1.1 History and Unique Features

1.1.1 History of Ayola

Ayola has been developed by the Ayola Research Group (ARG) at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The language was given the name ‘Ayola’, from the Italian word aiola, meaning ‘flower garden’. This name expresses the orderliness and beauty which the developers have striven to give to the language: a phonetic alphabet, logical grammatical and word-building systems, as well as pleasing and easily-perceived sounds. In developing Ayola, the ARG has borrowed ideas from many natural languages as well as previous constructed languages such as Esperanto, Interlingua and Loglan, and introduced many new ideas of its own. The Ayola vocabulary is taken from many natural languages of the world, with a strong emphasis on European languages. In contrast to previous constructed languages, Ayola takes more words from the less-widely-spoken European languages, such as the Scandinavian languages, the Slavic languages, and other central and eastern European languages.

1.1.2 Unique Features of Ayola

Many features of Ayola, such as phonetic spelling, regular grammatical endings, etc. are shared with other existing constructed languages. However, in several important ways, Ayola is unique. The principal unique features are as follows:

1. Accentless Familiar Phonetic Spelling .

The Ayola alphabet uses 24 of the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet for

spelling (q and x are used only as symbols). No accents are used in

spelling Ayola words; the stress accents (´) and (`) are used to indicate irregular stress in Ayola approximations of foreign names and in interjections borrowed from natural languages. All letters have phonetic values recognized by at least some of the major European languages.

2. System of Resolving Word Boundaries

A string of Ayola sounds may be easily and uniquely resolved into a string of Ayola words. In most cases this word-boundary resolution only requires knowledge of Ayola’s phonology and elementary words. Because no Ayola word besides the reply ya (yes) begins with the consonants ts, w or y, a word boundary can be placed after the vowel or following ts/w/y which immediately follows a stressed syllable. Because no non-elementary words begin with most syllables comprising an elementary word such as ce, ci, cu, ja, je, ji and vu, a new word boundary can be placed after each of these syllables when they immediately follow a word boundary. A few international non-elementary words beginning with one of the five elementary word syllables ke, la, le, lo and no, such as kerosene (kerosene), labirinto (labyrinth), leopardo (leopard), logaritmo (logarithm) and nobeliumo (nobelium), are allowed. However, in these cases what follows the initial syllable (roseno, birinto, garitmo, beliumo, epardo, garitmo) is not and never will be an Ayola word, so that the word-boundary resolution is unique. Therefore, in Ayola there are no oronyms, i.e. strings of sounds whose resolution into words is ambiguous.

3. Strict Rules of Word Building

The meanings of prefixes and suffixes are precisely defined and their rules of

application strictly stated. Word compounding is an important process in

Ayola but the rules for compounding words of the same part of speech are

more restricted than in most other languages. Such a compound always denotes something which is partially one of the components and partly the other as in fenestrivrato (French door), rujialbiblua (red-white-and-blue) and kurikaminare (to run-and-walk). A general relation between two things denoted by two nouns must always be expressed by adjectival modification or by a linked phrases, e.g. urbay muzeo (city museum) = muzeo je urbo (museum of (which is part of) a city) or artway muzeo (art museum) = muzeo jwe artoy (museum of (depicting) some art).

4. Complete and Consistent Markings of the Parts of Speech

All of the major parts of speech including prepositions are marked by characteristic word endings. In addition, names derived from Ayola words have a characteristic word ending. There is a consistent relation between the derived parts of speech and the underlying fundamental form. (See Chapter 1.3 for definitions of these). For example, the noun ending -o applied to a verb root yields a noun which denotes the subject of the action or relation expressed by the verb. The noun denoting event abstraction requires a suffix.

5. System of Prepositions and Links

A unique system of prepositions and links eliminates most of the ambiguities which occur in other languages due to the ambiguous syntactic function of prepositions. Both prepositions and links precede nouns and form phrases. However, prepositional phrases modify verbs and are free to move around in a sentence whereas linked phrases modify nouns and are bound to a position following the modified noun. Links are formed from prepositions by distinctive prefixes.

6. Equivalence between Complex Derived Adjectives and Linked Phrases

Every complex derived adjective has a one-to-one correspondence with a

linked phrase of identical meaning. Ambiguities due to the notoriously

vague meanings of adjectival suffixes are eliminated.

7. Precise and Familiar Vocabulary

In the great majority of cases the Ayola root of the word for a concept is identical to the root used in one or more natural languages, but the Ayola word is often defined more precisely. Most of the lexical ambiguities which are still present in most international languages are eliminated. Shades of meaning and specific technical meanings are allowed. The major portion of the vocabulary is easily recognizeable by speakers of major European languages.

8. Distinctness of International Combining Forms

A large number of international combining forms, such as kata-, meta- and mono-, are used only as combining forms which are parts of longer words. The possible roots within them (kat-, met-, mon-) are not used as Ayola roots. This restriction completely eliminates many potential ambiguities which might result if such possible roots were used both within combining forms and as roots. Ayola draws from such a large number of languages that it is always possible to find a suitable alternative root and maintain the distinctness of the combining form.

9. Simple Ayola Equivalents of Linnaean Terms

Ayola provides a simple set of rules for converting the internationally-used Latin Linnaean names for animals, plants, clouds, etc. into equivalent Ayola form. Genus and species words take the noun ending –o; descriptive adjectives take the ending –a; relational adjectives take the ending –ay. The resulting Ayola terms are almost always very similar to the original Latin ones but are simple and uniform in their word endings and satisfy the rules of Ayola grammar. For common animals and plants whose Latin name does not contain a species word, Ayola also derives a single-word term for that species from the natural languages.