Kelantepan

General and Cultural Information
Kelantepan (natively lüdar ca Kälamtäpar or Kälamdar /kjælʌmdʌɻ̝/) is a language spoken in the cold south of Patrona by the Kälamtäpar, a name which means "Fire-people". The Kelantepans, despite (or perhaps due to) their cold environment, worship fire, the sun, and volcanoes.

Consonants

 * 1) The sequences /kj/ and /gj/ are more common than the bare /k/ and /g/.
 * 2) /r/ is a raised retroflex approximant, sounding approximantly halfway between [ɻ] and [ʐ]. It is devoiced before a voiceless consonant.

Vowels
This strange vowel system actually originated as a very simple five-vowel system, having undergone a massive counter-clockwise shift.

Phonotactics
(C)V(/m/, /r/);

min: /u/; max: /kjær/
 * Syllable-final /m/ assimilates to the place of articulation of any following consonant in all but the most careful speech.
 * /w/ doesn't occur before /u/ or /y/.
 * /j/ doesn't occur before /e/ or /y/ except as a part of /kj/ and /gj/.
 * Consecutive vowels are in separate syllables.
 * No more than three consecutive vowels are permitted. If a four vowel sequence arises, the second vowel in the sequence is dropped. ex. due+agü=dueagü, but due+äemse=duäemse.

Stress
Primary stress is always on the second syllable of a word, with secondary stress on every other syllable after that. ex. Kälamtäpa [kjæˈlʌntæˌpʌ]

Writing System

 * Adding an apostrophe on  and  negates the inherent /j/. ex. g’amlu /gʌmlu/ "my eyes"

Noun class and number
Kelantepan uses an inverse number system, where the noun class of a noun determines which numbers receive markings. There are five noun classes in Kelantepan. The first is used exclusively for proper nouns, the second for animate common nouns, the third and fourth for inanimate common nouns, and the fifth for mass nouns and abstract nouns. The inverse number marker is a suffixed r after a vowel, -rä after a consonant, which appears after any case marking. Singular number is used for a single thing, dual is used for two things, and plural is used for more than two things.

Case
nominative, accusative, genitive, instrumental, causative, evitative, benefactive, antibenefactive, comitative, privative, distributive, comparative, adverbial, vocative

locative/directional cases: adessive, inessive, superessive, subessive, intrative, * locative, ablative, allative, perlative

Inalienable possession
Inalienably possessed nouns are those which always have a possessor, like family members, body parts, and part-whole relations. They are obligatorily marked for their possessor using prefixes.

Determiners
Determiners are placed before nouns. They include articles, demonstratives, quantifiers, and numerals (discussed in the vocab section).

Articles
Articles are undeclinable particles.

indefinite, definite (na), interrogative

Demonstratives
Demonstratives match the case marking of the nouns they mark.

proximal (ge na), distal (na na)

Quantifiers
no, very few/almost no, some/few, many, most/almost all, all

Kelantepan's continuum of quantifiers is broken up symmetrically.

Verbs
Verbs conjugate according to aspect, evidentiality, and polarity.

Aspects: continuous, habitual, perfective

Evidentialities: common knowledge/confirmed a long time ago, visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, gustatory, reportative, assumptive, inferential/deductive

Particles
There are many particles indicating grammatical mood, speaker attitude, etc.

Moods: indicative, optative, subjunctive/protasis, conditional/apodosis, hypothetical, imperative, interrogative

Syntax
VSOP