Description:

The word 'zisse' is a general word for speech and language. As a noun its most basic meaning is 'language' or 'speech'. As a verb its basic meaning is 'tell', with other senses like 'talk', 'speak', 'say', etc. derived from it in various ways.

Notice the evident similarity to 'zesse', 'tongue'. This similarity is evidently deliberate. In Old Common, 'zisse' was in the abstract gender and 'zesse' was in the concrete gender, and they appear to be derived from each other by gender change, a limited-productivity coining strategy in early Common before the gender system collapsed. This doublet was coined by Davidson himself, who confirmed the words were supposed to be related.

Noun

As a noun, 'zisse' means speech in general, or language, including a specific language. It can be used as a compound head term to derive the name for a language, although it is usually used as a standalone word, and the name of the language applied to it as a modifying term. See for example, 'na Xafen zisse', 'the Common language'.

The derived form 'zissehot' means 'dialect'. The phrasal form 'was zisse' means a lie.

Verb

• Paradigm: happat (ditransitive)
• Auxiliary: hap

'Zisse' is very diverse as a verb, with a lot of meanings and uses around speech. Its base meaning is 'tell', which it is a ditransitive verb with an ergative speaker, an absolutive thing said (often a dependent clause introduced with 'si') and a dative listener. The language you're speaking in can always be added as an optional extra argument introduced by the null preposition.

The phrasal form 'was zisse' can be used in the same sense of other zisse expressions to mean 'to lie'.

Other possible meanings:

Disintentive (say)

If 'zisse' is used as a transitive verb with the auxiliary 'te', it loses the sense of the intention to convey information to a specific listener and focuses instead on the speaker and what is said. In this form, the verb has an ergative subject who is the speaker and an absolutive object which is the thing said, often or typically a dependent clause introduced with 'si'.

Antipassive (speak to a listener)

The antipassive formed by using 'zissi' with the auxiliary 'nox' as a semitransitive verb promotes the speaker to the absolutive case and puts the focus on the speaker's experience of speaking. The dative indirect object still refers to the listener. The thing spoken of can be referred to obliquely using the preposition 're', 'about' with a nominative object which is the topic of conversation.

Disintentive Antipassive (speak in general, speak a labguage)

The disintentive antipassive formed by using 'zisse' with the auxiliary 'se' as an intransitive verb also promotes the speaker to the absolutive case and emphasizes the speaker's experience of speaking, but removes the dative listener. It is still possible to specify the topic periphrasitcally with a prepositional clause introduced by 're' and the topic in the nominative case. In addition, this is one of the idioms to say that you can speak a language, or that you are speaking in a language. To do so, specify the language as a nominative object of the null preposition 'y'. For example:

We se zisse na Xafen.

This means 'I speak Common', or 'I am speaking Common'.

Sexual Innuendo

There is a subtle sexual innuendo that uses this verb as well, based on its similarity to the word 'zesse', 'tongue', which is used as a colloquialism for oral sex.

It is based on using the verb in an apparently incorrect way, placing it in the disintentive transitive form with te, but instead of the absolutive object being the thing said, it refers to the listener, which is apparently confusing nonsense. By analogy to the very similar 'zesse' conjugated this way, though, it sounds like 'perform oral sex' on the object, and that's the key to the use as sexual innuendo.

For example, if you have:

Je hyp zisse iju.
I(ERG) give(IR.NP.IM) tell you(DAT)

That means 'I would speak to you', and is a polite and concise way to ask an intimate social equal if you can talk with them about something. Place it in the disintentive, and it comes out like:

Je ti zisse zu.
I(ERG) hit(IR.NP.IMP) tell you(ABS)

This seems to make no sense at all - it translates as 'I would speak regarding you' - it is hard to translate, but to a Common speaker, it sounds like it doesn't make sense. That's why it works as coded sexual innuendo - if you replaced the one word 'zisse' with the very similar 'zesse', it becomes:

Je ti zesse zu.
I(ERG) hit(IR.NP.IMP) tongue you(ABS)

That means almost directly something like the crude English expression 'I want to go down on you' or 'I would like to blow you'. Expressed with zesse it is a crude sexual advance; expressed with zisse it is slightly coded and veiled.