XMA, explained
A compressed brief for the new reader. The framework is from Kēlen. The roots are from English.
XMA (Tenth Mouth Anglossian) is a constructed language with no verbs. Its grammatical framework descends from Kēlen — Sylvia Sotomayor’s verbless artistic language — transposed into English vocabulary. The framework is the first theft. The roots are the second. All framework belongs to XMA; all roots come from English; nothing else is permitted in.
This page is a tight reference for a new reader who needs to write in XMA: the spine of the rules, the four mouths, the three classes, and the prohibitions. It is not the full guide. The full guide runs much longer; this is what fits in a head.
The fourteen laws
- There are four mouths, and only four: ALL, GREAT, DUNE, X.
- Every clause takes a mouth at its head.
- There are no verbs.
- All roots come from English. No roots come from any other source.
- The suffixes -ness, -ity, -ment, -tion, -ence, -ance, -dom, -ship, -hood, -age, -ure, -ery, -ism, and -th do not exist.
- There are no free adjectives. There are no free adverbs.
- All English roots may be recombined into compounds.
- A compound is a name, not a clause. A compound does not create framework.
- All description lives under DUNE — description is flow.
- All change lives under GREAT.
- All transfer lives under X, ending with wineffect.
- All standing, all place, all kind live under ALL.
- Uniproplus frames causation as instrumentality — the cause is the means, never the head.
- No other framework may be invented. All framework belongs to XMA; all roots belong to English.
The four mouths
Every clause takes one of four mouths at its head. The mouth is the framework. There are no verbs.
ALL — standing, place, kind, bare existence
| Form | Use |
|---|---|
| ALL | before a vowel or any consonant except L |
| AL | before L |
Templates:
- ALL [thing] eyeso eye [state or place] — the thing stands in the state/place
- ALL [thing] — bare existence
- ALL [thing] case [kind] — the thing stands as a kind
Examples: allunihole eyeso eye uni earth (the hole stands in the earth); allquavoid (void stands); almultistar case artlight (the few stars stand as light-substance).
GREAT — shift, becoming, crossing, brink
| Form | Use |
|---|---|
| GREAT | before a vowel |
| GREATO’ | before a consonant |
Slots: thing-that-shifts · aim + end-state · (hand + start-state) · (uniproplus + means + effect) · (pairso alsopair + accompaniment).
Examples: Greatunisky aim quanightfall (the sky crosses toward nightfall); Greatunimousewoman hand quasearch aim qua ache (the mousewoman crosses from search toward ache); uniproplus uniwind artbreath effect unihall (through the wind, the shift happens — breath reaches the hall).
DUNE — description, ownership, composition, flow
| Form | Use |
|---|---|
| DUNE | before a consonant |
| DUN | before a vowel |
All description in XMA flows. Every quality flows from one name toward another. There are no static adjectives. Templates:
- DUNE [whole] [part] — ownership
- DUNE [thing] hand [source-quality] aim [goal-quality] — flow of description
- DUNE [thing] re: [self-description] — flow back to itself
Examples: dununistreet quacrack plus artbrickdust (the street owns crack and brickdust); dununigrief hand qua age aim quasharpweight (grief flows from age toward sharpweight).
X — sending, arrival, transfer, reaching
| Form | Use |
|---|---|
| X | before a vowel |
| XE | before a consonant |
Every X clause has cargo, source, goal, and ends with wineffect. The particle wineffect belongs to X alone and is mandatory.
Template: X [cargo] [source] [goal] wineffect.
Examples: xartlight unistar unistreet wineffect (light passes from star to street); xequagrief unihouse unichild wineffect (grief passes from house to child).
The three classes
Every name takes a class at its head. No name may stand without a class.
| Class | What it marks | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| UNI | countable, solid | stone, child, house, star, wall, door, road, hole, ear, eye |
| QUA | state — uncountable, not solid | grief, hush, void, cold, dark, break, gape, weight, ache, heat |
| ART | mass substance, pourable | dust, light, glass, breath, brickdust, fur, dirt, water, rain, moss |
A single root may stand in more than one class with different meaning: unistone is a countable thing; artstone is mass substance.
The law of the noun face
If an English root has both a noun life and a verb life, only the noun face stands in XMA. The verb face is dead, completely. break → quabreak; light → artlight; cut → quacut; mark → unimark. Never a verb.
Number prefixes & counting
Three number prefixes sit at the head of the class: SOLO (one), MULTI (a few), MYRIO (many). Form: NUMBER-CLASS-ROOT.
Numbers one through seven take their English form: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Numbers from eight onward take their base-eight representation read as an English number, with point at the end: 8 = tenpoint, 9 = elevenpoint, 10 = twelvepoint, 16 = twentypoint, 64 = onehundredpoint, 512 = onethousandpoint.
The ten particles
| Particle | Function |
|---|---|
| aim | the goal, the flow toward |
| hand | the source, the flow from |
| eyeso eye | the spot, the state, the place |
| event | the kind of shift, the kind of sending |
| wineffect | belongs to X only; ends every X clause |
| effect | belongs to GREAT alongside uniproplus only; the means |
| pairso alsopair | accompaniment — one name alongside another |
| re: | belongs to DUNE only; flow back to itself |
| sofriend | a part belonging to a whole |
| buddyalsoso | a part belonging to a word-entity |
The ten connectives
| Connective | Function |
|---|---|
| plus | one name and another, or one clause and another |
| so also | one clause and then another, again, more |
| ifso…so if | law and its consequence |
| OR | only one clause stands; always capitalised (italicised if all caps) |
| sothoughso | the unexpected crossing |
| q.e.d. | cause toward consequence |
| either…either, either | uncertain standing — one or the other |
| nullso alsoneverso | bare absence — the clause does not stand |
| nullso | uncertain absence |
| handbyhand | one clause instead of another — the end replaces the head |
The six moods
A mood sits at the head of the clause alongside the mouth. The mouth does not change through the mood. The mood is the framework of the speaker’s mind toward the clause.
| Mood | What it marks |
|---|---|
| soyes | witnessed with one’s own eyes |
| somind | the law of all times — always so |
| nullsonullso | uncertain standing — no certainty |
| lust | longing — stands as wish, not fact |
| soplusso | emphatic force — more than somind |
| perfect | the clause is purposed; its kind is intention |
The five suffixes
No new suffix may come into being. Five suffixes only. Every suffix sits at the end of a name.
| Suffix | What it makes |
|---|---|
| -ette | smallness — uniholette is a small hole |
| -er | the instrument, the means — quagriefer is the means by which grief works |
| -foil | the opposite — quahushfoil is the opposite of hush |
| -socauseso | the one who causes — artdustsocauseso is the one who causes dust |
| -so eventso | the mark of the shift, the thing that results — unistepso eventso is the result of stepping |
The prohibitions
- There are no verbs. Not through the front door, not through the back, not through any door. The mouths are the framework.
- There are no English derivational suffixes (the list in Law 5). Reach for the bare noun instead of the suffixed one: hush, not stillness. grief, not sadness. void, not loneliness. heat, not warmth. brink, not closeness.
- There are no free adjectives. All description lives under DUNE.
- There are no free adverbs. If you want to shape the manner of a change, build another clause — not an adverb.
- The verb face of an English root is dead. Only its noun face stands in XMA.
Fusion rules
The hyphen between framework and root disappears according to the letters that meet. Run head-to-end, left-to-right.
| Left letter | Right letter | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Vowel | Consonant | fuse |
| Consonant | Vowel | fuse |
| Consonant | Consonant | fuse — but space if three of the same letter would result |
| Vowel | Vowel | space |
Y is a consonant.
For the new reader writing XMA
- Pick the mouth that frames the clause: ALL (standing), GREAT (shift), DUNE (description), X (transfer).
- For every name in the clause, attach a class at its head: UNI, QUA, or ART.
- Reach for English nouns. If a root has both a noun face and a verb face, take the noun face. Never the verb face.
- Refuse the forbidden suffixes. Refuse free adjectives. Refuse free adverbs.
- If your clause needs description, route through DUNE — describe as flow, never as static attribute.
- If your clause needs transfer, end with wineffect.
- If your clause needs cause, use uniproplus alongside GREAT — cause is the means, never the head.
- Fuse head-to-end. Where the rule says space, give it a space.
- Compose by clauses, joined by the ten connectives. No connective may carry content.
- If unsure, write the noun and let the framework do the work.
XMA inherits its grammatical architecture from Kēlen by Sylvia Sotomayor (1989–). Sotomayor’s site, dictionary, grammar, and relay texts are at terjemar.net/kelen.php; her broader work and writings are at terjemar.net. Kēlen uses four closed-class relationals in place of verbs; XMA transposes that move into English vocabulary and extends it through the four mouths.