Description:

The term 'atuin' is a polite word for an adult human being of adequate social standing, and the word for humans in general. It might be extended more generally, in which case it is a relatively dignifying term. Compare to the situation of 'man' in English, which means a male adult but which can be extended to mean humanity in general.

Used with the article of uncertainty, 'ko', as 'ko atuin', it forms the common expression for 'who'.

Common lacks a way to make a distinction between a person who is human and a person who is not - the word for human is the same as the word for person, 'atuin'. This usage tends to dehumanize children and those of poor social standing based on the positive connotations that 'atuin' possesses. It can be applied to any human, but it has an inherent prejudice for most speakers.

While Old Common was very gender neutral, in practive modern High Common is less so. The derived forms lijátuin (woman) and cejátuin (man) are therefore relatively common.

With the suffix of type, -(h)ot, 'atuinot' forms the general word for humanity or mankind.

The affix -(y)s is used as a modifier to assert the humanity of the head term, and the -(y)syn version refers to a human being or humans in general in a more neutral way than the positive connotations of atuin. In Common, it would be somewhat conceptually incoherent to try to refer to a hypothetical space alien visitor as a person, a perennial problem for science fiction authors.

Atuin also forms the suffix -(a)tuin, which works as a generic head in compound terms for words having to do with people. In this case, the generally positive connotation of atuin is unimportant, and the word can apply to any humans. It derived person-associated-with type words without having the verbal thematic role connotations of using a form of -ka. It can also apply to a thematic term to emphasize that it is talking about a human.

As an affix, -(a)tuin has the special phonological rule that the 'a' drops if possible, unless an epenthetic vowel is needed to break up an illegal consonant clust, in which case the 'a' reappears instead of the 'y' you would normally expect.

An example would be 'wisintuin', 'gourmand', from 'wisin', 'cuisine', and -(a)tuin