Latejami
This article is a stub. Please help us by contributing content!
Latejami (natively [laˈted͡ʒami]; 'speech-system')[1] is an engineered language intended as a speakable machine-translation interlanguage. It was developed by Rick Morneau in his 1995 paper The Lexical Semantics of a Machine Translation Interlingua, and developed over a number of years under different names, including Nasendi, Katanda, Ladekwa and Latenkwa.
Background
History
Aims
Design
Phonology and orthography
Latejami has 26 phonemes: 21 consonants and five vowels.
Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plosive | p b | t d | t͡ʃ d͡ʒ | k g | |
Fricative | f v | s z | ʃ ʒ | h~ʔ~x | |
Nasal | m | n | |||
Lateral | l | ||||
Rhotic | r | ||||
Semivowel | w | j |
/r/ may be realized as any rhotic, and /h/ may be realized "as a glottal stop or as any unvoiced velar, uvular, pharyngeal, or glottal fricative."
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | i | u | |
Mid | e | o | |
Open | a |
Three phonetic diphthongs are present: /aj aw oj/. They are treated as vowel-semivowel sequences and spelled ⟨ay aw oy⟩.
Grapheme | a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Phoneme | a | b | t͡ʃ | d | e | f | g | h~ʔ~x | i | d͡ʒ | k | l | m | n | o | p | ʒ | r | s | t | u | v | w | ʃ | j | z |
(Differences from the IPA are highlighted.)
Morphology
Morpheme classes
Word structure
Proper names, etc.
Syntax
Semantics
Verbs
Nouns
Case tags
Case-role semantics
Modifiers
Tense, aspect and modality
Anaphora
Abstract relationships
Literalness and metaphor
Lexicon
Samples
Notes
- ↑ Stress placement in Latejami depends on word-internal syntax. Here stress goes on the syllable te because te is a Modifier morpheme.
References
Morneau, R. 2007. The Lexical Semantics of a Machine Translation Interlingua. Accessed from http://www.rickmor.x10.mx/lexical_semantics.html (19 June 2021).