helyig

Helyig is a fictional linguistic term used in world-building and linguistic pedagogy to describe a hypothetical directional locative marker that encodes movement toward a location without specifying contact with or entry into that place. In proposed grammars, helyig functions as an intermediate indicator of path semantics, signaling approach to a target rather than completion of movement.

The name helyig is inspired by the Hungarian word hely meaning "place" and by the suffix -ig, which in some languages marks extent or boundary. In this fictional usage, helyig is not claimed to correspond to a real unit in any known language; it serves to illustrate how a language might encode path toward a location.

In practice, helyig would pair with verbs of motion and a subsequent destination noun phrase. In world-building examples, one might render a sentence like "They walked helyig the market" to mean movement toward the market without necessarily entering. The exact grammar—such as whether helyig attaches to the verb, follows the verb, or interacts with case marking—depends on the constructed language's design. Helyig is presented here as a hypothetical construct for exploring locative semantics, not as a description of natural languages.