TABLE OF CONTENTS
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Constructed Language AYBAY CONLANG (ABCL)
- ORTHOGRAPHY
- ALPHABET AND PRONUNCIATION
- PHONOLOGY
- VOCABULARY SYSTEM, LEXICON ARCHITECTURE and WORD FORMATION/DERIVATION
- NOUNS
- VERBS
- ADJECTIVES
- ADVERBS
- CONJUNCTIVES-PREPOSITIONS
- PRONOUNS and Possessive Determiners (Adjective Pronouns)
- NEGATION (_x), QUESTIONS (j) AND PLURAL (-i)
- TENSES, ASPECTS and SUBJUNCTIVES/IRREALIS of ABCL
- MODAL VERBS, INFLEXIONS and MODUS in ABCL
- GREETING and WISHES
- SYNTAX
- Subordinate/dependent and Relative Clauses in ABCL
- ASSOCIATION/EVOCATION-HINTS FOR MEMORIZING/DISREMEMBERING in ABCL
- LEXICON
- SAMPLE TEXT
Constructed Language AYBAY CONLANG (ABCL)
“AyAyBay ConLang (ABCL) is a constructed language developed and published by Dr Aydın Baykara in 2022. It is conceived as an international auxiliary language (auxlang), intended for practical global communication rather than for fictional, artistic, or experimental use.
ABCL is an a priori language: its lexicon has been created entirely from first principles rather than derived from existing natural languages. From a typological perspective, it incorporates features commonly associated with philosophical and logical languages. Morphologically, ABCL is neither strongly agglutinative nor isolating; instead, it relies on a controlled system of inflection and derivation. Inflection is limited primarily to verbal categories such as tense and aspect, while derivational morphology is used systematically to expand the lexicon without introducing irregularity.
The language avoids stem alternation altogether. Possession is expressed by suffixation on the possessor rather than by case marking on the possessed noun. Plurality and negation are likewise realised through suffixes, and clauses themselves carry no special morphological marking. Prefixes are reserved exclusively for modal and oppositional functions and are restricted to a single consonant. A limited form of reduplication is employed for the formation of certain deverbal nouns.
Purpose and Design Objectives:
A) A Language for Easy Learning as a Foreign Language for the Masses: ABCL aims to provide an easy-to-learn common language for the masses. This is achieved by classifying words into logical groups and employing a unique system of associations, hints, and evocations that allow learners to easily memorize words by connecting them to their existing knowledge using linguistic clues. According to Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLS), 25-45% of learners rely on such techniques.
B) Contexts Should Be as Concise as Possible to Save Paper: To reduce printing costs, ABCL aims to keep contexts short. This will be done by creating a vocabulary with words consisting of as few letters as possible. For example, adverbs and conjunctions will have only two letters, root verbs, adjectives, and prepositions will have three letters, and nouns will have five letters.
Learning natural languages is challenging due to irregularities, ambiguities, and complex grammatical rules. Many constructed languages (conlangs) aim to avoid these complexities to be more easily learnable as an international auxiliary language (IAL).
Criteria for a conlang to be simple and easy to learn:
- Logical and Simple Grammar Rules: Grammatic rules should be as less as possible. For example, the object noun, including pronouns, will not be declined for accusative, dative, or locative cases, as in Chinese. Word roles will be defined by their position in the sentence and the verb used, with prepositions used where necessary (as in English).
- High Degree of Unambiguity:Each word should have a single grammatical interpretation. The grammatical relationship between words should be clearly defined.
- Easy-to-Memorize Vocabulary: Words should be grouped into predefined, distinguishable classes. However, these classes should not be overly taxonomic. The vocabulary will include mnemonic strategies that help learners recall words, linking them to their English equivalents. This makes it easier for learners to remember words they have learned but forgotten.
- Simple Phonology: Words should not be differentiated by aspiration, shortening, lengthening, or stressing individual phonemes, consonants, or vowels.
- Fluent Pronunciation: Diphthongs and double consonants (clusters) should be avoided for easier pronunciation.
- Minimal Word Length: Words should be as short as possible to facilitate brevity in communication and reduce paper usage.
Two-Level Structure of ABCL:
ABCL is organised into two functional levels.
Level 1 is intended for general communication and corresponds approximately to an upper-intermediate (B2) proficiency level. It provides a fully functional linguistic system sufficient for everyday use.
Level 2 extends the language for advanced contexts, including formal discourse, technical writing, and literary expression. At this level, additional derivational options and finer semantic distinctions become available, without altering the core grammatical framework.
ABCL strives to meet these goals through:
- Clear Syntax: ABCL uses a clearly defined subject-verb-object (SVO) syntax, a fixed order for affixes, and a simplified set of tenses, moods, and aspects compared to most living languages.
- Lexical Creation: In Level 1, ABCL defines basic (root) words with one meaning only. Words with more nuanced meanings are formed by adding adverbs or particles to the root words. ABCL provides simple word derivation rules for words that are not part of the root vocabulary but are necessary for communication. For Level 2, frequently used words may be added as root words to be memorized as part of the vocabulary even though derived one’s is possible.
- Systematic Word Creation: ABCL words follow a systematic pattern, making it easy for learners to identify the role of a word (adverb, noun, etc.) in a sentence without knowing its meaning beforehand. Except for unconjugated root verbs, adverbs, and negated words (marked by the suffix “x”), all words end in a vowel.
- Avoiding Diphthongs and Clusters: The language avoids diphthongs and consonant clusters, with three exceptions: modal prefixes, plural marker, and verb transformations combined with passive and other modal/aspectual suffixes. For example, “lav.e.n.x.r” (unexpectedly). Such words should be pronounced while inserting the short vowel “i” between consonants (“laveniksir”).
- Turkish Alphabet and Phonetics: ABCL is based on the Turkish alphabet and orthography, following the principle “one letter per sound.” This orthographic transparency eliminates ambiguity between spelling and pronunciation and contributes to the language’s overall regularity. Written forms will be consistently recoverable from spoken input and vice versa.
Since adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns are the most frequently used words in many languages, ABCL creates these words with two or three letters. This significantly reduces the number of characters needed compared to English, which allows ABCL to save up to half the amount of text in a book, for example.
Simplifying Language Learning for English Speakers:
A key consideration when developing ABCL is that it will be learned by English speakers as a foreign language. This means it must be based on the English lexicon to make learning easier. As a result, ABCL includes vocabulary that bridges to English words, making it easier for learners to recall words they have learned but forgotten. For example, the ABCL adjective “age” corresponds to the English word “gentle,” with the last two letters of “age” linking to the first two letters of “gentle.” This method helps learners remember words faster. (See the chapter: “Association/Evocation-Hints For Memorizing/Disremembering İn ABCL” for detailed explanations.)
In cases where a logical word formation seemed more appropriate (e.g., “title BODY”), the approach may differ. Additionally, some grammatical structures, such as relative clauses, are made similar to English to further aid learning without compromising the simplicity of the language.
Reducing Vocabulary for Easier Learning:
To make the language easier to learn, ABCL reduces the number of vocabulary words as much as possible. It achieves this by using a single ABCL word for synonyms or closely related words in English. This reduces the amount of vocabulary that learners need to memorize. For instance, the ABCL verb “gab” covers multiple English verbs like “abandon,” “waive,” “quit,” “give up,” “renounce,” “relinquish,” and others. In context, “gab” would be used with a particle or adverb to express nuances of meaning. As for example: quit (the job)/gab (suljo) – abdicate (the throne)/gab (pasto) – renounce (the claim))/ gab (redde)).
By avoiding marginal contrasts and phonological redundancy, ABCL achieves a stable and predictable sound system that supports both human learning and computational processing.
Definiteness and Reference: ABCL does not encode definiteness morphologically. There are no articles equivalent to “a, an, or the”. Definiteness and specificity are inferred from context, word order, or the use of demonstratives and pronouns where necessary.
This design reflects the observation that articles frequently constitute a learning burden for non-native speakers while contributing relatively little to propositional content. Their omission simplifies noun phrase structure without significantly affecting communicative precision.
Understanding the Vocabulary System:
The vocabulary system of ABCL uses a simple representation for consonants (C) and vowels (V). An asterisk (*) attached to “V” or “C” indicates that the vowels(V*) or consonants(C*) can vary within the defined range (a-ü and b-z respectively). The “#” symbol serves as a placeholder for varying vowels or consonants. The point (“.”) between syllables is used to demonstrate affixes in examples, but it will not be used in normal speech.
ORTHOGRAPHY
ABCL makes use of all eight vowels that exist in some natural languages, without employing vowel lengthening or lowering. In addition to the common vowels a, e, i, o, u, the vowels ö and ü (as found, for example, in German) and “ı” (ɯ, the close back unrounded vowel, uncommon in most alphabets) are also used.
The letter “ı” is very common in Turkish and is not difficult to pronounce, despite appearing unfamiliar to non-native speakers. Although “ı” does not exist in the English alphabet, its sound frequently occurs in spoken English. For example, it can be heard in words ending in -tion, such as station, which could be written in ABCL as steyşın or even sıteyşın. The first ı may not be clearly articulated due to the consonant cluster st, but the second vowel is distinctly pronounced in English, often lengthened and stressed. In theory, ABCL could avoid using “ı” for nouns, since a large number of nouns can be created without relying on this vowel (or on certain consonants such as j). However, in practice—especially for verbs—ı and similar letters are necessary to generate a sufficient number of root words. Close-nuanced vowel sounds related to e (such as the German ä) have been deliberately excluded to maintain phonological simplicity.
ABCL employs a total of 20 consonants, though only 18 are generally used. These include ç and ş, which correspond to the English digraphs “ch” and “sh”. The letter “w” has been omitted because its pronunciation is very close to “v”, and “q” has been excluded due to its similarity to “k or g”. The letter “j”, pronounced as in the French word “je”, is included for marking questions, numerals, and a small number of verbs and adjectives. In addition, “j” may be required in Level 2 of ABCL if the available CV and VC two-letter particles (prepositions, conjunctions, and adverbs) become insufficient.
The final consonant, used only rarely (primarily for ordinal numbers), is “ğ”, which is pronounced similarly to the “gh” in the English word “though”. The letter “x” has the same pronunciation as in English and is used exclusively for negation and antonym formation, typically at the end of the word it modifies.
Below is the complete spelling-to-pronunciation table, accompanied by additional examples.
ALPHABET AND PRONUNCIATION
| Letter | Example in English | Letter | Example in English | Letter | Example in English |
| a | as in father | k | as in cop | v | as in village, vertical |
| b | as in below | l | as in length | y | as in bay, yes (/j/) |
| c | as in jungle, jar (/d͡ʒ/) | m | as in measure | z | as in zero, zodiac |
| ç | as in CHair, challenge (/t͡ʃ/) | n | as in nice | x | “iks” or, -if follows a vowel- “ks” as in six/sex |
| d | as in dark | o | as in pore | ||
| e | as in bed | ö | as in sir, German ö | ||
| f | as in friend | p | as in piece | ||
| g | as in dog, grind | r | as in rice | ||
| ğ | as in though (/ɣ/) | s | as in sick | ||
| h | as in hallo, has | ş | as in SHade (/ʃ/) | ||
| ı | as in open (/ɯ/) | t | as in tip | ||
| i | as in meet | u | as in today | ||
| J | as in measure (/ʒ/) | ü | as in fusion |
“(/d͡ʒ/)”: IPA pronunciatios of the letters not existing or different in English are given in brackets.
ABCL does not require precise phonetic execution for successful communication. The lexicon is constructed to be resilient to accentual variation and minor phonetic deviations. No lexical contrasts depend on stress placement, vowel length, or fine-grained articulatory distinctions.
However, for optimal clarity, certain stress patterns are recommended. In word forms of the types V, VC, CV, VCV, and CVC, the vowel should be stressed. In longer forms such as CVCCV and beyond, the second vowel should be stressed. This is particularly important when words differ from one another by only a single vowel or consonant, as proper stress improves intelligibility and reduces ambiguity.
Consonant clusters and diphthongs are avoided wherever possible. When morphological processes produce consonant adjacency—most notably in complex verb forms—speakers may insert a short epenthetic vowel (i or ı) during pronunciation. This insertion is purely phonetic and does not affect spelling or grammatical structure.
PHONOLOGY
Consonants
| Labial/Bilabial | Dental/Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Plosive/ Affricate | voiceless | p | t | ç (t͡ʃ) | k (c) | ||
| voiced | b | d | c (d͡ʒ) | g (ɟ) | ɡ | ||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ş (ʃ) | x | ||
| voiced | v | z | j (ʒ) | ||||
| Approximant | l (ɫ) | l | y (j) | ı (ɯ) | ğ (ɤ̞ɯ̞) | ||
| Flap | r (ɾ) | ||||||
IPA pronunciatios of the letters different from/or not existing in English are given in brackets.
Vowels
Front Back
unrounded rounded unrounded rounded
Close i ü (y) ı (ɯ) u
Open e ö (œ) a o
ABCL does not define any allophonic rules. The vocabulary is constructed such that each word is inherently distinct and intelligible without reliance on allophony. Speakers may therefore realize sounds according to the phonetic habits of their native language.
VOCABULARY SYSTEM, LEXICON ARCHITECTURE and WORD FORMATION/DERIVATION
The vocabulary system of ABCL is deliberately designed to scale. While the theoretical capacity of the templates is very large, only a carefully curated subset is instantiated at Level 1. This ensures that learners are not confronted with excessive or poorly differentiated lexical material.
Lexical items in ABCL are generated according to predefined phonotactic templates:
Root nouns are formed as CVCCV; verbs as CVC; adjectives as VCV; arithmetic numerals (1–9) as CV; geometric numerals (10, 100, 1000, 10 000, etc.) as CVC; adverbs as VC; conjunctions and prepositions as CV; and pronouns as either V or VCV.
When a template is shared across multiple lexical categories (notably VCV), category-specific constraints are imposed on segment selection to ensure unambiguous classification. For example, adjective forms using the VCV template are restricted to the initial vowels “a, e, o, ö, u, and ü”. Pronouns are generally marked by the initial vowel “i”; alternatively, the presence of “z” in the second position serves as a possessive indicator.
Template length and structure are selected based on the combinatorial capacity required for each lexical category. By way of illustration, an estimated lexicon of approximately 500,000 root nouns can be generated using the CVCCV template, while the CVC template provides sufficient capacity for the roughly 4,000 root verbs anticipated. Derived lexical items may exceed these base lengths as required.
The ABCL lexicon (ABCL–English/Turkish) has been prepared in the form of an Excel spreadsheet and is organized by lexical categories, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions, and pronouns. In addition, tables outlining the rules for word derivation—accompanied by numerous examples—have been created for derived nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Further tables presenting affixes for inflection, conjugation, and declension are included in the relevant sections.
The noun category comprises 24 noun classes, each of which is presented on a separate Excel worksheet. Further details are provided under the corresponding section titled “NOUN” below. Verbs are likewise divided into classes similar to those of nouns and are presented on a single worksheet, which also includes the rules for derived verbs in a separate section. Each of the remaining lexical categories is likewise assigned its own worksheet.
Words can be located using Excel’s search function in both directions (ABCL–English/Turkish and vice versa). In addition, direct visual lookup is possible when the lexical class of a word can be identified in advance, by consulting the relevant worksheet and subsection.
Unlike English, ABCL does not employ the same lexical form across multiple grammatical categories such as noun and verb, or adjective, adverb, conjunction, and pronoun. Each grammatical class is assigned a distinct lexical item. Nevertheless, morphological similarity is generally maintained across related forms. For example, the English word “some” corresponds in ABCL to “oşo” (adjective), “oşor” (adverb), and “işo” (pronoun).
At present, ABCL includes approximately 4500 root nouns (including the 3,000 most common English nouns as listed by the Britannica Dictionary), 2000 root verbs, 800 root adjectives (400 pairs), plus 200 explicitly defined derived adjectives. In addition, the lexicon contains over 200 adverbs, 150 conjunctions and prepositions, and 50 pronouns defined with English translations, with further expansion planned. Including approximately 200 defined derivations and 136 numerals, the current vocabulary approaches 8000 lexical items, which is considered sufficient for everyday communication in world languages.
Word formation through derivation among verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs is achieved by means of suffixation. Suffixes are selected separately for each logically defined derivational group and are described in the following sections, with examples provided for each syntactic category. Prefixes are reserved for modal and oppositional functions and are not used for general derivation.
As a general rule in derivation, the grammatical class with the shortest root morpheme (in terms of letter count)—typically verbs and determiners/adjectives—is preferred as the base form. Consequently, derivation from verbs to nouns results in six-letter forms (e.g., ças.ado), while derivation from adjectives to nouns yields five-letter forms (e.g., ego.ma). Derivation from nouns to verbs produces six-letter forms (e.g., denba.k), and from nouns to adjectives seven-letter forms (e.g., venvi.do). Derivation from adjectives to verbs likewise results in four-letter forms (e.g., üşo.t).
In accordance with this principle, derivations originating from nouns (i.e., noun → verb and noun → adjective) are to be avoided whenever possible. However, highly frequent concepts may be defined as root nouns rather than derived forms (e.g., rain, food).
As explained in the following sections, the ABCL word-creation system is capable of generating a very large number of additional root and derived lexical items. Nevertheless, the established derivational rules are designed to allow speakers to readily construct or identify the words needed for effective expression. On this basis, the current effective vocabulary of ABCL can be estimated at approximately 8,000 to 10,000 lexical items.
Functional Implications: The vocabulary architecture of ABCL reflects a deliberate trade-off: instead of maximising lexical diversity, the system prioritises structural predictability, semantic transparency, and cognitive economy. Learners are encouraged to internalise derivational patterns rather than memorise large numbers of isolated forms. This approach not only supports efficient human learning but also renders the lexicon well suited to computational processing, automated word generation, and machine-assisted translation.
NOUNS
The nominal system of ABCL prioritises predictability and analytical clarity. By eliminating case inflection, articles, and agreement, the language reduces cognitive load while retaining sufficient expressive power for precise communication.
Basic/Root Nouns
Basic (root) nouns are primarily formed as five-letter words with a CVCCV phonotactic template, realized phonologically as two syllables (CVC.CV). This consistency enables immediate identification of nouns based solely on form. In addition to these roots, the language also permits nouns derived from verbs, adjectives, and other nouns, resulting in forms of five, six, or seven letters as mentioned before.
All noun forms—whether basic or derived—terminate in a vowel, maintaining formal uniformity across the nominal system. The extension to six and seven letters serves a functional purpose: it prevents ambiguity with root nouns and avoids double-vowel sequences, which are otherwise disallowed or dispreferred in the phonotactic system.
Root nouns are organized into 24 noun classes, each corresponding to a distinct semantic domain. These domains include, but are not limited to: “body, human, animals, plants, mental, psychology–spirit, social, economy, daily home, health, pastime, nature and environment, science, technic, construction–transport, time, measurement, military, and others.”
Each noun class is identified by a dedicated initial consonant, which functions as a semantic classifier and provides immediate domain recognition. Given that /s/ is among the most frequently used initial consonants across natural languages, it has been deliberately assigned to the high-frequency and conceptually central domains of BODY and HUMAN, which dominate everyday discourse.
From a cognitive-linguistic perspective, the concern that words differing only by a final vowel or consonant might be easily confused rests on an overly narrow view of lexical access, one that treats words as isolated phonetic strings rather than as elements embedded in structured semantic networks.
Human lexical memory does not operate on raw phonological contrast alone. Instead, it relies heavily on chunking—the grouping of related information into higher-order units. In ABCL, nouns are not learned or retrieved as standalone forms, but as members of clearly delimited semantic and morphological clusters. The shared initial consonant immediately activates a domain-level chunk (e.g. BODY, HUMAN), significantly narrowing the search space before the remainder of the word is processed.
This process is reinforced by semantic priming. Encountering the initial consonant primes a specific conceptual field, biasing interpretation toward anatomically, socially, or functionally relevant meanings. As a result, even minimal phonological contrasts at word endings are disambiguated by context-driven expectation, much as they are in natural languages where homophones or near-homophones coexist without cognitive overload.
Furthermore, the regularity of word formation in ABCL promotes predictive processing. Speakers do not merely recognize words post hoc; they actively anticipate likely continuations once a semantic class is activated. This reduces reliance on fine-grained phonetic discrimination and instead exploits top-down processing, which is known to be more efficient and robust in real-time language use.
In this sense, ABCL trades excessive phonological distinctiveness for systematic connotative structure. The payoff is improved learnability and recall: words are remembered not because they are maximally different, but because they are meaningfully positioned within a cognitive map. What critics perceive as a risk of confusion thus becomes, within a cognitively informed framework, a deliberate mechanism for linguistic economy and mnemonic strength.
Nouns are generated through the use of an Excel-based matrix, which ensures consistency, exhaustiveness, and controlled expansion of the lexicon. An illustrative extract of this matrix for the primary domain BODY is presented below.
For this semantic heading, the CVCCV template is instantiated as S#N##, where S and N function as the fixed, basic consonants designating the domain BODY. These consonants immediately activate the relevant semantic field and serve as stable anchors within the lexical system.
Subtopics within the BODY domain are generated by varying the first vowel along the horizontal axis of the matrix, ranging from A to Ü (eight vowels, corresponding to eight columns). Each vowel thus defines a subheading. For example, for the subheading Head, the selected vowel is “İ”, yielding the fixed first syllable SİN; for Upper Body, the vowel “O” produces SON. In cognitive terms, each such CVC syllable functions as a mid-level semantic chunk, narrower than the domain but broader than individual lexical items.
Once a subheading syllable (e.g. SİN) is fixed, noun generation proceeds within a block defined by that syllable. The fourth letter (a consonant) is held constant across a column, while the fifth letter (a vowel) varies again from A to Ü, producing eight phonologically parallel forms (“SİN” C* A … “SİN” C* Ü). This creates a coherent horizontal block of closely related lexical items, reinforcing associative learning through systematic variation.
Vertically, within each column, the fourth consonant is varied from B to Z (20 consonants in total). Each vertical progression thus introduces finer semantic distinctions while preserving the overarching subheading cue SİN. The result is a two-dimensional matrix in which phonological regularity mirrors semantic proximity.
Through this mechanism, each subtopic can theoretically generate 8 × 20 = 160 nouns. Since each main heading (such as BODY) comprises eight such subtopics (“SAN”##, “SİN”## etc), the total capacity per heading is 8 × 160 = 1,280 nouns.
If the second basic consonant (N in S#N##) is itself varied from B to Z (20 possibilities), the system yields 20 × 1,280 = 25,600 nouns beginning with the initial consonant “S”. Extending the same scheme across 20 initial consonants, the full matrix permits the creation of 20 × 25,600 = 512,000 nouns in a strictly controlled, non-colliding lexical space.
From a cognitive standpoint, this architecture exploits hierarchical chunking (initial consonant → domain; CVC syllable → subdomain; final CV → lexical item). Lexical retrieval is therefore guided not by raw phonetic discrimination alone, but by progressively narrowing semantic expectations, which substantially reduces confusion while maximizing generative efficiency.
As stated above, Level 1 is intentionally restricted to approximately 5,000 nouns, a set that has already been defined and consists of 4,500 root nouns and roughly 100 derived nouns. This deliberate limitation allows the system to exclude combinations with difficult or undesirable pronunciations—for example those involving the consonant “j”, the vowel “ı”, or sequences that conflict with vowel harmony principles. Full exploitation of the matrix’s combinatorial capacity is therefore neither necessary nor desirable at this level.
Comprehensive utilization of the matrix is envisaged only for specialized vocabularies, such as medical, scientific, or technical terminology, where higher lexical density and finer semantic granularity are required. In these domains, the matrix’s systematic nature becomes a distinct advantage rather than a cognitive burden. Initial “K” is reserved for such terminologies. Further domains with the initial letters “N” and “L” are provided also in the Excel matrices as reserve tables.
From an implementation standpoint, the matrix-based structure is inherently compatible with computer-assisted word generation and translation. Because each lexical item is defined by its position within the matrix rather than by an opaque form, algorithms can reliably generate, parse, and map words across languages or semantic domains.
The matrix also supports further hierarchical refinement through sub-subheadings. For example, within the subheading “Head”, the first column or row (e.g. SİNba) denotes a primary concept. Beneath this primary entry are the sense organs—eye, nose, ear—grouped within the same structural block (denoted as sin#a: primary). Subsequent columns to the right represent secondary concepts, that is, constituent parts of the primary noun.
Thus, for the noun eye (sinse) in the first column, the same row yields related subcomponents: iris (sinsi), eyelid (sinsö), pupil (sinsü). This spatial arrangement encodes part–whole relationships directly into the lexicon, reinforcing semantic association through layout as well as form.
Because the system is implemented as an Excel table, each cell can additionally contain right-click annotations providing definitions or translations in any target language. This transforms the matrix into a multilingual, expandable lexical database, equally usable by human learners and computational tools.
From a cognitive perspective, the combined use of hierarchical chunking, spatial organization, and semantic proximity minimizes confusion while maximizing memorability. What appears superficially as combinatorial excess is, in practice, a tightly controlled framework optimized for both human cognition and machine processing.
| Below is a concise, illustrative sample of ABCL nouns in the S#N## group (BODY), presented purely as a partial example to demonstrate structure, not as an exhaustive list. |
SİN: Heading HEAD
| SinC*a,e: Primary | SinC*e-i-o-ö-ü: Secondary | ||||||||
| sin#a | sin#e | sin#i,o | sin#o,ö | sin#ö,ü | |||||
| sinba | head | ||||||||
| sinbe | skull | sinbi | scalp | sinbö | jaw, chin | sinbü | cheekbone | ||
| sinfa | face | sinfe | cheek | sinfo | forehead | sinfö | jaw | sinfü | |
| sinha | ear | sinhi | inner ear | sinho | earlobe | sinhö | middle ear/ossicles | ||
| sinma | mouth | sinme | palate | sinmi | lip | sinmo | tongue | sinmö | poach |
| sinna | nose | sinni | sinüs | sinno | nostril | sinnö | nosal bone | sinnü | |
| sinse | eye | sinsi | iris | sinsö | eyelid | sinsü | pupil | ||
| sinta | tooth | sinte | canine tooth | sinti | grinder | sinto | foretooth | sintu | gum |
| sinye | eye brow | sinyi | eye lash | sinyö | sinyü | ||||
Prosodic marking is generally not required in ABCL. However, to prevent potential misunderstanding arising from the close phonetic proximity of certain vowels, syllabic accentuation is applied where necessary, particularly on the second syllable. This accentuation does not introduce lexical stress contrasts in the traditional sense; rather, it serves as a clarificatory prosodic cue, ensuring reliable discrimination between minimally contrasting vowel sequences. In practice, this measure is applied selectively and systematically, preserving the language’s overall phonological simplicity while maintaining perceptual clarity.
Nouns in the Lexicon: In addition to the approximately 4500 root noun entries defined in the ABCL–English lexicon, the reverse English–ABCL lexicon contains an additional ~1,000 noun entries. These entries function as synonyms or nuanced variants of the primary ABCL nouns, as described in the preface. These do not represent an expansion of the ABCL noun inventory itself, but rather an enrichment of the mapping layer, enabling more precise and flexible correspondence from English into ABCL.
Derived Nouns
Nouns may be derived from nouns, verbs, and adjectives through the application of fixed suffixation schemes. Derived nouns typically terminate in the vowel “a” (except CVCCV forms), maintaining formal alignment with root nouns and preserving uniform nominal morphology. The derivational rules apply uniformly to all verb types; no distinction is made between transitive and intransitive verbs. As a result, nominalization is governed by morphological form rather than syntactic behavior, ensuring regularity and predictability across the lexicon.
Deverbal Nouns (Nominalization Table)
| ABCL Suffix Level 1 (examples) | ABCL Suffix Level 2 | Example: ABCL noun (Level1/Level 2) | English Suffix | Some English nouns as examples (only nouns in italics are translated into ABCL) |
| _aya (nomina acti-result of act) | _aya | kuc.aya | _, age, _ure | cut, bore, leakage, creature |
| _aya | çöp.aya | _(t)ion | protrusion, indication, motion, division, organization, evaporation | |
| _aya | reh.aya | _ | heap | |
| _aya | han.aya | _ing | building, being, writing, dead, smell, piping | |
| _aya | hic.aya | _ate | certificate | |
| _aya | kap.aya | _ | package | |
| _aya | bon.aya (=bonko), rez.aya | _ledge, (a)ncy | knowledge, expectancy | |
| _aya | _ama | dan.ama | _ | dress/clothes(ing)/wear/garment, |
| _ama | did.ama | _ | drink, food | |
| moz.zo (Verb’s last two letters reverse repeated) CVC.CV (nomina actionis-name of the action) gel.le yun.nu | _aha | moz.zo (moz.aha) | _ence | joy, fun, thought, excellence |
| _aha | höm.mö, tez.ze | _ment | employment, enjoyment, amazement, imprisonment, replacement | |
| _aha | bol.lo (bol.aha) | love, liking, praise | ||
| _aha | pef.fe | _ure | failure, pleasure, disclosure | |
| _aha | ned.de | _al | denial, approval, removal, proposal, refusal, dismissal, arrival, appraisal, remedial | |
| _aha | pöp.pö | _ance | resistance, deliverance, importance, attendance, defiance, assistance | |
| _aha | çeş.şe, pil.li | _, _ism | speech, criticism, shave, description, classification, dance, dream | |
| _aha | boh.ho, çen.ne | _ | hope, end, rain, work, fear, success, result | |
| _aha | luy.yu, rez.ze/rez.aha | _ion | Interruption expectation | |
| _aha | vus.su | _ing | counting, dying (death), measuring | |
| _ada | nel.le (nel.ada) | _ion, _tion,_sion | relaxation, attention, selection, evaporation, introduction | |
| _ada | çöm.mö | _age, _th, _ade | message, manage, drainage, growth, health, blockade | |
| _ada | yun.nu | _ | run, begin, joy | |
| _ada | sab.ba | _ity | ability, prosperity, intensity, simplicity, customs | |
| _ada | pıb.tö | _ery/-ry, _ony | bribery, robbery, testimony | |
| _ada | gel.le (gel.ada) | _ancy | tendency, (walk) | |
| _afa | yun.nu(yun.afa) | _ing (gerund) | running, beginning, rejoicing | |
| _asa (human) | _asa | höm.asa, tep.asa | _er, _or, -ent, -est, -ist, -ory, _ak, _ier | employer, player, teacher, student, assistant, servant, stimulant, baker, beggar, survivor, editor, governor, waitress, tourist, signatory, runaway (leakage), liar, applicant, cashier, cleaner |
| _ana (tool) | _ana | tap.ana, dat.ana | _er | (music)player, cleaner, counter, cleaner, recorder, player, opener, obstacle, scale, viewer (for suffix _scope: as microscope, telescope) |
| _aşa | _aşa | höm.aşa | _ee | employee, refugee, trainee |
| _aça | _aça | vüp.aça | _ery,_ry | refinery, bakery, laundry, laboratory, dormitory |
| _aca | dir.aca | _ing, _tion | bedding, station (bus stop), aim/target, passage |
According to the semantic contribution they make to derived nouns, English nominalizing suffixes may be grouped into categories such as nomina acti, nomina actionis, nomina agentis (actor), nomina patientis (affected entity), nomen loci (place), as well as nouns denoting the result or product of an action, whether concrete or abstract, and the result conceived as a process. These functional groups are represented in the second column (Level 2) of the table referenced above.
Level 1 Nominalization: Reduced Suffix Inventory
Closer examination, however, shows that distinct suffix groups applied to the same verbal root rarely yield genuinely distinct core meanings. In particular, suffixes such as –aya, –ama (and similarly –aha, –ada, –afa) do not systematically produce separate nouns with clearly differentiated semantics when attached to the same verb root. Even in cases where English appears to contrast forms—such as “expectation” versus “expectancy”— that apparent semantic differences are frequently marginal, contextual, or register-based rather than conceptually necessary.
Accordingly, ABCL does not require multiple nominalizing suffixes to express these closely overlapping categories at Level 1. A single, neutral nominalizing suffix is sufficient to represent the noun derived from a given verb. Apparent meaning differences are understood to reside in the lexical semantics of the verb root, not in the suffix itself; therefore, extensive suffix diversity is unnecessary. The inventory of nominalizing suffixes is deliberately reduced and consolidated in order to maximize regularity, learnability, and semantic transparency.
At Level 2, speakers may optionally employ more specialized suffixes (e.g. rez-aha vs. rez-aya) to introduce finer semantic distinctions when precision is desired. Such differentiation is treated as stylistic or technical refinement, not as a structural requirement of the language.
In summary, ABCL prioritizes semantic economy and morphological regularity: where multiple suffixes in natural languages serve largely overlapping functions, a single suffix is preferred, with optional expansion reserved for advanced or specialized usage.
For ABCL Level 1, the following suffix groups are retained, merged, or reinterpreted as specified below.
1. “-aya” for result/ product of act as real object normally. (nomina acti-quantitative). But sometimes abstract objects included in this category, if the meaning is modified in daily speech as “knowledge”
2. Suffixes “-ana” and “-asa” are indicating the subject of the act (thing or person) only. (nomina agentis)
3. The suffix “–aşa” is retained unchanged to indicate the entity affected by the action. This suffix remains distinct, as it encodes a clear and cognitively salient role contrast. (nomina patientis)
4. The suffixes “–aça” and “–aca” are merged into a single functional group.
This merged suffix denotes the location or place where an action occurs or is associated. (noun loci)
5. The groups with the suffixes “-afa” standing for “-ing” (gerund-nomina actions), “-aha” (nomina acti-qualitative and “-ada” (nomina actions), also naming the action itself by the name will have the form CVC.CV (VCVkkV or VCVttV for verbs derived from adjectives), where the last two letters of the verb will be reversed and so suffixed to the verb stem. This specific type of derived noun has five letters differently of others with six letters in CVCaC*a format. For the abstract deverbal nouns the scheme CVC.CV will be applied, but not for tangible nouns (for “things” e.g. bedding, passage) principally.
As previously stated, frequently used concepts are preferably expressed by independent root nouns, rather than by derived forms, provided they can be accommodated within the existing noun category system. This approach avoids unnecessary morphological complexity in high-frequency vocabulary.
For example, from the verb “bon”- “to know”, the semantically corresponding noun knowledge is not expressed by a derived form such as bonaya or bonno. Instead, a newly created root noun, “bonko”, is introduced and assigned to the appropriate noun category. This strategy prioritizes lexical transparency and ease of recall for everyday usage.
These elements are summarized in the first column of the nominalization table. The additional suffixes listed in the second column are not part of the Level 1 core and may be introduced at Level 2, if finer semantic or technical distinctions are required.
Given an assumed inventory of approximately 2,500 suitable verbs, and considering the retained derivational mechanisms, it is theoretically possible to generate up to 10,000 additional nouns for Level 1 alone. In practice, however, only a carefully selected subset is instantiated, in line with ABCL’s principles of semantic economy, controlled growth, and learnability.
Denominal Noun
ABCL generally avoids noun-based derivation when shorter bases are available. Derivational processes involving nouns typically yield longer forms than those derived from verbs or adjectives.
| _da (for abstract nouns) | _da | salma.da | _hood, _ship, _ness, _ity, _ism, _cy, _ery, _dom | motherhood, friendship, …, humanity, socialism, fatalism, regency, slavery, military, kingdom |
| _ha | sinsa.ha/dündi | spectacles, woodshed, cucumber, Spielzeug (German) | ||
| _ca (dimulative) | _ca | salma.ca | _y, -n/-en/-on, _ling, _ette | mummy, doggy, chicken, kitten, maiden darling, diskette |
| _sa (affiliation to people- group) | _va | pespo.va (sulpo) | _ian, _er, _man, _ist | politician, librarian, physician, musician, porter, sportsman, fireman, statesman, pianist, artist, dentist, racist, socialist, Buddhist, atheist |
| _sa | sölsi.sa, sölvi.sa, London.sa | _ien,_an, (e)r, _ish | citizen, villager, Londoner, republican, English, German | |
| _ra | vatne.ra / sülne | _eer | engineer | |
| _ga (relating to a branch, area | _ga | bünbi.ga, manpa.ga | _logy, _nomy, _graphy | biology, psychology, planetology, astronomy, stenography, geography, photography |
| _ya | _ya | pasna.ya/pesna | _ism | nationalism; racism |
| _la (language) | _la | Türk.la | _ish, _ian, _an, _er, _se | Turkish, Algerian, Roman, Chinese |
| folk and country name written in ABCL’s phonetic; | _ | Doyç/Doyçland, Engliş, Türk, Türkiye, Nippon | folk and country name | as in the original language, not in English |
| _meter | thermometer=“heat gauge” | in ABCL this suffix will be replaced with compound word |
By analogy with the deverbal noun derivation discussed above, ABCL adopts the suffix “-da” to cover the Level-2 suffixes “-da” and “-ha”; “-sa” for “-sa, -va, and -ra” (all human-related); “-ya” for -ism; and “-ga” for scientific nouns. Although rare, it is possible that two different suffixes may be required to represent distinct meanings derived from the same noun (as shown in the table above, where motherhood and mummy are both derived from mother using the suffixes “-da” and “-ca”, respectively).
When a noun is used very frequently, ABCL defines not only a derived form but also an independent root noun, as illustrated above (pespo.sa(/va) → sulpo “politician”, or vatne.sa(/ra) → sülne “engineer”). Once derivation rules are learned, they can be applied productively to new cases; however, the resulting words are longer. Alternatively, a new root noun can be learned in addition to the derived form, an approach that ABCL considers appropriate only for Level 2.
Noun Derived from Adjective
| _ma | una.ma | _y | pinkly |
| _ma; (x)_ma | ube.ma, ubex.ma | _ | beauty, ugliness |
| _ma | ufo.ma | _dom | freedom, boredom |
| _ma | edi.ma | _th | depth, strength |
| (x)_ma | _cy | vacancy | |
| _ma | apı.ma | _(en)ce | prominence, absence, residence |
| _ma | ahux.ma | _hood | falsehood |
| _ma | asa.ma | _ness | sadness, kindness, darkness, business |
| _ma | _(en)cy | fluency, frequency | |
| _ma | silbi.do(so).ma | _(al)ity, _ty, _y | sexuality, normality, formality, loyalty, jealousy, victory |
| _(ğ)ma | çi.ğ.ma, fiğma | couple, trio/triplet | |
| _ma | ome.ma | _side | outside |
| _sa (human) | ofü.sa, öfö.sa(i) | _ | fanatic, The greens |
| _ya | _ism | ||
| _ vusyu | oşu.vusyu, ki.vusyu | _gon | polygon, pentagon |
*Nouns will not be derived from deverbal adjectives but directly from verbs, so it will be “gav.va” and “vof.fo”.
Compound/Combined Noun Derivations
| Compound/Combined Noun Derivations | ||
| adjective.verb | di*.mese | telescope |
| adjective.verb | bi*.mese | microscope |
| verb.noun | güm.vönga | magnifying glass |
| adjective.noun | bi.vönga | lens/magnifier |
| preposition.noun | ku.vingö | underground |
| adjective.noun | oşo.ti | something |
*The last two letters of the adjectives edi (“distant”), ebi (“big”), oşo (“some”), and banti (“thing”) will be used as prefixes, together with the simple present tense of the verb (mes.e “see”).
In case of the combined phrases “verb+noun”, the verb in gerund followed by the noun but with separation. (e.g.: fes “(to) serve)” and vitka (car) combined to “fesiş vitka” (service(ing) car)). Grammatically the verb acts as the adjective.
Response Particles:
“Yes” and “No” are expressed as “Ay” and “Ya”, respectively. This pair is treated in ABCL primarily as interjection and is therefore included in this section.
VERBS
Basic/Root Verbs
Verbs in ABCL form a tightly regulated morphological class. All root verbs follow the CVC template and terminate in a consonant in their unconjugated base form. This form applies to inherently intransitive verbs as well as to transitive verbs. For the intransitive use of ambitransitive verbs, the form is CVC#t, where “#” denotes tense marking and “-t” is the ditransitive/reflexive suffix. Formally, this construction constitutes a derived verb; however, it is still listed in the Excel inventory. The rationale for this decision is that English often distinguishes between transitive and intransitive meanings by using two separate verbs.
Basic CVC verbs are also classified according to schemes similar to those used for nouns. There are nineteen main semantic headings, each associated with a characteristic initial consonant. These headings are as follows: “Physical Acts – K##”, “Active Actions – Y, L, R, and G## (including J)”, “People/Human – S and Ş## (partially C)”, “Social Relations – F, N, and P## (partially C)”, “Mental Activities – B and M##”, “Household and Daily Life – D##”, “Pastime, Sport, and Health – T##”, “Utterance and Non-personal Acts – Ç##”, “Business and Public Affairs – H##”, and “Technology, Science, and Nature – V##”.
Within the category of Physical Acts, “K##” functions as the initial consonant identifying the heading. The symbol “##” indicates the combination of one of eight vowels (from a to ü) in the second position and one of twenty alternating consonants in the third position. In theory, this system allows for the creation of approximately 4,600 verbs. However, for the same reasons applied to nouns, only about half of these potential forms are taken into consideration. At Level 1, ABCL includes approximately 1,800 such verbs, which is considered sufficient for practical use. Main headings may be further subdivided into subheadings when necessary, such as KA# for one type of physical action and KE# for another. For the sake of better correspondence with English vocabulary, this classificatory principle has been applied with considerable flexibility.
As example, some verbs in the category “K-physical acting” are shown below:
| kaf | fasten | kef | kıf | köf | fold | ||
| kah | haul/drag | keh | hang | kıh | köh | hew | |
| kak | catch | kek | kık | kök | connect/link | ||
| kal | lay | kel | kıl | köl | line | ||
| kam | kem | kım | köm | modify/alter | |||
| kan | narrow | ken | enlarge | kın | kön | ||
| kap | package | kep | kıp | press | köp | push | |
| kar | repair/mend | ker | rip | kır | kör | erase | |
| kas | saw | kes | separate | kis | slice | köş | shear |
At Level 1, verbs are inflected not only for tense, but also for ditransitive/reflexive, causative, imperative, passive, reciprocal, subjunctive/irrealis, and negative forms. At Level 2, additional suffixes are introduced for further moods such as inferential, optative, and conditional subjunctive. In Level 1, the functions of these Level 2 moods can instead be expressed by prepositions, in a manner similar to English.
Derived Verbs
Verbs can be derived from nouns and adjectives by adding suffixes according to a fixed scheme. Like root verbs, these derived verbs typically end in a consonant.
When verbs are derived from nouns, the suffix “-t” is used for intransitive meanings and “-k” for transitive meanings, resulting in six-letter verbs. Verbs derived from adjectives generally also take the suffix “-t”, as they are mostly intransitive. In the relatively rare cases where a transitive meaning is required, the suffix “-k” is used.
Derived Verbs from Nouns (Denominal Verbs)
Examples: (first noun of the rows translated only)
| Verbalizing suffix | ABCL verb | English suffix | English verb |
| (noun)_k (transitive) | venfi.k, denso.k | _, _en, _ize | fire, salt, frighten(vt), vocalize(vt), terrorize, idolise |
| benli.k | _ate | liberate, hyphenate, concentrate, oscillate | |
| (noun)-t (intransitive) | vessu.t, vüsli.t | _en, get … | sun/sunbathe, lighten, get old, prink up |
| venva.t | _ize/ise | vaporize, get icy, materialize(vi) | |
| banlu.t | be lucky | ||
| benzü.t | be unlucky | ||
| tenfe.t | get … | get fever |
Derived Verbs from Adjectives
Examples:
| Verbalizing ABCL suffix | ABCL verb | English verb |
| _t _xt (vi) | uni.t- unix.t | be new-become old |
| ubi.t- ubix.t | biggen-become small/diminish | |
| eşi.t- eşix.t | shine-become dull/tarnish/dim | |
| ufe.t-ufex.t | be fresh/freshen-be stale (wither) | |
| ube.t- ubex.t | become beautiful-be ugly | |
| _k (vt) | oci.k | make blind |
When adjectives are formed as antonyms using the negation suffix “-x”, the verbal derivation suffix is added after “-x”. Accordingly, if a derived verb itself is negated and conjugated, forms such as “ubix.t.o.x” (ubixtox = not diminished) are possible, since the negation suffix “-x” follows the tense conjugation suffixes.
Infinite and Imperative (morphologically same)
| ABCL Suffix Level 1 | Example: ABCL noun | English Suffix | Some English Nouns as Samples (verbs given in italic are imperatives) |
| _e-x | yun.e(!), den.e-x(!) | to …(infinitive)/ ! | to run, to eat / (run!, eat-don’t eat!) |
Verb Transformation in ABCL
Many English verbs are ambitransitive, meaning that they can be used both transitively and intransitively depending on context (ergative-anticausative). Typical examples include burn, sink, read, and break. In English, this distinction is often resolved either by the presence of an object or by the use of particles and prepositions. However, this contextual flexibility creates ambiguity when translating into ABCL. To avoid such ambiguity, ABCL systematically separates transitive and intransitive meanings. Each verb in the lexicon is defined as either inherently intransitive or inherently transitive. Inherently intransitive verbs—such as linking and copular verbs (appear, be, become, feel, get, grow, keep, look, seem, sound, smell, stay, turn, etc.)—cannot take an object. Inherently transitive verbs, by contrast, always require an object.
Ambitransitive (ergative) English verbs are treated in ABCL primarily in their transitive sense. These are defined as basic CVC root verbs and listed as such in the verb inventory. Their intransitive counterparts are formed by adding the suffix “-t” to the conjugated verb. For example, the English verb “sink” is represented in ABCL as “yes” (CVC) in the transitive sense (“the storm sank the boat”), and as “yes#t” (CVC#t) in the intransitive sense (“the boat sank”), where “#” marks the tense. In the past tense, the intransitive form appears as “yesot”. In ABCL, intransitive forms also cover reflexive meanings.
Since most natural languages—including English and German—contain more transitive than intransitive verbs, the transitive meaning is chosen as the default base form whenever such a duality exists. This approach minimizes redundancy and simplifies the verb system. For instance, English “look at” (transitive) versus “look nice” (intransitive) is reflected in ABCL as “mul.#” versus “mul.#.t”. Through this consistent distinction, ABCL effectively resolves the ambiguity associated with ambitransitive verbs. Additionally, to derive reciprocal (and therefore intransitive) meanings from transitive verbs, ABCL employs the suffix “-y”.
English also uses different lexical verbs or auxiliary constructions to express alternations between transitive and intransitive meanings. For example, inherently transitive meanings may correspond to separate intransitive verbs (kill – die), or be expressed through auxiliary constructions (make/get someone sleep – sleep). The reverse direction is also common.
In contrast to ABCL, English typically derives intransitive reflexive meanings from transitive verbs by using reflexive pronouns, as in “protect – protect oneself”. In ABCL, such distinctions are handled morphologically by suffixes rather than by separate words or pronouns, resulting in a more regular and transparent verb system.
For detransitivization in passive-like constructions—corresponding to English patterns such as “be/get” + “verb in past participle”, where the agent is hidden or not required—ABCL also uses the suffix “-t”. When the agent does not need to be mentioned, this suffix alone is sufficient. If the agent is to be expressed, the passive form is combined with an explicit agent introduced by the preposition “şü” (“by”).
For example:
I dress / put on my coat → a dano az danco
I get dressed → a danet
The child is dressed → solça danet
The child is dressed by the mother → solça danen şü salma
The verb “bab” is introduced as the ABCL equivalent of the English verb “to be”. In practice, however, it functions mainly as a zero copula. Thus, for simplicity, “it is beautiful” is not expressed as “u babe ube”, but rather as “u ube”, or simply “ube” when the context allows.
Further details and additional suffixes for other verbal forms are provided in the table titled “Modal Verbs, Inflections, and Modus in ABCL” below.
Negating Adverbs: no/not, never, hardly, barely, rarely. Differing from English, in ABCL the verb-action will be negated by the suffix “_x” even if the before stated adverbs used (double negation).
Verbs of Lexical Opposition/Antonymy and Prior-State Reversal (Reversive Prefix “y-“)
Event negation of a verb (in English by “not”) will be done in ABCL by the suffix “_x”, attached to the conjugated verb as stated before. Negation expresses absence.
For the verbs of Lexical Opposition/Antonymy the prefix “_y” will be used. Lexical opposition expresses counter-position. Here, the action presupposes a prior completed state created by the base verb, and whether the un- action actively dismantles, cancels, or returns that state toward a neutral or opposite configuration. implying that a prior state is being reversed. dismantling an existing state for event inversion. Lexical opposition expresses counter-position. disagree; reversal expresses undoing;
Lexical antonymy (oppositional verbs): For many English verbs that are morphologically negated with the prefix dis- (such as discharge, disagree, disorder, disappear, discourage, discomfort, disconcert, and disregard, disbelieve, disapprove) and indicating “lexical opposition”, ABCL does not introduce separate root verbs. Instead, the corresponding basic verb is simply reversed by reversing prefix “y-“. This approach reduces the number of lexical items learners must memorize. For example, “disagree” is expressed as: I disagree = a y.sage. (I don’t disagree: a ysagex)
Prior-State Reversal by suffix “_y”: (English prefixes: un_, de_, dis_) Express opposition verbs of propositional attitude with opposite polarity. Reversal expresses undoing. English reversive prefixe “un_”(undo, untie, unlock, unwind) expressing reversal or cancellation of a previously completed action (stating reversal), will be replaced in ABCL by reversing prefix “y-“ also. (i.e.: unwind=y.koce). Example: un_(reversal: unlock, untie), de_ (removal / reduction: deactivate, decompose), dis_ (separation / undo: disconnect, disarm).
Incorrectness: mis_(wrong action: misunderstand), mal_( bad / faulty: malfunction). English verbs formed with the prefix “mis-“ are rendered in ABCL by using the adverb meaning “wrongly=üç”. Verbs formed with the prefix “mal-“ are rendered by using the adverb meaning “faulty= üf”. For instance, “you misunderstood” is expressed as “o başo üç”, literally “you understood wrongly”. “The machine is faulty and malfunctions during operation” translates in ABCL as “Vütma babe üf ve heze üf şu vurru.”
Verbs in Lexicon
For the ABCL–English lexicon, approximately 1,750 root verbs have already been defined. The English–ABCL lexicon, however, follows a different approach, as explained in the preface. Overall, these 1,750 ABCL root verbs correspond to roughly 2,350 English verbs in the lexicon.
ADJECTIVES
Basic Adjectives
Basic adjectives consist of three letters in the VCV/x pattern, yielding approximately 860 forms. These can be semantically doubled by adding “x” at the end to produce an adverse or opposite meaning; for example, “ube” “beautiful” versus “ubex” “ugly”.
Adjectives are further organized into the following classes:
- Determiners, subdivided into interrogative, demonstrative, indefinite (quantifiers), locational adjectives, temporal adjectives, and additional groups such as main colours. In this class, the initial vowel “o / ö and u / ü” signals the main (head) group, while the intervening consonants (C*, such as “t, s, ş, m, p, y”; with colours also employing additional consonants) encode the specific subtype (e.g., interrogative). Indefinite numerals have however another specific system.
- Descriptive adjectives (physical state and quantifying), with two subcategories:
Forms beginning also with vowel “o” and “ö” designate special classes related primarily to “human features”, where the consonant corresponds to the initial letter of the English equivalent (e.g., ofo = “former”).
Forms beginning with vowel “u” and “ü” describe equivalent properties of “things” rather than humans.
- Descriptive adjectives (qualifying and evaluative), subdivided by semantic target:
Adjectives describing people (mainly personality and behaviour) begin with vowel “a”.
Adjectives describing things begin with vowel “e”.
Each of these classes is further subdivided internally according to a vowel–consonant pattern, for example V#V (e.g. eC*a, eC*e, eC*i, … eC*ü). Initially, each sub-pattern was intended to correspond to a specific adjectival subtype, such as aCe* for “being/state”, aCi* for “behaviour”, or eCü* for “nature/science”. However, this systematic ordering could not be fully preserved due to the later introduction of a design principle aimed at phonetic harmonization between ABCL and English adjectives, intended to facilitate memorization through connotative similarity. For example, ubi = “big”, where the final sequence “bi” in ABCL mirrors the initial letters “bi-“ in the English equivalent.
As a result, although the original structural concept remains in place (e.g. within the aCV* group), the intended semantic subdivisions—such as physical features, appearance, human attributes, opinion/view, and related categories—have become partially intermixed in practice.
The names of mixed colours are systematically derived from the main colours from which they originate. Specifically, the final vowels of the two source colours form the first and last vowels of the mixed colour term. For example, orange (ere) is defined as a mixture of red and yellow; accordingly, red (ure) and yellow (uye) combine to produce “ere”. This mechanism constitutes an additional component of the evocative (hinting) system of ABCL, designed to facilitate learning and recall through transparent phonological associations.yellow (udo) built up “uno”. This is another approach for the evocating/hinting system of ABCL for easy learning.
Examples for Root Adjectives:
| Indefinite (Quantifier): o/ö.ş.V* | English | Physical Description of Things e/o.C*.V* | Person-Behaviour a/o.C*.V* | ||
| öşö | more, _er | eşe-eşex | sweet-bitter | age-agex | gentle/polite/kind-impolite/rude |
| oşi | most, _est | ece | certain | afo-x | fair-biased |
| oşu-oşux | several/many/ much -few/ little | eso | sour | aju-x | just-devious |
| öşo-öşox | some_ – any_ | uho-x | hot-cold | aşe-x | sedate-excited |
| öşe | each | uva-x | warm- cool | asu | superficial |
| öşü-öşüx | every_ -no_ | ömi-x | wide-narrow | ake | keen/eager |
Possessive Determiners: az, oz, uz, ez, öz, üz- my, your, its, our, your, their
Although possessive determiners function syntactically as adjectives, in ABCL they do not conform to the adjectival formation rules described above because the genitive suffix “-z” is an integral part of the word. For this reason, they are treated exceptionally as possessive pronouns within the ABCL grammatical framework.
Derived Adjectives:
Adjectives may be derived by attaching suffixes to verbs and nouns. Like basic (root) adjectives, derived adjectives obligatorily end in a vowel, which is characteristic of the adjectival class in ABCL. Consequently, derived adjectives typically consist of six to seven letters. Derived adjectives in ABCL typically terminate in the vowel “-o”, in accordance with the general adjectival vowel-final pattern.
Deverbal Adjectives:
Deverbal adjectives are formed by attaching the suffixes “-ado / -adox”, which functionally correspond to a range of English adjectival suffixes such as -ful, -less, -ant / -ent, -ive, -ile, -ic, -ate, -y / -ly, -ous, and related forms. The suffix “-abo” is used specifically to express capability or potential, corresponding to English -able / -ible.
Unlike English, ABCL does not employ conjugated verb forms as adjectives for past and present participles. Instead, adjectival forms are created through dedicated derivational suffixes: “-ono” for meanings equivalent to the past participle (-ed), and “-iko” for meanings equivalent to the present participle (-ing). This approach maintains morphological regularity and preserves the clear distinction between verbal and adjectival classes within ABCL.
Examples for Deverbal Adjectives:
| _ado _adox | _ful _less | _ | _ant/-ent | _abo | _able, _ible | _ono | p.p _ed/ irregular | _iko | _ing |
| boh.ado boh.adox | hope.ful hope.less | nez.ado | relaxant | kıb.abo | breakable | dol.ono | boiled | ted.iko | dancing |
| bus.ado bus.adox | use.ful use.less | mas.ado | pleasant | mir.abo | admirable | bon.ono | known | tis.iko | singing |
| kim.ado kim.adox | harmful harmless | fur.ado | dominant | hıç.abox | incredible | muv.ono | worried | moh.iko | terrifying |
Denominal Adjectives
Denominal adjectives will be derived by the suffixes “_do/_dox” (in place of the English affixes “_ful, _less, _ive, _ulent, _ile, _holic, _ic, _ate, _y/ly,_ic, _ous, un_, im_, etc.) and “_no” (for capability “_able/_ible”)
Examples
| _do | _ful, _ous | _dox | un- | _bo | _able, _ible |
| fönpe.do | peaceful | bonho.dox | hope.less | ponfa.bo | fashionable |
| sonye.do | handful | cimti.dox | timeless | halta.bo | taxable |
| münpi.do-x | merciful-cruel | pasha.dox | homeless |
With these 8 suffixes (ado, adox, abo, ono, iko; do, dox, bo) it is possible to get unnumbered new adjectives from verbs and nouns additionally to 650-700 root adjectives.
Antinomies of Adjectives
As stated earlier, adjectival antinomies in ABCL are generally formed by adding the suffix “-x”. This strategy is applied preferentially in cases where English employs distinct lexical adjectives for the antonymic pair. By doing so, the number of independent lexical items that must be memorized is significantly reduced. For adjectives that are very frequently used, however, certain exceptions have been introduced. In order to avoid ambiguity as to which member of an antonymic pair constitutes the base form, the following principles are applied:
· Physicallyquantifiable adjectives
For adjectives denoting measurable or scalar properties, the form indicating greater degree or superiority (e.g. big, large, heavy, strong) is taken as the base adjective. The opposing meaning is then derived by adding -x.
ubi “big” → ubix “small”
· Qualitativeadjectives
For evaluative or qualitative adjectives, the form that is generally preferred or positively valued by speakers is treated as the base.
ahu “honest” → ahux “false”
uho “hot” → uhox “cold”
· Frequency-based exceptions
Adjectives that occur very frequently in actual usage may retain a basic form even if the above principles would suggest the opposite. For example, uda “dark” is treated as the base adjective, yielding udax “light / pale”, although from a purely physical perspective “light” could be interpreted as the more favorable or primary state. This exception is justified by the markedly higher frequency of “dark” in comparison to “light”.
The suffix “-x” is always attached directly to the adjective stem, whether the adjective is basic or derived (e.g. ohox.ka, enux.te, münpi.do.x), and precedes any further derivational suffixes.
With regard to negative prefixes in English, such as un- (unnecessary), ABCL does not employ adjectival negation by prefixation. Instead, ABCL prefers a direct adjectival form and expresses negation at the verbal level. For example, the English sentence “That was unnecessary” is rendered by negating the verb, rather than the adjective itself (back-translation: “to say that was not necessary”). Similarly, English negative prefixes such as in-, im-, il-, ir- and non- (e.g. inactive, impossible, illegal, irregular, non-existent) are uniformly expressed in ABCL through adjectival negation using the suffix “-x”.
· Predicative adjectives are used with the copular construction. No special verbal morphology is required, and adjectives remain unaltered.
Numbers and Numeral System
The numeral system of ABCL is designed to be regular, transparent, and cognitively economical. It avoids irregular formations, suppletion, and category overlap. Numerals constitute a distinct lexical class with clearly defined phonotactic patterns. Suffix “_x” functions as “zero”.
Arithmetic Numerals (Cardinal numbers/ digits): They follow CV template and are deliberately kept short to reflect their high frequency of use : 1 to 9: bi, çi, fi, ki, mi, ni, si, ti, yi
Geometric (Ordinal) numerals form a separate subclass and follow the CVC template.
The base numeral inventory is sufficient to generate all higher numbers through systematic combination. Complex numerals are formed compositionally, without introducing additional lexical items or irregular morphophonological processes.
| 1-9 | 10-90 | 11-19 | 100-900 | 1 Th-9 Th | 10 Th-90 Th | 100 Th-900 Th | 1 Mln-9 Mln | 10 Mln-90 Mln | |
| #i | #ix | bix#i | #iç | #if | #ik | #im | #in | #is | |
| 1 | bi | bix | bixbi | biç | bif | bik | bim | bin | bis |
| 2 | çi | çix | bixçi | çiç | çif | çik | çim | çin | çis |
| …. | …. | ….. | ….. | ….. | ….. | … | ….. | …. | |
| 9 | yi | yix | bixyi | yiç | yif | yik | yim | yin | yis |
For example: The number 6 572 120 is written in ABCL: nin.mim.sik.çif.biç.çix (includes 18 letters). The same digit written in English extends to 52 letters.
The system continues in such “ten” times pattern as (unary notion):
Bit, biy, bil, bip, bir, biş, biv, bi bid (quadrillion), where as a helping hint for remembering by logical thinking (up to “biy”, also to one billion only), the last letter indicates the number of zeros if the last letter “i” of the corresponding cardinal numbers dropped. (e.g. for “bit”, “t” is corresponding to “ti” , which means eight zero to be added to “1”, resulting in 100 000 000 which is “one hundred million” in English.)
With the (1015= quadrillion), the system follows one thousand pattern such as “bi bid, bix bid, bif bid; bi big (quintillion= 1018, bix big” etc.
Above “bih” (1015= quadrillion), the system follows one thousand pattern such as “bix bih, biç bih, big (quintillion= 1018, bix big” etc.
At the first sight it seems to be some ambiguity with some verbs, e.g. “bit” means as verb “think” but as number “hundred million”. However, in the syntax a mix up is not possible due to the fact that the verbs are nearly always conjugated (e.g bit.i).
Further, the verb is placed secondly after the subject where the numbers stay as adjectives after the verbs and before the noun they modify.Ordinal numbers are as below: (example for 2 “çi”)
çi.ji two.(and)half çi.ği; kiği -th (second; fourth) öşü çi/öşü fi both (every two)/every three ki.z.çi two forth (two of four/four’s two) ki.z.ji half of four/ four’s half i.çi; i.fi; i.ki double/two fold/twice, triple, quadruple çi ça (a) couple (of)
When a numeral directly modifies a noun, plural marking on the noun is omitted. They typically precede adjectives and the head noun. When numerals function independently as noun phrases, they do so with morphological modification. Context determines whether a numeral is interpreted as an abstract quantity, an identifier, or a referential expression.
Adjectives in Lexicon
In addition to approximately 1100 entries for root adjectives, numbers, and derived adjectives already defined in the ABCL–English lexicon, another ~750 words have been included in the adverse English–ABCL lexicon as synonyms or nuanced adjectives of main entries, as explained in the preface. Consequently, the ABCL lexicon covers roughly 1,850 English adjectives, either directly or through derivational and nuanced mappings.
ADVERBS
Basic Adverbs
Basic adverbs in ABCL consist of two letters in a VC (vowel–consonant) scheme, covering the most commonly used adverbs across languages. Similar to English and many other languages, adverbs often share the same form as adjectives or conjunctions; however, in ABCL, separate lexical items are assigned when a word functions as an adverb to avoid ambiguity.
For example, first letter being variable vowel, (“V*”), second letter C (consonant) indicates the general subclass. The consonants e.g. “s, t, y” indicate “time” and “ş” the “quantity” with the first vowel varying from “a” to “ü” (* means always “varying letters” in this article). Using this scheme (excluding the vowel “ı”), 110 basic adverbs can be generated. The consonant “ç, f, h” code the “adverbs of manner” which are further subdivided as: limitation (*f), descriptive (*ç), certainty (*h).
Some Examples:
| Time | Quantity | Manners/direction | Manners/descriptive | ||||
| V*s | V*ş | V*m | V*ç | ||||
| as | always | öş | more, _er | om | ahead, forward | oç | together |
| es | yet | iş | most | üm-em | in(side)-out (side) | of | enough |
| V*t | |||||||
| et | now | aş | all | ||||
| at | tomorrow | oşor | some | ||||
Derived Adverbs:
As with adjectives, the derivation of adverbs from verbs, nouns, and adjectives may involve deviations from the basic letter-count schemes. In general, derived adverbs are formed by regular suffixation, typically through the suffix “-r” (with limited exemptions in the case of certain compounded adverbs). As a result, these adverbial forms are longer than the basic two-letter VC pattern.
Examples of selected derivational patterns are given below. In each row, only the first English item is translated into ABCL (italic one’s); the remaining English words serve as semantic references.
| ABCL suffix | Derived from Root Verbs | ||
| _r** | feh.r | help(ing)fully | |
| şal.r, bon.r* | _(ing)ly | llaugh(ing)ly, know(ing)ly | |
**While reading and speaking, the vowel “i” or “ı” will be inserted before the suffix “_r”. (it reads as “feh.ir”)
| ABCL suffix | Derived from Derived Adjectives and Root Adjectives | ||
| _r | feh.ado.r (better: feh.r) banlu.do.x.r | (ful(ly), _(a)bly | helpfully unfortunately notably, passably, incredibly, |
| eni.r, atö.r | _ly | nicely tensely clearly, actively, quickly | |
| omo.r-omoxr | on the front-behind | ||
| ABCL suffix | Derived from Root Noun | ||
| _r | halce.r(x)*, monjo.r (in ABCL directly by noun possible) | _ally, _(ful)ly | (un)economi.c.ally, joy.ful.ly (in English only via denominal adjective possible) |
| _r | sum.r, honva.r, ulo.r | a_ | a.miss, away, along, ahead, apart, alone |
*Negation will be indicated in such cases by negating the adverb. Negation suffix comes in these cases at the end of adverbial suffix “_r”
The number of adverbs derived solely from verbs and adjectives is estimated to be approximately two thousand.
Compounded Adverbs (examples):
oşo.cam oşoxcam | sometime anytime |
Altogether we have 210 entries for ABCL-English lexicon (including derived ones) and additionally 85 entries for English-ABCL lexicon, thus for the latter we have 295 entries for English words in total.
CONJUNCTIVES-PREPOSITIONS
Conjunctive–prepositional particles consist of two letters in a CV pattern. Logical groupings are established systematically, including coordinating conjunctions (and, or, then, but, …), subordinating particles (so that, even if, unless, etc.), and prepositions. Within this system, specific consonants signal functional classes: the consonants “p, r, s, and v” designate coordinating conjunctions (e.g., else, consequently, however, and, but), whereas “k, l, m, and n” designate locational prepositions (e.g., in, at, on, out, under, above, behind). The vowel component varies from “a to ü”, allowing for systematic expansion within each class.
| CONJUNCTIONS | |||||||
| Coordinating Conjunctions | Subordinating Subclause | Correlative Conjunctions | Interrogative as Subordinate Conjunctions | ||||
| p_, r, s, v: varied vowels | h_, f, d, ç, b: varied vowels | ||||||
| sV* | fV* | tV* | |||||
| ve | and | fa | even if | pe…so (pe) | either…or | ta | what |
| so | or | fo | only | pex..so | neither…or | te | where |
| su | but | fe | if/in case | ça/(çö (adj)…ge) | as.(adjec).as | ti | which |
| se | yet | dü | unless | ça / (çö elo ge) | as long as | to | who |
| sa | namely | fö | alike | fü.. (so)..x | whether…or ..not | tö | why |
| pe | either | ha | while | tu | when | ||
| ro | however | du | that | tü | how | ||
| PREPOSITION | Locational PREPOSITION | ||
| y_, ş, g | k_, l, m, n | ||
| şV* | kV* | ||
| şa | after | le | between |
| şe | before | kö | among |
| şo | for | ko | across |
| şu | by | ke | beside |
Locational prepositions such as “lu” (= to), lü (= from), ma (= at/on), mu (= on), and mü (= in)” are defined in ABCL but are normally omissible, since the verb itself typically determines the case of the noun or noun phrase (accusative, dative, locative, or ablative). These prepositions are generally employed when two or more locational relations must be expressed in sequence, as in “ma hinbü mü toş çense” (at the snack bar in the shopping centre).
The use of “mü (= in)” differs from English usage. It is restricted to cases where the object is physically enclosed within a concrete entity (e.g., a room, building, or box). In all other contexts, ABCL employs “ma (= at)” as the general locational preposition, where English would typically use “in”.
Compound Interrogative Subordinating Conjunctions (examples)
irta whatever 1
irte wherever 1
irti whichever 1
PRONOUNS and Possessive Determiners (Adjective Pronouns)
Pronouns in ABCL consist of either one letter (V) or three letters (VCV). The personal pronouns are single-vowel forms: “a, o, u, e, ö, ü, i”. All other pronouns follow the VCV pattern, in which the initial vowel is always “i”, ensuring immediate recognizability and clear distinction from adjectives. An exception is found in reflexive pronouns, such as “azi” (myself), where the medial consonant is always “z” and the final vowel is “i”.
Pronouns and Possessive Determiners
| Personal Pronoun (pp) | Possessive Pronouns | Possessive determiners (adjective pronouns) | ||||
| iz.V*(pp) | (pp).own | V*z | ||||
| a | I | iza | mine | az | my | |
| o | you | izo | yours | oz | your | |
| u | he, she, it | izu | his, her, its | uz | its | |
| e | we | ize | ours | ez | our | |
| ö | you | izö | yours | öz | your | |
| ü | they | izü | theirs | üz | their | |
| (i) | (own) | |||||
| Demonstrative Pronouns | Interrogative Pronouns | Nonperson Pronouns | |||||
| is.V* | ip.V* | it.V* | iş.V* | ||||
| isa | this | ipa | this (one) | ita | what | işa | more |
| iso | that | ipo | that (one) | işe | most | ||
| isu | that | ipu | other | iti | which | işi-x | all-none |
| ise | these | ipe-x | either-neither | işo-x | some/someone- any/no one/none | ||
| isö | those | ipö | that (place name) | ito | who | işö | each |
| isü | those | ipü | there | işu | much/many-few | ||
| işü.ti/işü.bo işütix/işübox | every.(thing/body-no.(thing/body | ||||||
Compounded Pronouns:
| işote işüte | somewhere everywhere |
| işita | whatever |
| işiti | whichever |
| işito | who(m)ever |
Because ABCL neither encodes grammatical gender in personal pronouns nor employs syntactic placeholders (dummy or expletive subjects), clauses containing multiple third-person singular pronouns may occasionally give rise to referential ambiguity (i.e., who-is-who ambiguity). To resolve this, the demonstrative pronoun or adjective “iso / osu (= that)” may be used, as appropriate, to explicitly mark the intended referent.
In addition, where English distinguishes “he, she, and it”, and where repeated use of the equivalent ABCL pronoun “u” would result in ambiguity, sex-specific nouns may be employed instead. In such cases, “ofesa” and “amasa”, derived from “ofe (=female) and “ama” (=male), can be used to disambiguate reference.
140 ABCL conjunctives and preposition are defined already for the lexicon plus 40 synonyms and nuances for English-ABCL lexicon additionally.
NEGATION (_x), QUESTIONS (j) AND PLURAL (-i)
Negation
Verbal Negation: Negation of an action is expressed by adding the suffix “-x” to the end of the conjugated verb, following any verbal modal or voice suffixes (e.g. passive, irrealis), if present. For English verbs whose negative meaning is expressed lexically by prefixes (such as disagree, misunderstand, etc.), see the section “Verbs of Lexical Opposition/Antonymy and Prior-State Reversal” above.
Independent Particle “x”: When used as an independent particle, “x” corresponds to English “not”. In this function, it appears primarily in elliptical expressions, fixed constructions, and short emphatic phrases, including structures equivalent to “… or not”. Examples: o x! → you, not!/ x camti! → not today!/ x eni! → not nice!/ x oş → not only
Antinomies in Adjectives and Nouns: English expresses antonymy and negation through various prefixes such as “un, il-, in-, im-, ir-, un-, non-, a-, an-, anti-, counter-“. In ABCL, these meanings are handled by the suffix “-x”, according to grammatical category and semantic function.
Adjectives: State / Property Negation
For adjectives, state or property negation replaces English lexical negation prefixes. The suffix “-x” is used productively in ABCL to form antonyms of adjectives, and more rarely of adverbs and conjunctive or prepositional forms where semantically appropriate (including paired constructions such as with / without). The use of “-x” as an adjectival antonym marker has been addressed previously under “Antinomies of Adjectives.” Whether “-x” expresses a strict antonym or a broader sense of denial or antithesis is determined by context.
Example: üsox (antisocial); This form is unambiguous, since ABCL does not define a primary lexical antonym for social. Contextual contrasts such as solitary or reclusive are not treated as principal antonyms within the system.
Nouns: Exclusion and Denial
For nouns, “-x” functions as a suffix meaning “no / not”, but does not form a lexical antonym (e.g. not friend ≠ enemy). Instead, it marks exclusion, rejection, or denial of the noun’s reference.
Example: A bave şerpa, (su) şerbax. (I want an apple, (but) not a banana.)
Antithesis and Opposition (Nouns and Some Adjectives): The suffix -x also functions as an antithesis or opposition marker, corresponding to English prefixes such as “anti-“, “counter-“, and in some contexts “un-“.
Examples: tanvi.x → antivirus/ bantu.x → untruth/ çanpo.x → antitoxic (literally anti-poison)/ helpüda.x → counterproductive
Absence / Lack: Primarily with nouns, English absence or lack markers such as: “a-“ (amoral)/ “an-“ (anaerobic)/ without (pseudo-prefix, e.g. without fault) are likewise rendered in ABCL by “-x”, according to context.
Scalar / Partial Negation: English prefixes indicating partial or scalar negation, such as: “semi-“ (semiconscious)/ “pseudo-“ (pseudoscience) are treated as lexical concepts and handled separately from core negation, though they may interact with “-x” in derived forms where semantically justified. In such expressions, the adverbs biji_half and ufa-fake/false are predominantly used.
Context and word class determine whether -x functions as sentential negation or as lexical negation.
Numeral Zero:
Finally, “x” is also used in ABCL to denote the numeral zero.
Questions
Interrogative clauses are marked by the letter “J”. With pronouns, ”J” functions as a prefix; with nouns, it appears as an independent particle placed before the subject noun. Phonetically, “J” is realized with a short, non-syllabic schwa-like sound (“ı”-ɯ), comparable to the weak vowel heard “ion-loud” in station (as explained earlier), or alternatively as “i”, depending on phonetic convenience.
In spoken language, “J” may harmonize vocally with the pronoun.
Examples
- J.a yisa?
Shall I swim? - J (Jɯ / Ji) şenfi b.yis.e?
Can fish swim?
Interrogative Pronouns:
ABCL interrogatives correspond closely to English forms:
Interrogatives are similar to English:
What Ota Why Ötö
Where Ote When Utu
Which Oti How Ütü
Who Oto How much/many/old Üta.pis/vus/cam
Plural
Plurality is marked by the suffix “-i”, placed at the end of a noun or pronoun, thereby forming a diphthong. This is the only diphthong besides concessive adverbs (teir, tuir, tüir) in ABCL and serves as a clear and unambiguous plural marker.
Plural expressions of numbers corresponding to English forms such as hundreds, tens, or thousands are rendered in ABCL using the adjective oşu (many). Thus: “hundreds” → oşu bif (many hundred)
TENSES, ASPECTS and SUBJUNCTIVES/IRREALIS of ABCL
Tenses and Aspects
Verbal Conjugation by Tense/Aspect: Verbs are conjugated for five tense–aspect categories: future, simple present, present continuous, simple past (Past 1), and imperfect / durational past / historical past (Past 2). These categories are marked by the vocalic suffixes “-a, -e, -i, -o/ö, -u/ü”, respectively, which are attached directly to the verb stem.
The vowels “ö” and “ü” are used to indicate a prior event when two events are linked. In all other contexts, u/ü and o/ö are interchangeable (i.e., ü for u and ö for o and reverse as well) and selected according to vowel harmony rules.
| Tense/Aspects | Suffix | Examples ABCL | English |
| Future | _a | yog.a | will go |
| Simple present | _e | yog.e.x | doesn’t go |
| Present continuous (passive) | _i | vap.i.n.x , yog.i | is not painted, is going |
| Simple past (past 1) (“ö” for prior event if two events linked-past perfect) | _o/ö | dob.o | boiled |
| Durational past (past 2) (“ü” for prior event if two events linked-past perfect) | _u/ü | vap.un | had been painted (in one week) |
| Historical past (durational event is completed already in the past) | ey (adverb) | vap.u.p ey | had got painted (already) |
Past 1 (Simple Past / Perfective Past) includes all verbs that denote a completed or finished action, regardless of when the action occurred in the past. No distinction is made between recent and remote past events; temporal distance is irrelevant as long as the action is viewed as complete.
Past 2 (Imperfective / Durational Past) includes all verbs that encode continuity or duration in the past. It makes no distinction whether the effects of the action remain relevant in the present (as in the English present perfect) or whether the action occurred prior to any relative reference point. The only relevant criterion is that the action extends over a period of time in the past. As with Past 1, recency versus remoteness of the event is not grammatically marked.
Since the primary goal of ABCL is simplicity, various aspectual distinctions found across natural languages have been reduced as far as possible, without omitting any functionally necessary aspect used in spoken languages. In general, no single grammatical aspect fully expresses the speaker’s intended meaning on its own. To achieve the intended interpretation, speakers typically rely on additional elements—most notably auxiliary particles and temporal adverbs.
In practice, a language that lacks a particular “useful” aspect present in another language can still convey the same semantic content by employing such auxiliary means. In other words, speakers are able to express the same intentions through alternative strategies, even without access to an extensive inventory of grammatical aspects.
ABCL deliberately excludes complex aspectual constructions that require auxiliary verbs, modal combinations, or stem modification, such as those found in Germanic languages (e.g., progressive, perfect, past perfect, progressive perfect, past perfect progressive, future perfect progressive, conditional perfect progressive), as well as aspectual categories attested in other languages (e.g., habitual, recent vs. remote past, simultaneous, gnomic/generic).
In ABCL, distinctions such as frequency of occurrence and temporal relations (e.g., recently, long ago) are expressed by temporal adverbs, numerals, and auxiliary particles, when and where required.
For example, the present perfect is considered unnecessary, since whether a past event continues to have an effect in the present has little or no relevance for expressing the speaker’s core intent. If such a distinction must be made explicit, it can be described analytically by auxiliary particles.
In practice, even in natural languages that formally distinguish between the simple past and the present perfect, this contrast is gradually weakening; this is observable, for instance, in spoken German, where the functional separation between these forms is increasingly reduced.
The duration of an action in the past cannot be expressed reliably by adverbs or other peripheral means alone, nor can it always be inferred from the inherent semantics of the verb. For this reason—and because such information is relevant in many communicative contexts—Past 2 has been introduced in ABCL to cover durational and continuous past situations.
Historical events are, from the speaker’s perspective, typically non-witnessed and conveyed through hearsay. Accordingly, reported or relayed events are expressed in ABCL by Past 2, with or without an explicitly stated duration. Where uncertainty or additional nuance is required, auxiliary adverbials may also be employed. For example, when the completion of a durational event in the historical past needs to be emphasized, the adverb “ey” (“already”) may be used (e.g. vap.u.p ey — had already got/been painted).
Likewise, future progressive, future perfect, and future perfect progressive meanings cannot be easily replaced by adverbial strategies alone. Instead of modal constructions as used in English or German, ABCL introduces the prefix “s_” to encode these future-related aspectual distinctions.
Below are examples illustrating the English tense–aspect forms discussed above and their functional equivalents in ABCL.
Aspects of English present tense and their equivalent/counterpart in ABCL:
Present simple “I eat” A den.e
Present progressive “I am eating” A den.i
Present perfect “I have eaten” A den.o
Present perfect progressive “I have been eating” A den.u/ü
I have been eating last year often outside. (This year I eat at home) A den.ü oyüx camya us em.
Aspects of English past tense (and in brackets, how it is expressed in ABCL reverse translation with the help of auxiliaries):
Past simple : “I ate” (once) (often) A den.o[ab1] (üs) (us)
I used to eat / I ate (habitually) A buso deneş/ A den.o (sihr)
Past progressive : “I was eating” (for a while) (sweets) A den.u (üt) (denşe)
Past perfect: “I had eaten ” (already) (when you arrived) A den.ö (ey) (tu o yaro)
Past perfect (for “prior” event also in connection with suitable relational particle) A den.ü
Past perfect progressive: “I had been eating” (for “prior” event also) A den.ü
I had been eating (always)outdoor, (after 2018I have cooked at home) A den.ü (as) em, (şa 2018 a don.u ….)
Future tenses:
Simple future: “I will eat” A den.a
Future aspects: (“The prefix “s-” is indicator for future progressive, perfect and progressive perfect aspects)
Future progres.: “I will be eating” tomorrow at time of your arrival. A s.den.i at …Future perfect: “I will have eaten” tomorrow at time of your arrival. A s.den.ö at …Future perfect progressive: “I will have been eating” A s.den.ü at…
Subjunctives of future (realization seems impossible but cannot be excluded with certainty/theoretically):
Forfuture aspects the prefix “_s” and for subjunctivity (would) the suffix “_k” (see below) (for hypothetical/ conditional reference etc.) have been combined: (for Level 2)
Simple (conditional) subjunctive: “I would eat in 100 years at moon ” A dena.k
Future conditional progressive: “I would be eating” in one hour at Everest A s.deni.k
Future conditional perfect: “I would have eaten” A s.deno(/ö).k
Future condit. perf. progress: “I would have been eating” A s.denu(/ü).k (at…)
Present Subjunctive (marked by the suffix “_k”) (used for events whose realization is uncertain, hypothetical, assumed, reported, or construed as “future in the past”) (The term “Present” is functional and does not imply absolute temporal reference)
This mood expresses a wide range of non-assertive meanings, including dependency, emotion, hope, expectation, wish, desire, possibility, probability, likelihood, uncertainty, doubt, evaluation, opinion, obligation, necessity, request, imploration, encouragement, requirement, conjecture, and actions that have not yet occurred. It may also cover inferential or reported information when the event is not presented as confirmed.
Expression in the matrix (head) clause: When subjunctive meaning is explicitly marked in the matrix (head) clause, it is indicated by the suffix “-k” attached to the verb. This suffix signals that the event is presented as non-assertive or unrealized, rather than as an established fact.
Expression in dependent clauses: In dependent environments—such as subordinate clauses or clauses introduced by conjunctions (notably “du” and “do”, corresponding broadly to English “that” and “interrogative subordinating conjunctions”)—subjunctive meaning is not expressed by a dedicated subjunctive verb form. Instead, ABCL uses the ordinary tense forms of the verb, without subjunctive modals or stem modification. The intended non-factual or modal interpretation is conveyed through appropriate adverbs and special particles, unless subjunctivity is already inherent in the dependent clause by virtue of the governing predicate or clause type.
“If” clauses inherently encode conditional subjunctivity; therefore, they do not require the suffix “_k”. The tense of the dependent clause is preserved as it was expressed by the speaker at the time of the original experience. For example, if the speaker used the simple present at the time of speaking, the dependent clause will likewise be expressed in the simple present.
The same principle applies to clauses expressing “wish, necessity, and hearsay”, where applicable, supplemented by the appropriate completing particles or adverbials unless the speaker explicitly intends a subjunctive interpretation.
In “assumed, guessed, or expectation”-based cases—where the narrator or subject expresses an assumption about how the object referent would act at that time or in the future—the suffix “_k” is used.
Example: “If the father asked, she would say that she needed to read them as her homework.”
ABCL: fe salfa çajo, u çasek du u seno bireş ü eç uz bönhö.
Standalone English modal forms (though formally in past tense) without an explicit subordinate clause (i.e. could, should, might, would) are rendered in ABCL with the present tense suffix “-e” when subjunctivity is not intended or is not explicitly indicated by an appropriate adverb or another particle.
Examples for Presence Subjunctives:
Conditional / If-clauses (hypothetical): (fe)
If I could sleep fe a b.dar.e)…
I (would) eat, if I (were) am hungry: a dene fe a babe ohu
We (would) stay at home if it snow(ed)s. e yaşe pasha fe venşa vep.e.k
That-clauses (mandative): (du)
I suggested that Paul should eat an apple a nop.o du Paul gdene şerpa
He recommends that you be careful u nor.e du o bece.k
It is important that she stay (with you) by your side. Eji du u yaşe.k (ne o) oz vunku.
Desirative-Wish-clauses: (an)
I wish I had a car then I wouldn’t get on the bus An, (a biş.e) a bahe.k vitka ra a lege.kx vitba (If only(I wish) I have a car, I don’t take a bus)
I wish I knew Japanese. An, a bone.k Nippon.la
Necessity / Ought / Expectation Clauses (modalized subjunctivity):
I should be able to sleep (I ought to be able to sleep) A g.sabe dareş
I should be able to sleep (but it will not be possible) A g.sabe.k dareş
“k” is used when the speaker assumes that the required action, although expected or appropriate, will not be realized, will be prevented, or is no longer possible.
Hearsay-inferential (speaker reported)
“He must have gone” or “he is said to have gone” (allegedly) I heart/think/guess (that) he has gone (went): (A mehö/bite) du u yogo.k ev (Level 2: u yogo.v ev))
For Level 2, with special hearsay suffix: Inferential mood/Hearsay _v bolev – (it is said) (he/she) love …
Martina says that she be in love with you (can be true or not) Martina ças.e du u bole.k o öv. (Martina says that she loves you)
Subjunctive Omission
As stated above, ABCL does not treat the subjunctive in “if”- and “that”- subordinate clauses as essential for expressing the speaker’s intent. Where the governing verb already encodes irrealis, assumption, or non-factuality, explicit subjunctive marking is omitted.
For example, in English: “I suggest that you be careful”, expressed in ABCL as “I suggest that you are careful”.
Both sentences convey the same intended meaning. Although the second is grammatically indicative, the verb suggest itself already signals an irrealis or non-factual stance. Accordingly, ABCL relies on the lexical semantics of the matrix verb (e.g. suggest, say, infer, report) rather than obligatory subjunctive morphology in the subordinate clause. Subjunctive marking is therefore treated as optional and pragmatic, not structurally required.
Future in the Past as “Real Clause” (suffix _l)
This construction is used for events located in the past but narrated from the present, where the speaker reports the intention of a participant at the time of the narrated event to perform an action at a later point.
To express a future action viewed from a past reference point (future in the past), English commonly employs the modal verb “would”. In ABCL, this meaning is encoded by attaching the suffix “_l” to the conjugated verb. In such constructions, the verb is marked as future, while the clause as a whole remains anchored to the original tense perspective of the narrated event (i.e. the speaker reports how the future was conceived at that past moment, not how it stands now).
Example: She said she would call me / ABCL: U çeso du u çöta.l a. (literally: “she said that she will call me” however with suffix “_l” attached)
Here, “_l” signals that the calling is future relative to the past speech act, and the clause is treated as real in the sense that it reports an actual intention or plan held at that time, without counterfactual implication.
This meaning may be further specified or emphasized by temporal adverbials such as “uf” (“henceforth”), when the continuation or forward projection from the past moment needs to be highlighted.
He was very fat; therefore he would eat more vegetables “henceforth” …. u den.a.l “uf” …
(also possible to express the same as in English indirectly: … he decided to eat more vegetables henceforth.)
Irrealis in ABCL (the contrafactual suffix “_ç”)
An irrealis event refers to a counterfactual situation that cannot occur because the necessary dependency, condition, or requirement in the past was not fulfilled. Likewise, an event may be irrealis if it cannot be realized in the future due to the permanent failure of a required condition.
Across world languages, irrealis meanings are expressed through a variety of grammatical strategies, including:
modal verbs in past forms (e.g. would, should, might in English), modification of the verb stem (e.g. Arabic yaktubu → yaktuba), adjectives or adverbs, conjunctive structures (if, that), semantically appropriate verbs in subordinate clauses, special particles, verbal suffixes or combinations of these mechanisms.
In ABCL, irrealis is expressed by adding the counterfactual suffix “_ç” to the conjugated verb. All clauses marked with this suffix are interpreted as irrealis past subjunctive, indicating that the event is non-realizable due to an unmet condition or dependency.
Examples for Irrealis:
Irrealis clauses comprise counterfactual or non-realizable subjunctive events, most commonly occurring in conditional (if) clauses and other dependent subordinate clauses. In this sense, irrealis reference is primarily associated with past situations, since counterfactuality typically presupposes an unfulfilled condition in the past. However, limited cases of irrealis reference may also occur in the simple present, and hypothetical future events are likewise included when their realization is blocked because the required conditions in the past were not fulfilled.
Irrealis clauses may also involve implicit or unspoken dependencies, where the conditioning event is not overtly stated but is pragmatically recoverable from context. This category further includes: unreal desires and wishes (e.g. I wish, if only), and necessity or obligation constructions (should, ought to) when these refer to unrealized or impossible outcomes.
In ABCL, subjunctive marking is determined by topicality rather than by syntactic hierarchy. The suffix “_ç” is assigned to the verbal element of the clause that constitutes the semantic focus (topic) of the irrealis meaning. Accordingly, if the subordinate clause carries the counterfactual content, it receives _ç, while the head clause does not; conversely, if the head clause itself is irrealis, the suffix is attached there instead.
If-clauses: Due to inherently conditional subjunctivity, “If” clauses don’t need the subjunctivity suffix “_ç” but the main/head clause. If a subordinate clause implies beside conditionality also timely priority (such as with the “if”-clauses) the tenses “ö and ü” will be used instead of “o and u”.
“If I had felt well (were I well/if I were well) I would have sung”: fe a sevö (bab.ö ego) a tiso.ç
Would you have helped me if I had asked you ? jo feh.o.ç a fe a çajü o?
If I had been hungry, I would have eaten fe a duhö (bab.ö ohu) a deno.ç
Without your help (hidden condition) I could not have finished it: nex oz feh.he a b.gifo.çx u.
If you would be my son fe o babo.ç az salsa …
I would not help him if I were you (example for simple present irrealis): A fehe.çx u fe a baba o
That-clauses: Here the subjunctivity lies with the subordinating “that” clause, thus its verb will have the suffix “_ç” but the tense will be as at the time of the expression.
My mother had suggested that I should have eaten an apple: Az salma nopo du a gdene.ç şerpa
I drunk so much, that my head would have almost exploded. “ A didö çö oşu du az sinha çoze.ç ah
Necessity/must-modal-clauses: Here verb will have subjunctivity suffix “_ç” and past tense suffix.
I should have been able to sleep (I ought to be able to sleep): A gsabo.ç deşeş
You should have attended the meeting yesterday: O gfato.ç pönmi ot
Wish-clauses (incl. desiderative mood): Suffix “_ç” with subordinating clause only (topic).
Only if I could have slept: An, a bdar.o.ç …
I wish I had a car so that I hadn’t got on the bus. An, (a biş.e) a bahö.ç vitka du a logo.çx …
I should have learned German An, a g.bönö.ç Doyç.la
Future-clauses: Here. head-clause suffixed with “_ç” (it is the topic).
I would have got fresh air outdoor if it had not rained this morning. A s.regö.ç ofe venye em fe venre veno.x osa commo.
If a subordinate clause implies beside conditionality also timely priority (such as with the “if”-clauses) the tenses “ö and ü” will be used instead of “o and u”.
Subconjuntive and irrealis: How far are they required? How are they in natlangs?
In cases of inferential (indirectly reported), non-witnessed, doubted, or unconfirmed subjunctive constructions, such as “He said he was a physician” (German: Er sagte, er sei Arzt), the speaker may express the intended epistemic distance explicitly, for example by stating:“He said he was a physician, but I cannot confirm it.” The same pragmatic effect can be achieved by using adverbial auxiliaries such as allegedly or supposedly.
Likewise, the past subjunctive in sentences such as “He said he had no time” (German: Er sagte, er hätte keine Zeit) may be paraphrased without formal subjunctive marking. Similar substitutions apply to other temporal domains: past: “He has apparently been there” (German: er sei da gewesen), future: “He will assumably be there” (German: er werde da sein).
Turkish, by contrast, employs a dedicated inferential tense, marked morphologically: “O gitti” vs. “O gitmiş”.
If necessary, English constructions such as “he must have gone” or “he is said to have gone” can partially approximate this Turkish inferential meaning. Although Turkish provides a very economical solution by simply adding the suffix “–miş” to the verb root (git-), its correct use nevertheless requires explicit learning. Instead of adopting such obligatory morphology, I preferred—also in ABCL—to allow the same speaker intention to be conveyed through direct real clauses combined with suitable lexical or adverbial phrases, for example:
“I heard / was told that he has gone” or, contextually, “He has allegedly gone.”
Nevertheless, for systematic completeness, I defined the suffix “_v” in ABCL to encode this function at Level 2 (inferential / reported): a bdero.v commi ev -“I was able to fall asleep at midnight, supposedly / as I was told the next morning” (Turkish: uyuyabilmişim)
The past subjunctive (irrealis) is also used cross-linguistically to form conditional constructions, as in German Konjunktiv II with the modal würde. For example, the formally irrealis sentence: “I would not help him if I were you” can be paraphrased as: “I do not help him if I am you.” Although both clauses are grammatically real, the conditional if-structure implies non-reality, since the presupposition (I cannot be you) is inherently impossible.
In French, present and past subjunctives are used mainly with specific verbs or adverbs and are typically introduced by the conjunction que (“that”). In jussive constructions such as: “Il faut qu’il comprenne cela” (“It is necessary that he understand that”), the notion of necessity already implies an order, reducing the functional load of additional subjunctive marking. This principle has been partially implemented in ABCL, as stated earlier.
Italian shows a similar system, for instance with expressions such as “credo che” or “è possibile che”: “I believe that she is the best” (opinion-based, non-factual evaluation).
In Arabic, the contrast is morphologically explicit: Indicative: yaktubu — “he writes / is writing / will write”. Subjunctive: yaktuba — “he may / should write”
These forms can be paraphrased in English as: “It is possible that he writes” or “It is required that he writes.”
Some examples of the means for transferring the subjunctives of other languages and English into modified format to be used by ABCL:
Optative : “May I be loved!” transferred to “I wish that I will be loved” Jussive : “Everyone should be loved”, “I ask that everyone is to be loved” Potential mood : “She probably/possibly loves me” Dubitative mood] : “I think she loves me.” Hypothetical : “I might love you [if…]”; “May I love you” as “I don’t expect that I love you” Admirative: “Wow! She loves me!”, “Apparently she loves me.” Hortative: “Let us love!” Eventive: “I would probably love you [if…]” as “I probably love you, if …”
MODAL VERBS, INFLEXIONS and MODUS in ABCL
In ABCL, there is no declension or inflection for gender, number, or case. Where relevant, gender may be specified lexically by an appropriate noun or adjective rather than through grammatical marking.
Grammatical cases are generally not obligatory in ABCL. Likewise, locative and directional prepositions (such as in, at, to, from) can be omitted in certain cases, because the semantics of the verb together with fixed constituent order clearly determine the roles of participants in the clause. In typical constructions, the verb itself encodes the relevant relational information, making additional case marking or prepositional elements redundant.
Prepositions may be introduced in structurally or semantically complex contexts, where verb semantics and word order alone are insufficient to prevent ambiguity.
Modal Verb Prefixes and Related Verbal Markers in ABCL:
ABCL employs a limited and explicitly defined set of verbal prefixes to encode modality, aspect, and reversive meaning. At Level 1, the system includes four true modal prefixes, one future-aspect prefix, and one reversive prefix. These prefixes are not conjugated or declined. They remain invariant and attach directly to the verb stem.
| Modus | ABCL Prefix | English Modal Equivalents | Examples |
| Ability | b- | can/could | bdene/bdeno – can eat/could eat |
| Obligation | ç- | must/have to/ought to | çdene – must eat |
| Possibility | d- | may/might | ddene – may eat |
| Necessity | g- | shall/should | gdene – shall eat; gdeno -should eat |
| Future aspect | s- | will be/have | sdene/sdeno – will be eating/will have eaten |
| reversive (for verbs) | y- | un_, dis_ | lit.e/y.lit.e – tie/untie |
Example: A g.vap.e.p az hanka: I shall get my house painted (causative mode with suffix “p”).
Phonological Notes on Prefix Clusters:
Modals are placed as prefix to the verbs. Since multiple prefixes may form a prefix cluster before the verb, spoken ABCL inserts a soundless “ı” or “i”, as required for vowel harmony and ease of pronunciation in between as convenient. The modals will not be conjugated and declined at all.
Similarly, for suffix consonant clusters (e.g. densu dobetik – water would boil), a voiceless epenthetic vowel (i or e) is inserted between the consonants in pronunciation “-tik”.
There is countless “verbal modus” in living World languages. Which often used in one language does not exist such as in another at all. If necessary, modus is expressed using particles and prepositions. For the Level 1 we abandoned most of them, leaving a few where we think it easy to learn and nice to have them for good expression.
Possession is one, which “must be”, is formed by suffix “_z” and placed after nouns and pronouns. Plural “_i” is used as suffix also after nouns.
ABCL has in Level 1 nine verb features indicated by a particle marker and suffixes. Suffixes come after the conjugated verb but before any further suffix as “x” etc.
Example: A g.vap.e.p az hanka. I shall get my house painted. (This example illustrates: the necessity modal prefix (g-), the causative suffix (-p))
Modus Inventory and Design Rationale
Natural languages exhibit a wide range of verbal moods and modal distinctions, many of which are language-specific and absent in others. Where a given modus is not grammaticalized, languages commonly resort to particles, adverbs, or prepositional constructions. For ABCL Level 1, most such modes have been deliberately excluded. Only a small, high-utility subset has been retained, prioritizing: learnability, expressive adequacy and typological familiarity.
Possession and Number: Possession / necessity (“must be”) is expressed by the suffix “-z”, attached to nouns and pronouns.
Plurality is indicated by the suffix “-i”, also attached directly to nouns.
Verbal Feature Marking: At Level 1, ABCL distinguishes nine verbal features, expressed through a combination of
particle markers and suffixes. All verbal suffixes follow the conjugated verb, but precede any subsequent suffixes such as negation (-x) or similar operators.
Table of Affixes (Summary)
Temporal Suffixes/Tenses
| Tense/Aspects | Suffix | Examples ABCL | English |
| Future | _a | yog.a | will go |
| Simple present | _e | yog.e.x | doesn’t go |
| Present continuous (passive) | _i | vap.i.n.x | is not painted |
| Simple past (past 1) (“ö” for prior event if two events linked-past perfect) | _o/ö | dob.o | boiled |
| Durational past/history (past 2) (“ü” for prior event if two events linked-past perfect) | _u/ü | vap.un | had been painted (in one week) |
Modal Verbs:
| Modus | ABCL Prefix | English Modal | Examples |
| Ability | b- | can/could | bdene/bdeno – can eat/could eat |
| Obligation | ç- | must/have to/ought to | çdene – must eat |
| Possibility | d- | may/might | ddene – may eat |
| Necessity | g- | shall/should | gdene – shall eat; gdeno -should eat |
| Future aspect | s- | will be/have | sdene/sdeno – will be eating/will have eaten |
Tables of Derivational Suffixes
Suffixes for Adverb Derivation
| From Verbs | _r | feh.r – helpfully |
| From Adjectives | _r | etu,r – truely |
| From Nouns | _r | cömti.r – clockwise |
Suffixes for Verb Derivation
| From Nouns From Nouns | _k | denso.k – to salt (for vt) |
| _t | vessu.t – to sunbathe (for vi) | |
| From Adjectives From Adjectives | _k _t, _xt | oci.k -make blind (vt) uni.t to become new (vi) uni.t- to become new, unix.t- to become old |
Suffixes for Noun Derivation
| From Nouns | _da | salmada – motherhood |
| _ca | salmaca – mumy | |
| _sa | pasnaba – nationalist | |
| _ya | pasnaga – nationalism | |
| _ga | manyata – psychology | |
| _la (languages only) | Türkla – Turkish | |
| From Adjectives | _ma | unama – pinky /asaxma – sadness |
| _sa | ofüsa – fanatic | |
| _ya | ofüya- fanatism | |
| From Verbs | _aya | hanaya – building |
| _ana | dakana – cleaner (tool) | |
| _asa _aşa | hömasa – employer, dakasa-cleaner hömaşa – employee | |
| _aça | dabaça – bakery | |
| Name of Verb: CVC-Noun CVCVC instead of (_ada, _afa, _aha) mozzo (moz.aha), nel.le (nel.ada), tis.si (tis.afa-singing/gerund)) | ||
Suffixes for Adjective Derivation
| From Verbs | _ado(x) | bohado – hopefull / bohadox – hopeless |
| _abo | mesabo – visible | |
| _ono | dobono – boiled, dakono-cleaned | |
| _iko | tisiko – singing | |
| From Nouns | _do | fönpedo – peaceful |
| _dox | cemtidox – timeless | |
| _bo | ponfabo – fashionable |
Tables of Affixes for Verb Transformations, Causative Alternations, Inflexions, Moods, Subjunctives
| Mood/Verb Transformation- Causative Alternations | ABCL Marker Suffix | ABCL example- English equivalent |
| Conditional (factual-predictive): Banku.do(.so): marker conjunctions “if” | fe… | fe a seve – if I feel well |
| Imperative/jussive/infinite- Poyeş | “verb”.e | yoge – go! |
| Verbal Conjunctive (gerund)- Poyiş | “verb”.iş | yogiş – going |
| Passive- Bunpi | _n | vapon – was painted |
| De-transitivizasyon / Refleksivizasyon (transitive to intransitive) Rac.ono, ver.ato | _t | (densu) dob.o.t -(water) boiled dav.e.t – wash myself, (donpa) kab.o.t – (paper) burned |
| Reciprocal (mutuality-intransitive) –Pic.ato | _y | moley – make love (sevişmek) |
| Causative (Transitive) -Gac.ato(.ado) | _p | vapep – get painted (boyattırmak) |
| Subjunctive/irrealis- Buc.ana | ||
| Present subjunctive | _k | tisek – would sing; densokek-would salt |
| Past in future (real) | _l | yomal–(he said) she will come (next day); vesselal-(…) … sunbathe (… …); unilal –(…) … …renew (… …) |
| Future subjunctive (prefix) | s_ (verb#)_k | stisük -would have been singing |
| Past/irrealis (counterfactual | _ç | tisoç/tisüç – would have sung |
| Future/irrealis (prefix) | s_(verb#)_ç | stisaç – would have sung |
Mood, Subjunctive-Hearsay/Desirative (Level 2)
| Level 2 moods | |||
| Inferential mood/Hearsay-Binhe | _v | mol.#v | molev – (it is said) (he/she) love … |
| Optative desiderative- An Münde (in level 1 expressed by auxiliary particle “an”) | _s | sev.e.s | (an) seves (o)- (I wish) (you) be well |
| Hidden Subjects (Turkish mood-formally like passive of intransitive which is not possible in English) | _f | deş.e.f | ma osa comho “deşef.x”- At this hour (people) don’t sleep (usually) (would not be slept.) (Bu saatte uyunmaz) |
Negation-Question
| Negation- Çün.aya | _x | vapenx | (is) not painted |
| Reversive (prefix for verbs) | y- | lit.e/y.lit.e | tie/untie un_, dis_ |
| Question (prefix to subject) –Çunya | j_ | jo seve | do you feel well? |
Inflexinal Suffixes for Nouns:
| Possessive/Genitive –Hoy.ato | _z “yo” | şintü.z şindü / o.z şintü benbe yo solma | of, _’s (kitten of cat) your cat behaviour of the man |
| Plural-Bunpü* | _i | hanho.i | _s (houses) |
#…vowel for tense
*Plurals of numbers as in English “hundreds, tens, thousands” will be expressed in ABCL with the adjective “many=oşu”, thus “hundreds” means “oşu biç” (many hundred).
Explanations/Summary to Causative Alternations/Moods
The real conditional mood in ABCL is marked by the conjunctional particle “fe”. This particle introduces conditional clauses corresponding to factual or realizable conditions (i.e., “if X, then Y”), without invoking irrealis or hypothetical modality.
Imperative, jussive, and infinitive-like functions are expressed through a combination of personal pronoun prefixes and the verbal suffix “-e”.
Structure: Pronoun + Verb + e (examples: o.Verb.e – you. (Verb)/ u.(Verb).e – let him/her (Verb)/ e.(Verb).e – let us (Verb) For the second person singular, the pronoun prefix “o-“ may be omitted. In this case, the bare form: “(Ver)b.e” functions as a direct imperative.
Verb Transformation Suffixes such as “-t, -y, and -p” are placed after the conjugated root verb. (example: davet)
The passive voice is marked by the suffix “-n”, which is attached after the conjugated root verb.
Derived Verbs and Passive Formation: Derived transitive verbs are treated as root verbs for the purposes of conjugation and voice marking. (Examples: “densokeş” (to salt), derived from the noun “denso” (salt): is salted → “densoken”)
Verb derived from an adjective: oci (blind)- ocik (to blind)- ocikon (has been blinded)
For ergative or inchoative verbs, the verb is again treated as a root verb, and suffixes attach directly to it. (Example: densu dobot – water boiled / densu dobetik – water would boil). Example: densu dobot — “the water boiled”; densu dobetik — “the water would boil.”
In such constructions, no additional passive marking is required, as the verb inherently encodes a non-agentive or self-initiated event.
Tense marking in ABCL is always applied to the root verb (e.g., “dob#t”, past tense “dobot”). The passive suffix follows the already conjugated root verb. There is no need, nor is it permitted, to mark tense again on the passive suffix.
ABCL marks hypothetical but possible subjunctive constructions with the suffix “_k”. Past counterfactual (irrealis) subjunctives are marked with the suffix “_ç”, while “s_” functions as a prefixal aspect–modal marker for future-oriented irrealis cases (see “Aspects” above). Other subjunctive types are expressed by appropriate particles.
Combination of verb transformations and modal/subjunctive markers: “Water would have boiled if …” → densu dobotiç fe … / “(Water) would have been boiled (by mother) if …” → densu doboniç … fe … / “(Water) could not have been boiled (by mother) if …”→ (densu) bdobonikx …
As stated above, in complex clusters, a weak “e, i, or ı” vowel may again be inserted in speech for articulatory ease (e.g., bdobonkx may be realized as bıdobenekix). Such forms can be phonologically dense and may function as tongue-twisters in ABCL (sinma kıtana).
Negation: The negation suffix “_x” is always placed at the end of the fully conjugated verb, following all passive, modal, and subjunctive suffixes, if present. This can result in sequences of three or four suffixes, for example: vapo.p.n.x — “(the house) was not painted by …”/ bdobonkx — “(water) could not have been boiled by …”. Also in such cases, a soundless “ı or a weak i/e” vowel may be inserted in speech, or the final vowel may be reused to maintain vowel harmony. The suffix “_x” is pronounced as in English “x” and written in ABCL as “iks”.
In genitive and possessive constructions, ABCL—unlike English—does not enforce a strict grammatical distinction between ownership/possession and the genitive. Instead, it operates on a semantic distinction between materialistic/physical entities and abstract, notional, or conceptual relations.
Where a relationship denotes direct ownership, possession, inherent part–whole structure (head–dependent), or a spatial–temporal relation—a usage typically associated with materialistic or physical entities—the suffix “_z” is employed. Where the relationship does not necessarily imply ownership or possession, and is typically abstract, notional, or conceptual in nature, the particle “yo” (functionally corresponding to English “of”) is used.
English structural ambiguities are thereby systematically resolved in ABCL. For example: “little girl’s school”-
ubix sölgiz bönşö → the school of the little girl (“little girl’s school”), sölgiz ubix bönşö → the girl’s little school
In ABCL, adjectival modifiers are placed directly before the noun they modify, ensuring unambiguous scope assignment.
Exceptions and Clause-Level Genitives: An exception to the material–abstract distinction applies in the case of long noun phrases and relative clauses. In such constructions, the particle “yo” is used regardless of whether the entities involved are material or abstract. The choice depends instead on clausal attachment and referential scope—specifically, whether the relative clause modifies the possessor (head) or the possessed (complement).
For example: “The brother of the old man, who was sick yesterday, did not go to work.” / The old man was sick; the brother did not go to work.
If, however, the brother is the one who was sick and did not go to work, the construction would instead be rendered as: “The old man’s brother, who was sick yesterday, did not go to work.”
Thus, ABCL employs structural transparency rather than morphological ambiguity to encode relational meaning.
English genitive constructions of the form “(noun) of (noun)” (e.g., bundle of nerves) are, in ABCL, preferably expressed as compound nouns, such as “nerve bundle” or “nerves’ bundle”. This strategy is the default and reflects ABCL’s general preference for nominal compounding over analytic genitives.
Noun phrases are otherwise formed analogously to English genitive–nominative sequences, for example: “water glass” → densu dinga
Structures that employ English “of” are generally reproduced without an overt equivalent of “of”, preserving the same linear order: “colour of water glass” → dengu dingaz vüsko, using the possessive suffix “_z”, since the possessor (glass) is a concrete entity.
If the possessor is notional or abstract, the particle “yo” is used instead: “end of police pressure”→ çenri yo sülpo pırrı, where the possessor (pressure, pırrı) is abstract.
This differentiation between “_z” and “yo” in such constructions is not strictly essential and is therefore designated as Level-2 grammar, where stylistic and semantic nuance prevails over minimal structure.
Exceptions Requiring “yo”: If the complement noun phrase is too long or structurally complex, compounding is avoided to prevent ambiguity. In such cases, “yo” is used: “group of ten other villagers” → analytic structure with “yo”, since converting the complement into a compound would obscure internal relations. Another exception applies when the head noun is governed by a preposition and the complement is long. Compounding in such cases would separate the head from its governing preposition: “in the range of their radar” → analytic form preferred over a compound such as “in their radar’s range”.
“yo and _z” with Pronouns: In constructions such as “some of them”, ABCL applies a conceptual transformation prior to surface realization. “some of them” → conceptually reinterpreted as “some of those” → işo yo isü → surface possessive form: isüz işo (“those’s some”)
Here, the suffix “_z” does not denote ownership, but rather a part–whole relationship, where “some” is a subset of “they”.
Similarly: “one of them” → “one of those” → bi yo isü → isüz bi
Spatial relations follow the same principle: “in front of me” → ma omoma yo a (analytic) → transformed into possessive spatial relation: ma az omoma (“in my front”).
Long Successive Genitives: For chains of successive genitives, ABCL prefers restructuring into combined phrases rather than preserving the original nesting: “in the middle of the end-of-term finals” → restructured as “term-end finals” → ma omima yo “cumre çenfi bonfii”
This strategy reduces syntactic depth while preserving semantic transparency.
Absence of Unspecified Third-Person Subjects: ABCL does not employ singular third-person pronouns (it, one) as unspecified or generic subjects. Instead, it uses an intransitive-passive construction—a category absent in English but functionally comparable to Turkish “hidden-subject” forms. (Example:Ma osa venhe deşefx. (lit. “At this hour, sleeping is not [done].”)
Comparable meanings: “At this hour, people do not sleep (usually).” / “In this heat, one cannot sleep.” (Turkish: Bu saatte uyunmaz; Bu sıcakta uyunmaz.)
Thus, ABCL encodes generic or unspecified agency structurally, not pronominally.
Aspectual Compound Verbs and Moods (Level-2 Features)
Certain aspectual compound verb forms and modal nuances found in Turkish—typically expressed through suffixation—are supported in ABCL at Level 2. These categories are not morphologically encoded in ABCL; instead, they are rendered through adverbial particles, corresponding to the semantic values highlighted in the underlined English translations.
Copular Enhancement: The copular mood may be reinforced by the adverbial suffix “uh”, conveying certainty or speaker commitment (“surely”), when emphasis is required. “John is big.” → John obi / “John is surely big.” John obi uh. Thus, “uh” functions as a pragmatic certainty marker rather than a tense or aspect operator.
Turkish Compound Tenses and Their ABCL Treatment: Turkish compound tenses—formed through combinations of tense and aspect suffixes—are expressed in ABCL via adverbial particles that encode the same discourse-level meanings. The following Turkish forms are illustrative:
“Di”-li geçmiş hikaye (Simple past with narrative/historical perspective): Turkish: geldiydim- (“I had come there [by then / at some earlier reference point]”) → ABCL: expressed by a past-tense verb plus an adverbial particle indicating anteriority or narrative distance.
“Miş”-li geçmiş hikaye (witnessed/resultative) (Past perfect with result known or observed): Turkish: kırılmıştı (“It had been broken by then.”) → ABCL: rendered through past tense + resultative or evidential adverbial particle, depending on context.
Şimdiki zamanın hikayesi (Present continuous in narrative past) Turkish: biliyordum (“I was knowing it then / at that time.”) → ABCL: expressed via past tense + durational/temporal adverbial indicating simultaneity in the past.
Geniş zamanın hikayesi (Habitual/simple present viewed retrospectively) Turkish: (eskiden) severdi (“He used to love [formerly / at one time].”) → ABCL: rendered as past tense + habitual or temporal-distance adverbial (e.g., formerly, at that time).
GREETING and WISHES
The infinitive forms of the verbs “sev” (“to be well”) and “sin” (“to keep in touch”) are defined as short greeting nouns.
Usage: when meeting or initiating a phone call: : sev → “hello”; full form: sev.eş = “(I wish you) to be well” Usage: when parting: “sin” → “goodbye”; full form: e sin.ey = “we keep in touch”
The following additional courtesy expressions are defined at root level:
sat (“to thank”) → “thank you” mos (“to regret”) → “sorry” mas (“to request”) → “please”
The expressions “how are you,” “I’m fine,” “best wishes,” and “welcome” are also explicitly defined for Level 1. No further greeting or courtesy expressions are defined at Level 1.
Users may optionally introduce additional expressions (e.g., good day, good luck) by directly translating them from English or from their native language.
Forms of address such as Mr., Mrs., Sir, Madam, etc., have no place in ABCL and are not used as native elements of the language. However, when translating from another language in which such addressing forms are obligatory or pragmatically relevant, the neutral placeholder “aya” may be employed to render them without introducing social hierarchy or honorific distinctions into ABCL itself.
Below is a consolidated table that summarizes Level 1 greeting and courtesy phrases and the extended courtesy and social phrases for Level 2:
| sev(eş)*** (e) sin(ey) *** sat o (a) mos mas(eş)*** o tü? (a) ego şebiş* enex (reply to “sat o”) aha.cam** aho.cam ego.ban(lu) ego.tan(he) | hallo see you (good by) thank you (I’m) sorry please how are you? I’m fine best wishes welcome (unrequired) Happy New Year merry/holy “Holy Day” good luck good health | Literally: be well wish to keep in touch thank you unnecessary |
* Being “biş” is root verb for “wish” and “oşe” is adjective “most”, the full wish phrase would be: “A biş.e o oşe banti.” meaning “I wish you the best things”. For greeting they will be merged to one word “oşebiş”, better “şebiş”: This will be used as overall wishes for almost all situations like good luck, success, health, journey etc. (although I defined for good luck and health separate phrases for Level 2)
** Although New Year means “camyü”, only first syllable “cam” indicating the class “time” is taken and suffixed to “aha=happy” building one word for the sake of shortness and simplicity. The same apples also to the following phrases (aho camho).
*** Short forms: sev, sin, mas
SYNTAX
ABCL employs a fixed Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) word order as its default syntactic structure. As nouns do not inflect for case and verbs do not agree with subjects or objects, syntactic roles are recovered through word order, prepositions, and context.
| Order | Component | Content / Marking | Notes |
| 1 | Question marker (QM) | “J” (prefix/particle) or interrogative word | Mandatory |
| 2 | Subject (S) | Noun / Pronoun (nominative) | Mandatory |
| 3 | Verbal complex (Vc) | Modal prefix (Mp) + Verb root (Vr) + Tense suffix (Ts) + Causative/Alternation suffix (C/As) + Subjunctive suffix (Ss) + Negation suffix (_x) (Ns) + Infinite verb (Iv) | Fixed internal order |
| 4 | Adverb (Adv) | Manner, degree, etc. | Mandatory* Optional |
| 5 | Predicate adjective | Adjective (Pa) | Mandatory |
| 5-a | Attributive adjective (Aa) | Adjective before Nouns | Mandatory |
| 6 | Direct object (Do-ac) (accusative) | (attrib. adjective, if any) +Noun / Pronoun | Mandatory |
| 7 | Indirect object (İo-da) (dative) | (Preposition (Pr), attrib. adject., if any) + Noun/ Pronoun) | Mandatory |
| 8 | Indirect object (İo-ab) (ablative) | (preposition, attrib. adject., if any) +Noun | Mandatory l |
| 9 | Indirect object (İo-lo) (locative) | (preposition, attrib. adject., if any) +Noun | Mandatory |
| 10 | Indirect object (İo-in) (instrumental) | (preposition, attrib. adject., if any) + Noun | Mandatory |
| 11 | Temporal / Local phrases | Time ↔ Place (order variable) | Emphasis-dependent |
* Adverbs are typically placed immediately after the verb, though their position may vary depending on contextual requirements.
Example:
“Why couldn’t John intentionally fail to carefully make the result of the final report very clear to the new manager for the project from the old department in the main office with a detailed explanation yesterday in Ankara?”, translated in ABCL;
Ötö (QM) John (S) bpefox (Mp + Vr + Ts+ Ns) rinnir (Adv) bameş (İv) becador (Adv) çurru yo ela posre (Do-ac-phrase) eş (Adv) eçe (Pa) (lu-Pr), uni (Aa) sulme (Io-da) şo vaspo (adverbial PP adjunct) lü (Pr) unix (Aa) pasde (Io- ab) (mü-Pr) uma (Aa) pasbe (Io– lo) ne (Pr) tidono (derived adj.) çazza (Io- in) ot (temporal adv) (ma) Ankara (Local phrases)?
ABCL provides no explicit markers for accusative or dative case. Their roles are determined by verb-governed syntactic position, following the fixed clause order defined above. In certain contexts, the same principle may apply to ablative and locative roles (as indicated in brackets in the example), permitting the omission of prepositions. Where such omission would result in ambiguity or increased structural complexity, the corresponding ablative or locative prepositions shall be used.
Relative noun clauses, relative adjective clauses, and adverbial clauses are generally placed after the noun, object noun, adjective, adverb, or phrase that they modify. This post-modifying structure constitutes the default word order in ABCL. An exception applies to conditional subclauses (“if”-clauses). In such cases, the logical or temporal dependency between events may override the default placement, and the conditional clause may precede the main clause, reflecting the sequence of dependency rather than linear modification.
ABCL does not employ a dummy or expletive subject equivalent to English “it”, as used in constructions such as “it snows” or “it is important”. Instead, ABCL consistently avoids semantically empty subjects and expresses propositions directly through lexical or predicative structures.
Accordingly, English “it snows” is rendered as “vense ven.e” (literally: snow falls.) English it is important is rendered simply as “eji” (important), with the copular element omitted in the present tense.
In cases where temporal anchoring is required (past or future), the verb to be (bab) is introduced unlike in English, as a copula. The verb root “bab” is conjugated for tense and precedes the predicate adjective or predicate phrase: bab.o → past (“was”)/ bab.a → future (“will be”)
Examples: It was important to know→ boneş babo eji (literally: to know was important) It is important to me→ lu a babe eji (literally: to me is important)
In such constructions: no dummy subject is introduced; the semantic focus (event, infinitive, or experiencer phrase) occupies a syntactically meaningful position; and “bab” functions strictly as a tense-bearing modal copula, used only when temporal specification is required.
Subordinate/dependent and Relative Clauses in ABCL
Subordinate, dependent, and relative clauses in ABCL are conceptually and functionally aligned with English, while maintaining the language’s preference for functional economy and semantic transparency.
Clauses may be formed by interrogative words, functioning either as relative/adjective clauses (modifying a noun), or as noun clauses, in a manner broadly comparable to English usage.
1. Linking particles and conjunctions:
ABCL employs the following primary clause-linking elements:
fe — conditional conjunction (equivalent to English “if”) du — general subordinating conjunction (equivalent to English “that / so that”) do — relative pronoun / relative marker (equivalent to English “what, which, who) Relative adverbs (te, tu, tü) — equivalents of where, when, how, used when adverbial modification is required.
As a general principle, “do” and “du” function as the default relative and subordinating markers, comparable to English “that” in its broadest usage.
When a single lexical item (such as a noun) is being modified, interrogative subordinating conjunctions (e.g. equivalents of who, which, where, when) may be employed.
When phrases or phrasal clauses are modified, general conjunctive particles, “do” and “du”, are considered sufficient to express subordination. In such constructions, the modified noun or phrase is explicitly identifiable through the syntactic structure itself. As a result, the semantic relationship between the modified element and the subordinate clause is often recoverable without the explicit use of interrogative relativizers (such as who, which, when).
2. Use of “do” as a generalized relative marker:
Relative pronouns (who, which, what=to, ti, ta) may be collapsed into a single form “do” when they function not as independent interrogatives, but as subordinate or relative clause heads, i.e. when they refer back to a preceding noun, phrase. In such cases, “do” operates as a neutral relative connector, signaling dependency without encoding personhood or animacy, similar to English that.
3. Use of “du” as a generalized relative marker:
Where “do” is used as a marker for nouns and noun phrases, “du” is used to mark subordinate clauses, corresponding to the English complementizers “that” and “so that”.
4. Differentiation by descriptive function
When the relative element introduces descriptive information about a noun, and semantic distinction is required, specific relative pronouns (what, which, who= ta, ti, to) may be used according to the nature of the referent: TTo-who → human or animate noun Ti-which → non-human noun Ta-what → abstract, undefined, or clausal referent
Thus, “do” is default, neutral relative/subordinator for who / which / what optional, semantically marked relatives.
5. Design principle
For Level 1, unrestricted use of “do” and “du” is sufficient to express most relative, adjectival, adverbial, and noun-clause relationships without significant loss of meaning. More specific relative pronouns and adverbs may be introduced at higher levels to support finer semantic distinctions and stylistic precision.
Non-finite (Non-definite) Clauses in ABCL
ABCL permits non-finite clause constructions, including infinitive clauses and participle clauses, broadly comparable to those in English, with systematic adjustments to conform to ABCL morphosyntax.
1. Infinitive clauses: Infinitive clauses function as noun-equivalent units (subjects or objects) and do not require a dummy subject or explicit copula in the present tense. When temporal specification is required, the copular verb (modal) “bab” is employed.
Example:To reach him was difficult → lar.eş u babo eyix (literally: to reach him was difficult)
Here: “lar.eş” functions as an infinitive clause, eyix functions as a predicate adjective (difficult), “bab.o” supplies past tense to the predicative construction.
2. Participle clauses function in English primarily as adjectival modifiers and are placed after the noun they modify; this principle is also applied in ABCL for simple expressions. who, which, and that.” In general, however, ABCL prefers the use of subordinate clause marked by relative pronouns (ta, ti, to), corresponding to the English.
Example: The man covered with paint is decorating … → solma (to) kokon ne hunpa tedi …
In this construction: “kokon ne hunpa” functions as a participial modifier (covered with paint), “solma” is the head noun (the man), the participle clause directly follows the noun it modifies.
Expression of the English Gerund in ABCL
The English gerund is not mapped to a single grammatical form in ABCL. Instead, it is distributed across three distinct constructions, each reflecting a different semantic and syntactic function.
1. Progressive / Present Continuous Aspect: Suffix: “_i” (verbal aspect marker). When the English gerund corresponds to a progressive verbal action, ABCL expresses this through the aspectual suffix ”i”, attached directly to the verb.
Example: She is smiling → u şeş.i
Here: _i marks ongoing action, the form remains fully verbal, no auxiliary verb is required.
2. Participial/Relative-Clause Function: Suffix: “_iş” (participial/relative marker). When the English gerund functions adjectivally or adverbially, especially within relative or circumstantial clauses, ABCL employs suffix “-iş”.
Examples: The boy smiling always→ solbo şim.iş as (solbo to şime as) While speaking with me, he was happy→ ha çeş.iş ne a, u aha
In these constructions: “_iş” converts the verb into a non-finite participial clause, the clause modifies a noun or provides circumstantial information, temporal or logical relations are inferred from context or particles. As with the participle clauses, ABCL prefers also here the use of subordinate clause marked by relative pronouns (ta, ti, to), corresponding to the English
3. Deverbal Noun (Nominalized Action): Process: Bunru (“reversed name creation”)
When the English gerund functions as a true noun (object of a preposition, complement of an adjective, abstract event), ABCL derives a deverbal noun through a morphological process called “bunru”.
Bunru is formed by reversing the final two letters of the verb root, yielding a lexical noun.
Example: She was surprised at losing the race→ u nüson ma pollo … This process is not limited to gerund-equivalents, but is also used for general deverbal and denominal noun formation.
Example: pöf (to forbid) → pöffö (ban, prohibition, forbidden state)
Auxiliary Verbs in ABCL
In the strict grammatical sense, auxiliary verbs do not exist in ABCL.
English auxiliaries: “to be; to have” are treated in ABCL as ordinary lexical verbs: bab — to be; bah — to have
They do not serve as default tense, aspect, or voice carriers. Instead: tense, aspect, and modality are primarily expressed through suffixes and particles, “bab” and “bah” appear only when their lexical or modal meaning is explicitly required.
ASSOCIATION/EVOCATION-HINTS FOR MEMORIZING/DISREMEMBERING in ABCL
Vocabulary Design -Lexical Formation Principles in ABCL
The vocabulary has been developed with ease of memorization as a primary design objective. ABCL vocabulary is designed to support rapid memorization and recall, primarily through mnemonic correspondence between English and ABCL lexical items. These correspondences are systematic but not rigid and allow controlled deviation where semantic grouping or phonotactic constraints require it.
In its initial stage, lexical items were organized into logical and grammatical classes, corresponding to the major word categories of the language, as outlined earlier. While this classificatory approach is theoretically sound, practical experience—particularly in learning the language for active speech—revealed a limitation: such structural grouping becomes genuinely useful only after a substantial lexicon (on the order of two to three thousand words) has already been internalized.
To address this issue, the vocabulary system was subsequently revised. The revised approach aims to establish associative links between English and ABCL lexical items, such that the English equivalent of an ABCL word contains a phonetic, semantic, or mnemonic cue that evokes the corresponding ABCL form. This is especially intended to facilitate translation from English into ABCL, where rapid lexical recall is critical.
The result is a vocabulary design in which ABCL words are: not only systematically classified, but also mnemonically anchored to features of their English counterparts.
The outcome of this approach can be illustrated by the following examples:
1. Noun Formation: For nouns, consonants from the initial segment of the English noun are reassigned to the internal positions of the ABCL word.
Rule (default): One consonant (preferably two) from the first syllable of the English noun appears as the fourth (or fifth) letter of the corresponding ABCL noun: Examples: sölse — settlement/timne — news / vitca — car/salfa — father / salma — mother
This internal placement avoids excessive surface similarity while still providing a retrievable mnemonic cue.
2. Verb Formation: Verb formation follows a different mnemonic logic, emphasizing final-position recall.
2.1 Default verb rule: The first letter (preferably the first two letters) of the English verb are reflected—often in reversed or echoed form—as the final letter(s) of the ABCL verb: Examples: lin — initiate / bat — attract
In some cases, the first two letters of the English verb correspond directly to the last two letters of the ABCL verb (such as rap-approve; lap — approach), sometimes also all three letter taken over from English (examples: get-get; let-let).
2.2 Special consonant groups: a) Verbs beginning with “j or c”, the first three letters of the English verb are typically adopted or minimally adjusted as the ABCL verb root: Examples: jum-jump; jon — join; jus — justify; con — connotate
The English letter “c” may surface in ABCL either as “c” or “k”, depending on phonological requirements.
b) Verbs beginning with “Consonant + r” cluster: For English verbs beginning with the consonant cluster C*r, ABCL adopts the schematic form: “C*·ı”: Example: kıt — try
2.3 Prefix- and vowel-based adjustments: English verbs with the prefix “ex”- insert “_z” as the third letter in ABCL: çez — explain
English verbs beginning with a vowel mostly end in “y” in ABCL: biy — imagine
3. Semantic-group Overrides (Category Priority)
Certain verb groups override the default mnemonic rules when they belong to tightly integrated semantic–lexical categories.
Verb to Noun:
Faith / psyche category (m–s group): Verbs and nouns associated with faith / psyche (category “m-s”) deviate from standard formation rules to preserve internal lexical cohesion.
Rule: All nouns in this category begin with the syllabic pattern “musC*V*”.
Examples: musfa — faith/ musro — prophet/ muspa — paradise
The corresponding verb “mus” (to believe / faith) follows category identity rather than English-letter mirroring eventhough letter-mirroring may be applied additionaly as in this example: Housing (h-n group): han → hanka (build → building). Education (b-n grpoup): bun → bunde (educate → education).
4. Flexibility and alternative mnemonic strategies: These rules are guidelines rather than absolute constraints. Other evocative strategies are permitted, including phonetic similarity: bim — mean (sound-based association)
Such flexibility ensures that mnemonic strength takes precedence over rigid formalism.
5. Adjectives: The first two letters of the English adjective correspond directly to the last two letters of the ABCL in general.
ofo foreign
ahü hypocritical
olo alone
agex not gentle/unpolite
ave weary
ayo young
6. Adjective-Adverb-Conjunction-Preposition-Pronoun Relations/Hints (Cross-Category Lexical Relations)
General Principle: ABCL employs form-based lexical hints across word classes to facilitate memorization. These relations are associative and reversible, not obligatorily productive derivations.
Adjective – Adverb – Preposition – Conjunction -Pronoun Relations (example)
| Base Category | ABCL Form | Derived/Related Category | ABCL Form | Related Category | ABCL Form | Example Gloss |
| Adjective | ome | Adverb | em | Preposition / Conjunction | me | outside → out |
| Adjective | oşi | Adverb | iş | Pronoun | işi | all (as NP) |
7. Cross-category hints: reinforce lexical cohesion, reduce memorization load and support rapid class recognition without additional morphology.
Memory aids have also been devised for derivational suffixes. For agentive derivations from verbs, adjectives, and nouns, the suffix “_sa” is used to denote the acting agent. The suffix “_la” is used for languages, “_ya” for ideologies (e.g., pesya), and “_ga” for scientific fields, with _bünga (science) serving as a mnemonic reference.
Evocation, association, and bridging are, of course, merely auxiliary tools to support memory and recall and should not be relied upon too heavily. Within this approach, only one noun is typically defined from among several possible synonyms. What to do with the remaining synonyms therefore remains an open question.
For example, I defined the noun “idea” as “binde” in accordance with this method. If so, how should I recall related synonyms such as “thought, concept, or notion” if they are not defined individually? In this case, “notion” (banno) was fortunately defined as well, and concept was grouped together as a synonym (notion/concept = banno) in a single Excel cell. However, if I attempt to retrieve “concept” directly from memory, this approach offers no assistance unless I first search for synonyms of “concept” and happen—by chance—to arrive at “notion”.
Another bridging method involves exploiting verb–noun relationships in suitable cases. For example, the verb “cam” denotes the elapsing or passing of time. Accordingly, many time-related nouns share this root or its initial consonant: “camda” (day), “cambi” (Monday), as well as forms beginning with “c-“ such as “cemti” (time), “cemsü” (summer), “cimçi” (February), and “cömga” (age).such as cemti /time), cemsü (summer), cimçi (February) cömga (age).
LEXICON
The ABCL lexicon has been organized as a set of Excel matrices, separated by word class—nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions/prepositions, and pronouns—mapping ABCL to English. The simplest approach is to use the Excel search function bidirectionally, enabling lookup from ABCL to English as well as from English to ABCL.
The number of vocabulary items already defined in the lexicon is as follows (the numbers in parentheses refer to the English–ABCL lexicon, which additionally includes synonyms and more finely nuanced terms corresponding to the main ABCL entries):
Nouns: 4500 (5200)
Verbs: 1550 (2350)
Adjectives: 860/1100 (1650) (860 including antonyms coined by suffix “_x”, may reach to 1100 actually)
Adverbs: 210 (290)
Conjunct/Prepos.: 140 (175)
Total: 7500 (9625)
The matrices can also be used to incorporate a third language (e.g., the native language) by means of the right-click “Insert Comment” function. Access to the tables is available for interested conlangers. via Aybay’s website
or through direct contact by e-mail at (aydbayk.2022@gmail.com)
In parallel, I am also working on a more “classical” lexicon arranged in alphabetical order, developed in conjunction with my ongoing effort to translate my novel into ABCL. At present, this lexicon contains approximately 2250 entries.
SAMPLE TEXT
Below is a passage from The Old Man and the Sea translated into ABCL. The particles shown in parentheses indicate optional elements that may be omitted at the first proficiency level. As can be seen, the equivalent English text requires almost 60 percent more letters to express the same content.
“I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were [A b.bar.e (ite) o kuf.u a mü lu vitbö te (bab.o) odux koç.ono tümli.i] and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him [ve (du) a mef.i oşa vitbo şiş.e ve vanno (yo) o lüç.iş u] like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me.” [ge doç.ço şirte omur ve uşe sanla meş.şe oşi ka a.]
The ABCL text now put to gather:
A bbare (du) o kufu a mü lu vitbö te (babo) odux kaçono tümlii ve (du) a mefi öşi vitbo şişe ve vanno (yo) o lüçiş u ge doçço şirte omuxr ve uşe sanla meşşe oşi ka a. (127 letters only, where the English text utilized 162 letters for the same.)
ABCL is considered completely developed for Level 1 with basic nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions particles, prepositions and pronouns already. The lexicon with about 8000 vocabularies would be sufficient for a fair communication.
ABCL is free for everyone except for commercial use.
Below is a large text translation from: (paragraph by paragraph)
The Old Man and the Sea
Solmo (ayox solma) sa Vinse
He was an old man who fished alone in a vessel/skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him.
U bab.o solmo to tüm.ü şenfi olo.r (mü) vitve mü G-S ve u yog.u six ki camda et nex latiş şenfi. Mü oyir kix camda solbo bab.u ne u.
But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week.
Su şa kix camda nex şenfi, solbo.z salpa çet.o u du solmo bab.o et bödr ve çenfir “salao”, ti babe benyü.z eş ego.x vusfu, ve solbo yog.o ma üz poyyoi (mü) öpo vitbo, ti kak.o fi ego şenfi oyi camva.
To see the old man that he come back each day with his empty skiff, made boy unhappy.ly and he always went down for helping him carrying either coil.ed lines or gaff and harpoon and sail that(ki o) was wrapped/furled around pole/mast
Meseş solmo du u yut.o öşö camda ne uz ufux vitve, bam.o solbo ahaxr ve u as yog.o omuxr şo fehiş u kac.iş pe koç.ono tümli.i so tümga ve tümha ve vitsa ti kıvon (ük) vitpo.
The sail was patched with flour sacks and furled, it looked like the flag permanent defeat of.
Vitsa dap.o.n ne denfu dünsa.i ve kıv.on, u mül.o ge çanfa yo upe fönde (fönde.z çanfa).
The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck (his neck’s back).
Solmo bab.o uti.x ve opü.x ne udi lıvvı.i mü uz sonhe.z vünba.
The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer (which) the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic see were on his cheeks.
Uce lob.boi yo abe sansi tenka (abe sansi tenka.z uce lobboi) ti vessu lib.e lü uz vüsre/ver.re (mu) vintö.do vinse bab.o mu uz sinfe.i.
The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords.
Lob.boi yun.o egor omuxr uz sinfa.z vünke ve uz sonyei bah.o udi-lıv.ono tünşai lü sah.ha uhe şenfi mu tümköi.
But none of these scars were fresh. They were old as erosions in a fishless desert.
Su ose tünşa.i.z işox bab.o ufex. Ü bab.o ayox ge vanyo mü şenfi.dox vinde.
Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same colour as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.
İşüti ga u bab.o ayox gü uz sinse.i ve ü bab.o esa vüsko ge vinse ve bab.o meç.ado ve fön.ono.x.
“Santiago,” the boy said to him as they climbed the shore-side/bank from where the skiff was hauled up.
“Santiago,” solbo ças.o u he ü lic.o vinsö lü te vitve kah.on omur.
“I could go with you again. We’ve made some money.”
“A byog.e ne o üt. E bam.o oşo halmo”
The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.
Solmo bet.o solbo tümeş şenfi ve solbo mol.o u.
“No,” the old man said. “You’re with a lucky boat. Stay with them.”
“Ya,” solmo ças.o. “O bab.o ne banludo vitbo. Yaşeş ne ü”
“But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones(piece) every day for three weeks.”
“Su bareş tü o yog.o six pi camda nex şenfi ve ar e kak.o ubi bi çenpi öşü camda ho fi camva.”
“I remember,” the old man said. “I know you did not leave me because you doubted.”
“ A bar.e”, solmo ças.o. “A bon.e o lel.ox a be o bud.o.”
“It was papa (who) made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him.”
“U bab.o salfa (to) lel.o.p a. A solbo ve a çfob.e u.”
“I know,” the old man said. “It is quite normal.”
“A bon.e” solmo ças.o“ Uç eno (bannu.do).”
“He hasn’t much faith.”
“U bah.e.x oşu musfa.”
“No,” the old man said. “But we have. Haven’t we?”
“Ya,” solmo ças.o. “Su e bah.e. J.e bah.e.x?
‘Yes,” the boy said. “Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we’ll take the stuff home.”
“Ay”, solbo ças.o. “J.a b.füt.e o denbü (mo) hante ve ra e lat.a çanşu pasha.”
“Why not?” the old man said. “Between fishermen.”
“Ütüx?” solmo ças.o. “ Le şenfi.sa.i”
They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry.
Ü yis.o (mo) hante ve şenfi.sa.i.z oşu.ma (oşuma yo şenfi.sa.i) tom.o solmo ve u bab.o.x ana.
Others of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad.
İpoi yo aş ayo.x şenfi.sa.i, mul.o u ve bab.o asa.
But they did not show it and they spoke gently/politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady/permanent good weather and of what they had seen.
Su ü koş.o.x u ve ü çeş.o age.r ga vencü ve udi.ma.i te ü yud.o üz tümlii ve upe ego venve ve yo ta ü mes.o.
The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across two planks, with two men staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they waited for the ice lorry/truck to carry them to the market in Havana.
Osu camda.z suc.ado sulfii/şenfi.sa.i (yo osu camda) bab.o ey vünmü ve dub.o üz şenşö em ve kac.o ü yal.o.n ufu yanle ko çi hunpi, ne çi solma yüş.iş ma çenfi yo öşö hunpi, lu şenfi hanha te ü lav.o şo vönyi vitlo kacoş ü (lu) hinme in Havana.
Those who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle, their livers removed, their fins cut off and their hides/skins skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for salting.
İsü to kak.o şenşai, lat.o ü (lu) şenşa hinfa mu öpo vunsi yo vinko te ü koh.o.n mu koh.ana, üz senlii lömo.n, üz sünfii kuc.o.n öl ve üz sansii diş.o.n ve üz sunfe kuc.o.n (mü)(lu) çenşii şo denso.t.to.
When the wind was in the east a smell came across the port/harbour from the shark factory; but today there was only the faint edge of the odour because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.
Tu venvi bab.o mü vundo meş.şe yom.o ko honpo lü şenşa hinfa; su it efü vusyu yo çunda (enix meş.şe) bebo oş be venvi şab.o mü lu vunno ve ar yıd.o öl ve (mu) hante bab.o epü ve vessu.do(lo).
“Santiago,” the boy said.
“Santiago,” solbo ças.o.
“Yes,” the old man said. He was holding his glass and thinking of many years ago.
“Ay” solmo ças.o. U loh.u uz dinga ve bit.ü (yo) oşu camya oy.
“Can I go out to get sardines for you for tomorrow?”
Ja byog.a em get.eş şenso.i şo u şo camta?
“No. Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the fishnet.”
“Ya. Yog.eş ve tep.eş tambe. A b.tor.e is ve Rogelio kuf.a tümne.”
“I would like to go. If I cannot fish with you, I would like to serve in some way.”
A mel.ek yog.eş. Fe a b.tüm.e.x şenfi ne o, a s.mil.ek feseş mü in (oşo honva).
“You bought me a beer,” the old man said. “You are already a man”
“O hub.o a denbü”, solmo ças.o. “O bab.e ey solma.”
“How old was I when you first took me in a boat?”
“Üta cum(ga) a bab.o tu o lat.o oyir a mü vitbo?”
“Five and you (almost)nearly were killed when I brought the fish in to green and he nearly tore the boat to pieces. Can you remember?”
“Li ve o pik.o.n.ç ah tu a lib.o şenfi mü lu öfö ve u ah let.o vitbo lu çenpi.i. J.o b.bar.e?
“I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the clubbing.
“A b.bar.e sünta paş.iş ve çab.iş ve gub.aya kıb.iş ve vanno yo lüççü.
I can remember you flinging/throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet blood smell all over me.”
A b.bar.e (du) o kuf.u a mü lu vitbö te (bab.o) odıx kaç.ono tümli.i ve (du) a mef.i öşi vitbo şiş.e ve vanno (yo) o küç.iş u ge doç.ço şirte omuxr ve uşe sanla meş.şe oşi ka a.
“Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?”
“Jo bbar.e üh osu so ja çet.o oş u (lu) o?”
“I remember everything from when we first went together.”
“A bar.e işüti lü tu e yog.o oyir oç.”
The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes.
Solmo mul.o u ne uz vessu-kab.ono, aka mol.iko sinse.i
“If you were my boy(son) I’d take you out and gamble,” he said. But you are your father’s and your mother’s and you are in a lucky boat.”
“Fe o bab.e az solbo(salsa) a kat.ek o em ve tag.ek”, u ças.o. “Su o (bab.e) oz salfa.z ve oz salma.z ve o bab.e mü benlu.do vitbo.”
“May I get the sardines? I know where I can get four baits too.”
“Ja d.get.e şenso.i? A bon.e te a b.get.e ki tümba af”
“I have mine left from today. I put them in salt in the box.”
“A lel.o iza lü camti. A kup.o ü mü denso mü dönbö.”
“Let me get four fresh ones.”
En a get.e ki ufe çenpi.
“One,” the old man said. His hope and his confidence had never gone. But now they were freshening as when the breeze rises.
“Bi”, solmo ças.o. Uz bonho/bohho ve uz masko yog.ox ax. Su ü ufe.l.ü et eç tu venbe çir.e.
“Two,” the boy said.
“Çi”, solbo ças.o .
“Two,” the old man agreed. “You didn’t steal them?”
“Çi”, solmo sag.o. “O peş.ox ü?
“I would,” the boy said. “But I bought these.”
“A peş.e.k” solbo ças.o. Su a hub.o ise”
“Thank you,” the old man said. He was too plain/simple to wonder when he had attained humility.
“Sat o”, solmo ças.o. U bab.o uş esi bov.eş tu u gay.o püh.hü.
But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.
Su u bon.o du u gay.o u ve u bon.o du oso (u) bab.o.x pöndi.do (pönga.do.x) ve u kac.o.x ya gollo yo etu manpı.
“Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current,” he said.
“Camta bab.a ego camda ne osa vencü(vof.fo)” u ças.o.
“Where are you going?” the boy asked.
“Ote o yog.i ? solbo çay.o.
“Far/distant out to come in when the wind shifts. I want to be out before it is light.”
“Edi em yom.eş mü tu venvi riş.e.m. A bav.e bab.eş em de vüsli.”
“I’ll try to get him to work far out,” the boy said. “Then if you hook truly big something we can come to your aid.”
“A lıt.a havepeş u edi em”, solbo ças.o. “Ar fe o tümhö.t.a etur ubi işüti, e b.yom.e lu oz pinye ”
“He does not like to work too far out.”
“U milex haveş uş edi em.”
“No,” the boy said. “But I will see something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get him to come out after (from behind of) dolphin.”
“Ya”, solbo ças.o. “Su a mes.a işüti du u b.mes.e.x öş eç şönbi hav.iş ve yomepeş u em (şa) şendoz lü omoxma.”
“Are his eyes that bad?”
“J. uz sinse.i ça (osu) ego.x?
“He is almost blind.”
“U ah oci”
“It is strange,” the old man said. “He never went turtle-ing. That is what kills the eyes.”
“Eno.x”, solmo ças.o. “U yog.o.x ax şentü.l.lü. İsu bab.e ta pik.e sinse.i”
“But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good
“Su o yog.o şentü.l.lü ho camya.i) lö Mosquito Coast ve oz sinse.i edi.
Little child, be not afraid: Ubix solça, mafeşx
Though rain pounds/knocks) harsh against the glass: Fo venre kon.e ume.x na vonga
Like an unwanted stranger: Ge bav.ono.x solfo
There is no danger: Banda beb.ex
I am here tonight: A bab.e ik ut
Little child, be not afraid: Ubix solça, mafeş.x
Though thunder explodes and lightning flash: Fo ventü çoz.e ve venli vaf.e
Illuminates: Vay.e
Your tear-stained face: Oz sanfü-lob.ono sinfa
I am here tonight: A bab.e ik ut
Aydın Baykara 