Species File: S'ruba

[Jubal]

The S'ruba: Species File

Biology

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Basic factfile

Average Height	4'9"
Average Mass	50kg
Average Lifespan (In Earth terms)	115 years
Native habitat	Mostly wet forest and swampland
Skin colour	Orange/light green/yellow

Reproductive Cycle
S'ruba are not gendered, and there is no sperm/egg distinction in the gametes, both of which are the same size and merge into one another. They spawn gametes into protected, still pools, usually collectively; the baby s'ruba form in the pool, which is cared for and given high nutrient levels by the family group that use it (S'ruba are able to secrete a sort of syrup that raises the nutrient levels in the pool). The babies are effectively aquatic until the age of eight months, when they are usually about a foot long and will be taken out of the pool and cared for by the family group (an eight month spawn baby can be considered equivalent to a human child of perhaps seven months' old, making the early stages of S'ruba development roughly twice as fast).

S'ruba can, in Earth terms, live around 115 years on average, though ages in excess of a hundred and forty are not entirely unknown. They will usually spawn regularly from the ages of (again, on average) twenty-three to ninety.

Culture

Spoiler

Cultural Syncretism
If using a gendered language, S'ruba tend to all get given female pronouns.

[Jubal]

The Language

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The S'ruba construct most of their nouns from a preceding element indicating where the noun fits in a certain structure of groupings followed by verbs and modifiers, though there are exceptional "unconstructed" nouns (these are usually still subject to modifiers though).

Sentence Construction
S'ruba sentences always end with the verb or verbs. Nouns form the rest of the sentence and are always capitalised and in order of valency.

Valency is an important concept when constructing S'ruba sentences. The item with no valency modifier is always the subject of the sentence. The first valency is given to the object. So in the sentence "I ran down the field" "I" has the first valency and "field" the second. Third valency is used when the main verb needs a third argument. "I gave him the key" would be an example. The first valency is again given to I, the second to the key as that's what the verb is acting upon. The third valency is given to "him", the noun that clarifies how I am doing the action.

Verbs are categorised by their valency, the importance of this is that only one verb with a valency of over one can be used in each sentence, though many first-valency verbs can be used as descriptors. So "The huge flying red dragon burned the village" would have four verbs in; one second valency (to burn), and three first valency (to be huge, to fly, to be red). Where the sentence is all first valency verbs they assume equal action, so "The singing minstrel danced" and "The dancing minstrel sang" would be the same sentence. There are non-enumerated valencies, the causal and permissive valencies; this is used when a single object or some objects are being given as a cause or source of authority (more complicated causes are dealt with by pattern indicators). So "I did it for love" would have I as first, it as second, and love as causal. "Love let me find you" would be the same sort of structure but would use the permissive valency.

The concept of compound sentences is not applicable to the language. "I went down the road, then shot him" Would have to be rendered as "I went down the road. I shot him."

In description, adjectives and adverbs do not exist in the sense they do in many other languages. The adjective is a verb - "to be green" and "to be happy" do not rely on the same verb, they are different actions in their own right. Adverbs simply do not exist (though there is a vastly larger range of verbs in partial compensation).

Paragraph Construction
Paragraph construction is done with a number of "pattern indicators" that give the flow of the passage ahead. These can give a large amount of important information, including the chronological flow of a passage of text and how an argument or discussion is laid out.

Dictionary

Pattern indicators
hya - an informative on a noun in the preceding sentence
kla - succeeding
kra - and/also
ksi - preceding
thi - a cause/because
tsha - but
tyi - a permission/allowing aspect

Example use:
"The S'ruba went to the door, then ran down the path, because his friend had promised to give him the key."
This then renders to the following sentences:
"T'rubata T'hunihi losh" -> The S'ruba went to the door
"T'rubata T'jushi klosh" -> The S'ruba ran on the path
"T'rakta T'rubahi ylia" -> His friend had made a promise
"T'rakka T'ribahi T'rubashi ospa" -> His friend was planning to give him the key

These then need the pattern indicators to give the shape of the thing:
> kla'thi'hya | T'rubata T'hunihi losh/ T'rubata T'jushi klosh/ T'rakta T'rubahi ylia/ T'rakka T'ribahi T'rubashi ospa.
Thus the first boundary is an event after the first event, the second boundary is a reason for the preceding event or two, the third boundary is a sentence giving some information about the previous sentence.

Noun Group indicators (almost all verbs start with one of these)
Bh' -> Indicates a "group"
T' -> Indicates an individual element in a group
Ch' -> Indicates an element without a group, used esp. for abstractions
S' -> Indicates a group where the elements are themselves groups

Verbs:
ana -> To die
ardis -> To heal
ayas -> To be spawned
bana -> To be birthed
bha -> To be high up
caga -> To worship
cha -> To be low down
egga -> To be big
eika -> To communicate
eila -> To be small
eina -> To breathe
esha -> To be wet
eya -> To choose
hacaga -> To worship (derogatory, implies blind subservience)
halya -> To work
hini -> To protect
hulan -> To act/to do
huni -> To guard (a path or passage)
hunali -> To guard (an object)
huya -> To have the right of use of
jasa -> To have jurisdiction over
jisi -> To be mad
jus -> To allow (movement, passage, etc)
juyas -> To permit
kalin -> To know
kara -> To live
kan -> To organise
kelan -> To be blue
kelsaa -> To be ultraviolet
kelya -> To be purple
kiba -> To lock
kitya -> To fear
klosa -> To die
klosh -> To run from A to B*¹
laa -> To be bright (in the sense of a light)
lann -> To be dim (in the sense of a light)
losnya -> To make/create
losh -> To move from A to B*¹
lyna -> To throw
lya -> To shoot (implies long distance)
lyna -> To shoot (implies short distance)
nani -> To defend (eg oneself, one's family)
naga -> To fight
naha -> To break/go back on (eg one's word, a promise, etc)
nina -> To sense (used often instead of to see/hear/smell etc)
nini -> To live/be alive
ospa -> To give
olba -> To exist/to be*²
oha -> To search
rak -> Approximately, "to be together" or "to coexist"
rall -> To make peace
riba -> To unlock
ruba -> To think
runye -> To command
rurtarn-> To be green
rurtin -> To be red
rurtris-> To be yellow
sasi -> To be sane
sassa -> To be dry
sikaa -> To break (eg an item)
skisa -> To take
ssara -> To fly
syan -> To make war
ylia -> To undertake/promise
yka -> To be first
ynalla -> To smell
ynia -> To feel (in the sense of touching)
ysa -> To be last

*¹ these are unusual in that it is possible to validly use it with only a first and third valency noun. The second valency is always point B, the third point A, so "He's coming from over there" would have "over there" as third valency and "He" as first.
*² given the lack of adjectives olba is usually applied as a valency two verb aka "The Silmarillion¹ is a book²". Where it is used with valency one it translates to "exist" more.

Person, tense, and other modifiers (in constructions these must come at the end, usually with person-tense-numerator-other modifier order though this is subject to a lot of dialect variation):
Persons:
la: the verb is reflected (aka me, us)
ra: the verb is addressed directly (aka you)
NB with no modifier the third person is assumed

Tenses:
ta: past tense
ka: the "planning" tense (for intentions, or the far future)
NB the near future tense is assumed. The present tense is non existent, or at least indistinguishable from the near future tense.

Numerators:
1 - aka
2 - akra
3 - aren
4 - arn
5 - ata
6 - ana
Order of magnitude - anla (places it into a sixfold order of magnitude without giving anything more exact)
Columnal - ki (effectively multiplies the preceding number by six)
Greater columnal - kli (effectively multiplies the preceding number by 216)

Thus, twenty-seven T'ruba are not searching for the two T'ruba because of their promise - T'rubaarnkiarenrho T'rubaakrahi Ch'yliathi oha
Equally, 144 T'ruba are searching - T'rubaarnkiki oha, 145 - T'rubaarnkikiaka oha, A lot (where a lot is, say, 2500ish) T'rubaanlakliki

Other:
rho: the negative modifier
bo: the stress modifier, imparts anger, urgency, grief
hi: makes the noun the second valency object
shi: makes the noun the third valency object
thi: makes the noun causal valency
tyi: makes the noun permissive valency

Constructed nouns

Word	Literal	Meaning	Etymology & Notes
Bh'hini	The Group That Protects	A village	The dwellings of one Bh'rak.
Bh'la	Modifier (reflective, individual element)	Us (my immediate group)
Bh'rak	The Group that Coexists	The Bh'rak	The basic "super-family" unit in S'ruba society.
Ch'ylia	The One that Chooses	A choice
Ch'ylia	The One that Promises	A promise
Ch'yka	The One that was First	The home planet of the S'ruba.
S'hini	The Groups That Protect	A city	Thought of as a collection of villages
S'klosh	The Groups That Run	Land animal/s
S'la	Modifier (reflective, individual element)	Us (my species/nation/super-group)
S'nina	The groups that sense	Air	Originally conceived of as a concept of stuff through which sensory information travelled.
S'ruba	The Groups That Think	The S'ruba!
S'ssara	The Groups that Fly	Flying creature/s	Initially a specific group on Ch'yka, but often applied by non-scientists elsewhere.
T'ardis	The Item That Heals	A Doctor
T'halya	The Item That Works	A labourer, builder, or other unskilled worker
T'hini	The Item That Protects	A building
T'huni	The item that guards the way	A door or gate
T'jus	The item that permits the way	A path
T'la	Modifier (reflective, individual element)	Me
T'laa	The item that's bright	A sun/star	The S'ruba never distinguished; primitive S'ruba thought that at night there were lots of tiny lights, in the day one big one, but that they were basically the same thing.
T'losnya	The Item That Creates	An artisan, craftsman, or architect
T'nina	The Item That Senses	A scout
T'olba	The Item That Exists/Is	A name
T'rak	The Item that Coexists	A friend
T'riba	The Item That Unlocks	A key/keycard
T'ruba	The Item That Thinks	An individual S'ruba
T'rurtris	The Item That Is Yellow	A native creature	A large, blotchy yellow coloured, semi-aquatic animal. Relatively docile but with a painful bite.
T'runye	The Item That Commands	An S'ruba military Captain
T'syan	The Item That Makes War	A sword	Placing a sword on the border of your opponent's territory was a traditional declaration of war.
T'ynalla	The Item That Smells	A native creature	A graceful herd creature with an extremely large nose (think giant elephant shrew). One of the few Homeworld animals to have structures similar to fur, though in most types it's short growing..

Example sentences

Phrase/Sentence	Literal	English rendering
T'la rurtarn	I will be green	I am green
T'laka rurtarn	I am planning to be green	I am going to be green (with implication of not being so currently)
S'ruba rurtarn	The S'ruba will be green	The S'ruba are green
S'rubarabo rurtarn	(Addressing the S'ruba, with emphasis) The S'ruba will be green!	The S'ruba must be green!
T'ra oska	You give	Give it.
T'ra T'ribahi oska	You give the key	Give the key.
T'ra T'ribahi T'lashi oska	You give me the key	Give me the key.