Universal is an

Esperantido An Esperantido (plural Esperantidoj) is a constructed language derived from Esperanto. ''Esperantido'' originally referred to the language which is now known as Ido. The word ''Esperantido'' contains the affix (''-ido''), which means a "child (' ...

, a

constructed language A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...

based on

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

. It has inclusive and exclusive pronouns, uses partial

reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...

for the plural ( "table", "tables"), and inversion for

antonym In lexical semantics, opposites are words lying in an inherently incompatible binary relationship. For example, something that is ''long'' entails that it is not ''short''. It is referred to as a 'binary' relationship because there are two members ...

s ( "big", "little"; "give", "receive"; "far", "near"). Inversion can be seen in, :: ::He finished reading 'lit.'' 'to read'and she started to write. The antonyms are the pronouns "he" and "she", the (completive) and (inchoative) aspects, the verbs "to finish" and "to begin", and the verbs "to write" and ''farg-'' "to read". The ''Universal'' reduplicated plural and inverted antonyms are reminiscent of the musical language

Solresol Solresol (Solfège: Sol- Re- Sol), originally called Langue universelle and then Langue musicale universelle, is a constructed language devised by François Sudre, beginning in 1827. His major book on it, ''Langue Musicale Universelle'', was p ...

Orthography

The

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

is used with

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...

values, with five additional IPA letters: The

affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...

s are written . The

schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...

is used to break up consonant clusters in

compound word In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when ...

s and the like. A

palatalized consonant In phonetics, palatalization (, also ) or palatization is a way of pronouncing a consonant in which part of the tongue is moved close to the hard palate. Consonants pronounced this way are said to be palatalized and are transcribed in the Internat ...

is marked with a

hacek The HACEK organisms are a group of fastidious Gram-negative bacteria that are an unusual cause of infective endocarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart due to bacterial infection. HACEK is an abbreviation of the initials of the genera of t ...

, a

nasalized vowel A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced with ...

with a tilde: ã (among other things, nasalization marks the accusative case; a long vowel by a circumflex: â If stress is not marked, it falls on the last non-schwa vowel preceding the last consonant of the word. Otherwise it is marked by an

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...

: á.

Grammar

Inflectional morphology

As in Esperanto, Universal nouns are marked by the suffix ''-o,'' which is elidable in certain cases. ''O'' by itself is a

subordinating conjunction In grammar, a conjunction (abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitutes a ...

: :''al gefinu o fargu kaj egnifu o grafu'' :"he has finished reading and is beginning to write." As in Japanese, adjectives and verbs are a single

part of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assi ...

in Universal. They have two forms, an

attributive In grammar, an attributive expression is a word or phrase within a noun phrase that modifies the head noun. It may be an: * attributive adjective * attributive noun * attributive verb or other part of speech, such as an attributive numeral. ...

form when they modify a noun like an adjective, and a predicative form when they stand on their own to form a clause like a verb. The predicative form is marked by the suffix ''-u: urbo megu'' "(the) city is big", ''lampo pendu'' "(the) lamp is hanging". On its own before a noun, this ''u'' is a copula: ''formiko u insekto'' "(the) ant is an insect". Tenses are optional. (See below.) As in Esperanto, the attributive form is marked by the suffix ''-a: mega urbo'' "big city", ''penda lampo'' "hanging lamp". This ''a'' on its own is a

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

: ''podo a tablo'' "leg of a table", ''luso a deno'' "light of day, daylight". Nouns may instead be converted directly into attributives with the suffix ''-j-: denja luso'' "daylight". Personal pronominal roots end in ''i,'' as in Esperanto, but inflect for number and gender as do nouns. (See below.) Possessives take the ''-j-'' that converts nominals to verbals as well as the attributive ''-a: mi'' "I", ''mija "my, mine"; ''vi'' "you", ''vija'' "your, yours"; ''al'' "he", ''alja'' "his"; ''la'' "she", ''laja'' "her, hers"; ''lo'' "it", ''loja'' "its", etc.

Optional inflection

Plurality and

pluractionality In linguistics, pluractionality, or verbal number, if not used in its aspectual sense, is a grammatical aspect that indicates that the action or participants of a verb is/are plural. This differs from frequentative or iterative aspects in that ...

may be shown through

, usually partial: ''tatablo'' (or ''tablo-tablo)'' "tables", ''dendeno'' or ''dedeno'' "days", ''kloklora'' "of many colours", ''marmarʃu'' "walk repeatedly". Tense is also optional, and may be used with verbs or nouns. The affix ''e'' indicates

past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some hav ...

when prefixed ''(ebela'' "formerly beautiful", ''eʃefo'' "ex-boss"), but

future tense In grammar, a future tense (abbreviated ) is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French ''aimera'', meaning ...

when suffixed and stressed ''(sanéa'' "healthy-to-be", ''urbéo'' "city-to-be"). The imperative is marked by the prefix ''ʒ-,'' which often requires a schwa to break up consonant clusters: ''ʒədonu'' "give!", ''ʒəluso'' "let there be light".

Oblique case In grammar, an oblique (abbreviated ; from la, casus obliquus) or objective case (abbr. ) is a nominal case other than the nominative case, and sometimes, the vocative. A noun or pronoun in the oblique case can generally appear in any role exc ...

(

direct Direct may refer to: Mathematics * Directed set, in order theory * Direct limit of (pre), sheaves * Direct sum of modules, a construction in abstract algebra which combines several vector spaces Computing * Direct access (disambiguation), a ...

and

indirect object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...

s) may be marked by nasalisation of the final vowel of the noun and also of any attributives: ''ʒədonu zeã librõ'' "give this book!". This includes the conjunction ''o: ʒənifu õ grafu'' "start writing!". Gender is optionally indicated by the prefixes ''al-'' for masculine ( "he-tiger", ''al-Dʒonson'' "Mr Johnson"), and ''la-'' for feminine ( "she-tiger", ''la-Dʒonson'' "Ms Johnson"). In a few words gender is marked by ''a,''

infix An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word or the core of a family of words). It contrasts with ''adfix,'' a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix. When marking text for int ...

ed before the last consonant for the masculine ''(tigar'' or ''tigaro'' "male tiger"), suffixed and stressed for the feminine ''(tigrá'' or ''tigráo'' "tigress"). Even verbs can be marked for gender, with the meaning of performing the action in a masculine or feminine way. Personal pronouns take gender in ''a,'' and may drop their characteristic ''i'' ending when they do, just as nouns may drop their ''o:'' :''mi'' "I", masculine ''ami'' or ''am,'' feminine ''mai'' or ''ma;'' :''ti'' "thou", masc. ''ati'' or ''at,'' fem. ''tai'' or ''ta,'' and similarly with formal ''vi, av(i), va(i);'' :''li'' "s/he", ''ali'' or ''al'' "he" and the masculine prefix, ''lai'' or ''la'' "she" and the feminine prefix, etc. The latter forms use reduplication for plurality: ''alali'' "they" (masc.), ''lalai'' "they" (fem.).

Derivational morphology

Some of the structure of Universal words is apparent at a glance, but cannot be easily extended to create new vocabulary. As in the

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...

, vocalic

ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German ''Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its ...

derives roots with related meanings, such as ''lina'' "long", ''lana'' "wide", and ''lona'' "tall", or ''valdo'' "forest", ''veldo'' "savannah", and ''vildo'' "steppe". Inversion is used to create

s, and is so characteristic of Universal that one of its creators jested that the language should be called "Inversal". As in Esperanto, extensive compounding keeps the number of roots low; cf. ''simpatu'' "sympathise" and its partial inversion ''mispatu'' "be hostile". However, a number of frequent compounds are contracted into new roots: ''dennedo → dendo'' "day and night", ''evdeno → evdo'' "morning", ''evnedo → evno'' "evening", ''evzaro → evzo'' "spring", ''evrazo → evro'' "autumn". The personal pronouns have somewhat irregular morphology. The bare roots are all singular: :''mi'' "I", ''ti'' "thou" (informal "you"), ''vi'' "you" (formal or honorific), ''li'' "he/she", and—through ablaut—''lo'' "it" (inanimate). The plurals are based on Esperanto ''ili'' "they": :''imi'' "we", ''iti'' "ye" (informal), ''ivi'' "you" (formal), ''ili'' "they". Compounds are used to specify

clusivity In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressee ...

: :''mimi'' "we" (exclusive), ''timi'' "we" (inclusive informal: thou/ye & I), ''vimi'' "we" (inclusive formal: you & I). (The base (singular) form of the second-person pronoun appears to be used in the compounds ''timi'' and ''vimi'' regardless of number. That is, no

dual Dual or Duals may refer to: Paired/two things * Dual (mathematics), a notion of paired concepts that mirror one another ** Dual (category theory), a formalization of mathematical duality *** see more cases in :Duality theories * Dual (grammatical ...

–plural distinction is attested.)

Bibliography

* L I Vasilevskij (1925), ''Neizvestnaja stranica v istorii otechestvennoj interlingvistiki—jazyk Universal,'' in M I Isaev ''et al.'' (eds.), ''Problemy interlingvistiki: Tipologija i êvoljucija mezhdunarodnyx iskusstvennyx jazykov.'' Moscow: Nauka, 1976.

External links

Universal language profile
{{Constructed languages Esperantido Constructed languages Constructed languages introduced in the 1920s