Láadan () is a gynocentric

constructed language A constructed language (shortened to conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, orthography, and vocabulary, instead of having developed natural language, naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devise ...

created by Suzette Haden Elgin in 1982 to test the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, specifically to determine if development of a language aimed at expressing the views of women would shape a culture; a subsidiary hypothesis was that Western

natural language A natural language or ordinary language is a language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change. It can take different forms, typically either a spoken language or a sign language. Natural languages ...

s may be better suited for expressing the views of men than women. The language was included in her

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

''Native Tongue'' series. Láadan contains a number of words that are used to make unambiguous statements that include how one feels about what one is saying. According to Elgin, this is designed to counter male-centered language's limitations on women, who are forced to respond "I know I said that, but I meant this".

Phonology

Tones

Láadan is a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasi ...

. It utilises two distinct tones: * or , a short, medium or low tone, represented by a single unmarked vowel * , a short, high tone, represented by a single marked vowel The word "Láadan" has three syllables: "lá-" with the short vowel /a/ plus high tone; "-a" with the short vowel /a/ and no tone; and "-dan". Láadan doesn't allow any double (i.e.

long Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...

) phonemes. Whenever two identical short vowels would occur side by side in a single morpheme, one of them has to be marked for high tone. When adding an affix would result in two identical vowels side by side, an

epenthetic In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the first syllable ('' prothesis''), the last syllable ('' paragoge''), or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite process in whi ...

/h/ is inserted to prevent the forbidden sequence. The language will allow either or , but not *maa. These combinations can be described as: * , a long, low-rising tone, represented by a double vowel, the second of which is marked * , a long, high-falling tone, represented by a double vowel, the first of which is marked Some people analyze these tone sequences as tonemic as well, for a total of four tones. By this analysis, the word "Láadan" would thus be considered to have two syllables, and /dan/. Elgin preferred an analysis of the language as having no long vowels and a single tone, the high tone (distinguished from "neutral, baseline pitch"), but she acknowledged that linguists using other formalisms would be justified in saying that there are two tones, high and low (or unmarked or mid).

Vowels

Láadan has five

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s: * ''a'', an

open back unrounded vowel The open back unrounded vowel, or low back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some Speech, spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is A ...

(as English ''calm''), * ''e'', an

open-mid front unrounded vowel The open-mid front unrounded vowel, or low-mid front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some Speech communication, spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is the Latin epsil ...

(as English ''bell''), * ''i'', a

near-close near-front unrounded vowel The near-close near-front unrounded vowel, or near-high near-front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , the small capital ...

(as English ''bit''), * ''o'', a

close-mid back rounded vowel The close-mid back rounded vowel, or high-mid back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . Close-mid back protruded vowel The clo ...

(as English ''home''), * ''u'', a

close back rounded vowel The close back rounded vowel, or high back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is u. I ...

(as English ''boon'').

Consonants

Láadan lacks the

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

s . It uses ''b'', ''d'', ''sh'' (), ''m'', ''n'', ''l'', ''r'', ''w'', ''y'' (), ''h'' with the same phonetic value as English. Three digraphs require further explanation: * ''th'', a

voiceless dental fricative The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to most English speakers as the 'th' in ''think''. Though rather rare as a phoneme among the world's languages, it is encount ...

(always as in English ''think'', never as ''then''), * ''zh'', a

voiced postalveolar fricative The voiced postalveolar or palato-alveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiced postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describe ...

(as English ''pleasure''), * ''lh'', a

voiceless alveolar lateral fricative The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is , a ...

(as Welsh ).

Grammar

Most Láadan sentences contain three

particles In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscle in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass. They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...

: * The ''speech-act'' particlethis occurs at the beginning of the sentence and marks it as either a statement (), a question (), ''et cetera''; in connected speech or writing, this particle is often omitted. They are: *; : Indicates a declarative sentence (usually optional) *; : Indicates a question *; : Indicates a command; very rare, except to small children *; : Indicates a request; this is the usual imperative/"command" form *; : Indicates a promise *; : Indicates a warning * The

grammatical tense In grammar, tense is a grammatical category, category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their grammatical conjugation, conjugation patterns. The main tenses found ...

particlethis occurs second in the sentence and marks it as either present tense (),

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 ...

(),

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 ''achètera'', mea ...

() or hypothetical (); without the tense particle, the sentence is assumed to have the same tense as the previous sentence. * The

evidence Evidence for a proposition is what supports the proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the proposition is truth, true. The exact definition and role of evidence vary across different fields. In epistemology, evidence is what J ...

particlethis occurs at the end of statements and indicates the trustworthiness of the statement. They are: *; : Known to speaker because perceived by speaker, externally or internally *; : Known to speaker because self-evident *; : Perceived by speaker in a dream *; : Assumed true by speaker because speaker trusts source *; : Assumed false by speaker because speaker distrusts source; if evil intent by the source is also assumed, the form is *; : Imagined or invented by speaker, hypothetical *; : Used to indicate that the speaker states a total lack of knowledge as to the validity of the matter Láadan is a verb–subject–object (VSO) language.

Verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

s and

adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

s are interchangeable. There are no articles, and the object is marked by the or

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

. The

plural In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...

number is shown only by the prefix to the verb. The particle following a verb makes it negative. Separate clauses are joined by the particle .

Morphology

Láadan has an

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

, and uses a number of

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation' ...

es to indicate various feelings and moods that many

s can only indicate by tone of voice,

body language Body language is a type of nonverbal communication in which physical behaviors, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information. Such behavior includes facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye movement, touch and the use o ...

or circumlocution. The ''speech-act'' particle, at the beginning of a sentence, can also carry several suffixes, which expand on the overall state of the sentence. For example, begins a statement, but begins a statement that is part of a narrative; begins a request made in pain; begins a question that is meant in jest.

Pronouns

Pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (Interlinear gloss, glossed ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts of speech, but so ...

s in Láadan are built up from a number of constituent parts. The consonant ''l'' marks the first person, ''n'' the second person and ''b'' the third person. Usually, these are followed by the vowel ''e''. The vowel ''a'' is used to designate someone who is loved ( is prefixed to describe someone who is despised). The suffix is used to mark a plural pronoun for numbers up to four, and for numbers beyond that. Therefore, means "we, several beloved", and means "they, many despised".

References

External links

*
Elgin's Láadan introduction
*

*

* Elgin’s critique of others’ analysis of Láadan: *
Myths About Láadan
*
Just One More Láadan Myth

Láadan lessons
(moderately paced lessons in Láadan by A.M.J. "Amberwind" Barnhart
archived from prior URL

Some Láadan (PDF)
(The text says that "wo-" is a plural marker. This is an error; the plural marker is "me-", while "wo-" is a relativizer.)
Láadan Working Group

How to count in Láadan
* : a critical video review of the basics of Láadan as an artlang
Essays and guides about Láadan
a group blog {{DEFAULTSORT:Laadan Agglutinative languages Engineered languages Feminist science fiction Fictional languages Constructed languages introduced in the 1980s 1982 introductions Gender in language Tonal languages