Láadan is actually a pretty language (fight me), so I am going to make a derivative out of it.
It does have some nooblang problems which will need to be retconned, however. I feel like the phonology honestly doesn't have to be one of these—it's weird, but I feel like it's kind of plausibly weird.
A thing which does to be retconned is the noobish phenomenon (which really needs a name) of forming a group of related words with by changing only one phoneme—e.g. the evidentials
wa, wi, we, wáa, waá, wo, wóo (and there are other examples). Accordingly I will change these. (I will also remove the last one, which is supposed to simply be a null marking anyway.)
I am also getting rid of the "speech act" markers (the things that go at the beginning of the sentence), except for
báa which will remain as an interrogative marker.
Hence, here is a brief grammar of Improved Láadan:
Verbs
TENSE - PERSON/HON - NUMBER - ATTRIB - ASPECT - root - GENDER - COMP - NEG - HABIT - EVID
Tense: aril- future
1,
é- past,
rilrili- subjunctive,
wi- optative.
Person: le- first,
ne- second,
behid- third masculine,
behizh- third feminine.
Honorifics: -i deferential,
-a intimate,
lhe- formal. The first two combine with a final bowel (
li-,
la-); the last precedes the person marking (
lheli-).
Number: zhe- paucal,
me- plural. Before a sonorant these become
zh-,
n-.
Attributive marker: wo-Aspect: du- conative,
ná- continuative,
raa- iterative,
elith- cessative.
Gender: -id marks masculinity. How could we forget our favourite feature of Láadan? Note that when the subject is incorporated into the verb, gender will actually be marked twice.
Complementizer: -hé2Negative suffix: -raHabitual suffix: -badan3Degree: -hal4 comparative,
-háalik superlative;
-ulh anticomparative,
-úulhik antisuperlative.
Evidentiality: -álh perceived,
-wi self-evident,
-yen dreamt,
-atháá trusted,
-waálh untrusted.
I am slightly concerned there are too many things here... hmm.
_________________________
1. Dialectal
aríli-2. Dialectal
-hée3. Dialectal
-bradan,
-bada,
-bradá,
-brada4. Dialectal
-hóo