A stack conjunction is a word with the primary purpose of directly manipulating the mental stack. The following sections cover the key stack conjunctions and their meanings.
Placeholder Conjunctions
This type of operator searches the stack down for the first occurrence of the placeholder nyun. Every subsequent element of the stack is then put in a series representing the relationship glossed (e.g., "and", "or", "nor").
drumh (A nyun X Y Z -- A "X, Y and Z") marks a simple series of nouns.
tuumnh (A nyun X Y Z -- A "either X, Y or Z") marks an either...or series of nouns
dwoumnh (A nyun X Y Z - A "neither X, Y nor Z") marks a neither...nor series of nouns.
Copying Conjunctions
The following copying conjunctions add one or more items to the top of the stack, based on the existing contents of the stack.
du ( n1 - n1 n1 ) makes a copy of the top stack item. [called "dup", for duplicate, in English grammars]
kuu ( n1 n2 - n1 n2 n1 n2 ) copies the top two stack items. [called "redup"]
voi ( n1 n2 - n1 n2 n1 ) copies the second stack item to the top of the stack. [called "dupover"]
dzhi ( A B nyun X Y Z - A B nyun X Y Z X) copies the stack item above nyun to the top of the stack. [called "pick"]
For instance, hong lin du produces the stack <hong lin> <hong lin>. The phrase hong lin du lo translates as "most loyal man of loyal men" (the superlative is determined from context in this instance).
Another example: the phrase zhong hong kuu produces the stack zhong hong zhong hong, "nation man nation man".
Note: Stylistically, it is considered poor form to repeat a recently said word when a stack conjunction could easily be used instead.
Ordering Conjunctions
The following ordering stack conjunctions rearrange the position of the items on the stack:
shen ( n1 n2 - n2 n1 ) exchanges the stack positions of the top two stack items. [called "swap"]
ronh ( n1 n2 n3 - n2 n3 n1 ) moves the third stack item to the top, pushing down the first two stack items. ["rotate"]
lonh ( n1 n2 n3 - n3 n1 n2 ) moves the top stack item to the third item, pushing the second and third items up. ["counterrotate"]
The word shen is used to rearrange the order of the top two items of the stack. For example, Hong ke rumn ke vith e. is "The man saw the robot." while Hong ke rumn ke shen vilh e. is "The robot saw the man." The swap rearranged the order of the subject and object. Swap, rotate and counterrotate conjunctions enable Fithian word order to be pretty free, despite the fact that verbs require subject-object word order. What follows illustrates this and is a good example of lonh:
The sentence zhong hong zhong hong non lonh lo shen krai e means "nation man nation man without [counterrotate] of hate" -> "The man with a nation is hated by the man without a nation." (Contrast this with zhong hong non zhong hong lo krai e, "The man without a nation hates the man with a nation.")
The effect of ronh lonh is to rotate the top three items, then restore them to their original order, in effect leaving the stack unchanged. As a result, Fithian speakers use ronh lonh as a filler sound like English "um" when hesitating while talking.
Destructive Conjunctions
The following conjunctions remove items from the stack:
frong ( n1 - ) removes the top item from the stack. [called "drop"]
bom ( n1 n2 - n2 ) nips the second item from the stack. [called "nip"]
skuunh (n1...nn - ) removes all items from the stack. [called "drop all"]
Here is an example of skuunh: the phrase shi vum vai e ("you were an egg", lit. "you egg be") is a dire insult, roughly equivalent to "f-- you" in English (and is a reference to the pestilent monotreme rodents native to the planet Fithia). However, the phrase shi vum vai skuunh is the equivalent of "shucks" or "you goof"; it is the mildest of oaths, said by parents to their children and lovers to one another. (Imagine saying "f-- you never mind" to your child!)
Stop Stack Operators
The following stop operators remove items from the stack as sentences.
e (n1 -) removes the top item from the stack as a sentence.
i (n1 -) removes the top item from the stack as a sentence introducing detail (translated to English with a colon as punctuation).
o (n1 -) removes the top item from the stack as an exclamation.
u (n1 -) removes the top item from the stack as a question.
The conjunctions e and frong have different semantic meanings (while sharing the same syntactical function). The word e ends an utterance, popping the stack top off the stack. It is like a period ending a sentence in written discourse, but in Fith it is always spoken. The word frong, on the other hand, like bom, has the sense of "forget I mentioned that".
Synchronization Conjunction
The synchronization conjunction strunh [called "synch"] is used to remind the listener how deep their mental stack should be. It requires that a number already be on the mental stack. For instance, kyuunh strunh means "two [synch]". Such a phrase has the sense of, "You should still have two items on your mental stack [after kyuunhhas been removed], and I'll be getting to them shortly. If you don't, let me know and I'll clarify."
It is frequently used when talking in a noisy environment (the communal showers, for instance) and is used less often otherwise.
Further Usage Notes
Fith often uses the stack conjunction du [*dup] as a type of third-person pronoun. For example: Hong du produces the following stack in the mind of the listener: hong hong, "man man". To say, "The red robot jumped. The man deactivated it.", you would say in Fith: rumn ke vainm du vonh e hong ke shen shkrung e. Literally: "Robot the red (dup) jump. Man the (swap) deactivate."
The difficult part of this for English speakers is that you have to call attention to the fact that you will be referring to something later by saying du. In other words, you have to know that you are going to refer to something with a pronoun before you actually do so, marking the antecedent. This makes it harder to use (for humans) than a third-person pronoun.
The shen (*swap conjunction) is required to place the nouns in correct order for the verb shkrung, "deactivate". The subject has to go on the stack first, followed by the object. The swap-conjunction places the items <hong ke, "man the"> and <rumn ke vainm, "robot the red"> in the correct order on the stack. Without shen, the meaning of the last sentence would be, "The red robot deactivated the man."
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