coherent account of the language as an integrated whole. Attention has been paid to both regular patterns and minor irregularities, as these together define the internal balance of the language.

The grammar is accompanied by a bilingual dictionary and a collection of illustrative texts, offering material for further study and comparison. The examples have been selected to demonstrate typical constructions and to give a sense of the language in extended use. The description is intended as a reference work for linguists and language enthusiasts alike, and as a foundation for any future research, teaching or creative adaptation of Mesh.

Typological Profile

Phonology

Phoneme Inventory

Consonants

Mesh has 23 consonant phonemes, a size that falls within a broadly average range.

The table below presents the full inventory of consonant phonemes in Mesh. The chart lists all places and manners of articulation attested in the language.

Vowels

Mesh has 9 vowel qualities, forming a relatively large inventory. The system distinguishes several vowel categories, as indicated in the chart, offering a wide range of vocalic contrasts.

The table below presents the full inventory of vowel phonemes in Mesh. The system comprises the distinct vowel qualities listed in the chart.

Stress and Tones

Mesh has neither phonemic stress nor lexical tone. Prosodic prominence and pitch variation are determined by pragmatic and discourse factors rather than by lexical contrasts.

Phonological Processes

Vowel Harmony

Vowel harmony does not exist in this language.

Writing System

Introduction

Mesh is normally written using the Cyrillic alphabet, a script with a long and varied history across Eastern Europe and northern Asia. In this grammar, phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are also used to give an unambiguous representation of sound.

The conventions adopted here follow standard Cyrillic practice for the language where that exists; where they do not, the IPA transcription should be taken as authoritative.

Orthography

Here are the various components of the orthography:

Simple letters

Multi-letter combinations such as digraphs

Word Classes and Morphology

Number and Gender

Number

Mesh distinguishes singular and plural.

Gender

Mesh has the following noun classes:

Class cl.1 – for instance: биренв ‘fat’, бүдв ‘blood’, гүраўхв ‘faeces’, двавидв ‘ash’, двинв ‘year’, двијер ‘dust’, дигеен ‘money’, квер ‘time’, квоон ‘name’, кусөсв ‘neighbour’, ноох ‘friend’, нунор ‘smoke’, рвөөк ‘idea’, сабаўм ‘stick’, свөрв ‘city’, таанв ‘language’, твинөш ‘feather’, јаўој ‘slime’, ўадвөд ‘salt’, ўүкв ‘stone’.

Class cl.2 – for instance: бон ‘earth’, будвиик ‘court’, вүшүсв ‘cloud’, двеп ‘speech’, двитиў ‘God’, маситв ‘apple’, мунвекв ‘restaurant’, нвисайс ‘student’, ратоохв ‘wheat’, соохв ‘moon’, твиип ‘fruit’, твихв ‘sky’, тиј ‘egg’, хвес ‘meat’, јар ‘star’, јен ‘sun’, ўасвес ‘cheese’.

Class cl.3 – for instance: баб ‘nose’, бөс ‘bone’, габадв ‘penis’, дваап ‘ear’, диив ‘leg’, кахиб ‘belly’, квөм ‘hair’, киирв ‘wind’, миўөт ‘breath’, набаўнв ‘anus’, нүбуп ‘library’, паўаап ‘plain’, пимес ‘neck’, рвик ‘mouth’, свахвайш ‘breast’, тидвос ‘bosom’, хедв ‘tooth’, хувихв ‘fingernail’, шарваам ‘liver’, јутвеех ‘guts’.

Class cl.4 – for instance: биб ‘sea’, бипов ‘seed’, вааб ‘fish’, вөөб ‘colour’, гудв ‘cat’, гүпаўг ‘bank’, дајос ‘snake’, двүхиир ‘louse’, динвайсв ‘river’, канух ‘lamb’, квүт ‘dog’, мидуухв ‘lake’, нвүрөд ‘mammal’, пасвиид ‘wild boar’, саној ‘mouse’, свисайр ‘tiger’, тишес ‘jaguar’, хвайр ‘animal’, јүдвихв ‘worm’, ўишудв ‘lion’.

Class cl.5 – for instance: ван ‘fire’, гөкв ‘people’, кииб ‘water’, машин ‘root’, маўап ‘flower’, мибүў ‘brick’, нвој ‘land’, нөсв ‘father’, рваўб ‘mother’, рвеетв ‘husband’, рон ‘wife’, саасв ‘leaf’, сасош ‘grass’, свеј ‘night’, сишаан ‘teacher’, тварид ‘bark’, твип ‘boy’, турв ‘girl’, хирвайс ‘mountain’, ўахваўб ‘hunter’.

Class cl.6 – for instance: гасат ‘bottle’, дашух ‘box’, дваринв ‘net’, мох ‘bed’, нвавах ‘binoculars’, пидвеш ‘umbrella’, пииў ‘knife’, рваўсв ‘chair’, рвирваад ‘horn’, сваак ‘east’, түрех ‘rope’, хваат ‘north’, хвијес ‘medicine’, хиш ‘south’, хухуудв ‘school’, шидаан ‘market’, шүп ‘surface’, јахаб ‘mortar’, јунвеј ‘embrace’, ўаанв ‘top’.

The Nominal Phrase

Nominal phrases in Mesh can be exemplified by the following example:

In the following, we shall look at the various components in more details.

There is one type of clitic in the nominal phrase, namely an enclitic (placed finally), expressing case. a clitic expressing case, comprising дүр /dyɾ/ ‘DAT’, квас /kʷas/ ‘INS’, пам /pam/ ‘VOC’, пүн /pyn/ ‘ALL’, јүм /jym/ ‘LOC’, кан /kan/ ‘ABL’ and ба /ba/ ‘PART’.

The morphology of the elements of the nominal phrase, i.e., nouns, adjectives, numerals and pronouns, is described below, as is the way that possession is expressed in Mesh.

The Noun

The noun in Mesh consists of the root followed by an obligatory suffix expressing number, comprising -ун /-un/ ‘sing’ and -ам /-am/ ‘plur’.

The Adjective

The adjective in Mesh stands alone without any prefixes or suffixes attached to it.

Numerals

The numeral in Mesh stands alone without any prefixes or suffixes attached to it.

Determiners

In Mesh, the determiner has the following structure: the root followed by an obligatory suffix expressing gender, comprising -хвис /-xʷis/ ‘cl.1’, -мин /-min/ ‘cl.2’, -ўүс /-wys/ ‘cl.3’, -дум /-dum/ ‘cl.4’, -рүс /-ɾys/ ‘cl.5’ and -двис /-dʷis/ ‘cl.6’.

Pronouns

The pronoun in Mesh has the following structure: the root followed by an obligatory suffix expressing number, comprising -с /-s/ ‘sing’ and -р /-ɾ/ ‘plur’.

In Mesh, both subject and object pronouns are dropped unless they are stressed. Here is an example where neither of the pronouns are stressed:

But here, the word corresponding to he is stressed:

And here, it is the one translated as her that is stressed:

Proper Nouns

Possession

Derivation

Mesh has no derivational processes.

Note how none show up here:

Compounding

Verbs

Inflectional Categories

There is one type of clitic in the verbal phrase, namely an enclitic (placed finally), expressing question. a clitic expressing question, comprising вис /ʋis/ ‘Q’.

In addition, the verb is structured like this: first, the root; second, an obligatory suffix expressing ta, comprising -м /-m/ ‘PRES’ and -тв /-tʷ/ ‘PAST’; third, an obligatory suffix expressing mode, comprising -ү /-y/ ‘indicative’, -и /-i/ ‘imperative’, -а /-a/ ‘conditional’ and -у /-u/ ‘optative’; fourth, an obligatory suffix expressing voice, comprising -к /-k/ ‘active’ and -г /-h/ ‘passive’; and finally, fifth, an obligatory suffix expressing negation, comprising -им /-im/ ‘NEG’ and -ир /-iɾ/ ‘POS’.

Adverbs Minor Classes

Adpositions

There is one type of clitic in the adpositional phrase, namely an enclitic (placed finally), expressing root.

Syntax

Basic Clause Structure

Constituent Order

Constituent order describes the typical arrangement of the subject (S), verb (V) and object (O) in simple declarative clauses. It is a fundamental parameter in grammatical description and forms one of the clearest ways of characterising the overall structure of a language’s clause system.

Mesh employs Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) as its basic word order. The subject is followed by the verb, with the object occurring in post-verbal position. This ordering is widely attested across the world’s languages.

The following examples illustrate the basic, unmarked, constituent order in Mesh.

The language has a fixed constituent order, and major phrases normally appear in a predictable position in the clause. Movement for discourse reasons is highly restricted: topics and foci are expressed not by rearranging elements, but through dedicated constructions such as clefts, focus clauses or topic–comment frames. Constituents remain continuous, and both the relative order of phrases and the internal structure of each phrase are stable. As a result, significant deviations from the basic word order are ungrammatical, and discourse structure is managed through these specialised constructions rather than through word-order variation.

Noun Phrases

Structure and Order

The internal structure of noun phrases in Mesh reveals typologically significant preferences in the ordering of nominal constituents. This includes the position of adjectives, numerals, and possessors relative to the noun, each of which can offer clues to the overall headedness of the language.

Possessive constructions are head-initial: the possessed noun precedes the possessor. For instance, Mesh expresses “the child’s toy” with the equivalent of “toy child”. This structure is typologically rarer and often co-occurs with verb-initial syntax or with grammatical marking on the noun.

Case Marking

Mesh does not use case marking to distinguish the core participants of the clause. There is therefore no regular nominative, accusative, ergative, active or stative marking on subjects and objects. Instead, the roles of the participants are identified by other means, cf. the examples below.

Conjunctions

Here is an example of a conjunction.

Modifiers and Determiners

The ordering of demonstratives, articles (if present), and other modifiers in Mesh provides further insight into the structure of the noun phrase. These elements frequently exhibit fixed positions and may reveal whether the language favours head-initial or head-final patterns.

Complex Sentences

Relative Clauses

Mesh forms relative clauses by using a head-internal strategy. The head noun appears inside the clause itself, occupying its regular syntactic position. The entire clause functions as a modifier, and its external syntactic behaviour is identical to that of a noun-modifying phrase.

To illustrate how relative clauses work, let us begin with a simple sentence:

We can now add a relative clause modifying the noun:

Relative clauses may themselves contain other relative clauses:

Finally, here is an example containing several layers of embedding:

Complementation Strategies

Mesh introduces complement clauses with a dedicated complementiser, similar to English that. The complementiser appears at the beginning of the embedded clause and signals that the clause functions as a syntactic argument. The embedded clause is fully finite and displays the same tense, aspect and agreement patterns as independent clauses.

The following example illustrate how complement clauses function:

Quotes

Mesh employs a quotative particle to mark direct and indirect speech. The quotative follows the reported phrase and identifies the preceding expression as quoted or reported. The same construction is also used to express reported thoughts.

Here is an example of how quotations are expressed:

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