Tvrtko Samardžija is a Croatian tabletop game designer, worldbuilder, but first and foremost, he is a husband and father. He received a BA in English and Philosophy in 2018, an MA in English Linguistics and Philosophy in 2020, both at the Faculty for Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. As a professional, his passions lie in the publishing business, but also storytelling, worldbuilding, and designing tabletop roleplaying games, and anything to do with the genre of science-fantasy. His favorite books belong to the old sword-and-planet period of the early 20th century, but he also loves a good dark fantasy novel. He is always interested in new ways of applying linguistics and in linguistic research, as well as any form of artistic cooperation where he might contribute with his knowledge and skills. His biggest flaw is he likes really, really dark humor.
Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to explore the possibility that Trigedasleng, a conlang, could be a future development of Present-Day English (PDE). The main argument of this thesis is that Trigedasleng developed from PDE as a creole. Three aspects of Trigedasleng will be analyzed and discussed: the pronunciation and possible changes; the system of verb auxiliaries that English-based creoles use, which determine the tense, mood and aspects of verbs (TMA auxiliaries), and its comparison to the verb system found in Trigedasleng; the phrasal aspect of Trigedasleng’s verb system, referred to as “phrasality” in this work, and an exploration of the possible developmental connections to PDE, as well as connections to the development of this feature through the history of English since the Old English period. The firm conclusions that can be drawn from this work are that Trigedasleng does seem to fit the profile of an English-based creole as far as the analyzed features are concerned, but also that phrasality “runs in the veins” of the English language, and ties Trigedasleng firmly to the English family in this aspect; lastly, it can be firmly concluded that Trigedasleng subscribes to compounding and phrasal construction seemingly as much as PDE does. Loose conclusions include the possibility of a creole developing within the “confines” of a single language, that there exists a shared cognitive reality that governs the grammar of a language as well as its possible developments, as well as that studying such constructed languages that are proposed future developed forms of present-day languages might help linguists predict the direction in which a language’s development might proceed. What remains inconclusive is whether the changes observed in Trigedasleng’s development are distinctly English.
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