Lapine: Difference between revisions

It is written in a very English-looking use of the Latin script, with the exception of the character [[wikt:é|''é'']], which appears to be the only use of any diacriticals in the transcriptions. One may assume this is to establish the vowel quality as closer to /ei/ than, say, /i/ - but for all we know this could have to do with stress or pitch or simply aesthetics. [[w:Arabic phonology|Arabic]] has been cited as an inspiration, but the phonological resemblance is unclear, if present at all.

The words tend to be incorporated into English sentences, so only vestiges of the original grammar remain. Some derivational morphology is clear: a couple of personal names show noun compounding, as well as the derivational suffixes [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/-rah|''-rah'']] (augmentative) and [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/-roo|''-roo'']] (diminutive). The verb [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/silflay|''silflay'']] ("to feed outside") is especially valuable in this regard, as it comes from [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/silf|''silf'']] ("outside") + [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/flay|''flay'']] ("food"), and thus shows not only a verb derived from a compound of words in two other parts of speech, but also eliminates the double f that one would expect (especially surprising given that <ff> is indeed legal, as in [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/pfeffa|''pfeffa'']] ("cat").) Noun plurals are always formed by replacing the final vowel with [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/-il|''-il'']], although some nouns end with a consonant, and it is unclear how these would be pluralised. The words [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/Frith|''Frith'']] ("sun") and [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/Inlé|''Inlé'']] ("moon") are prefixed to form [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/ni-Frith|''ni-Frith'']] ("noon") and [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/fu-Inlé|''fu-Inlé'']] ("after moonrise"), but the exact meanings of the temporal prefixes is unclear.

Some parts of Lapine grammar, like syntax and conjugation, are generally hidden by embedding the words in English. One couplet serves to give the only information that readers get about those two features in the book:

<poem>''Hoi, hoi u embleer Hrair''

Rabbit culture infuses the meagre vocabulary, like the implication that [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/hrair|''hrair'']] means both "five" and "thousand" because rabbits cannot count beyond four. (The biological validity of that statement is beside the point, but it is reasonable.) Rabbits evidently also communicate with other animals in a language called Hedgerow Vernacular, which is translated to suggest that it is a kind of pidgin. It is clearly based on Lapine, and preserves some of the lexical features like [[wikt:Appendix:Lapine/marli|''marli'']], which can mean both "doe" [i.e. female rabbit] and "mother", but it lacks fundamental features of Lapine, like the definite article.