Ngazikha

Knatxiksa ([ɲa.θik.sa], or just "Goblin Tongue" in Common) is the language the Goblins speak among themselves in the world of Seyandun, and the lingua franca of many sentient non-human creatures.

General information
Created at first as a non-world specific Goblin language (for whenever I my need one, like in an RPG, for example) and a self-imposed challenge to try to do my first minimalistic conlang, the only use case at the moment is the con-world of Seyandun.

Unlike most of my other conlangs, instead of starting with the phonology and then building up the rest, this time around I started with the writing system, deriving it from a set of glyphs that a friend of mine did as a DM for a puzzle in an RPG game he directed, and then assigning phonetic values to the glyphs.

Classification and word order
It is classified as a partially analytic language, as it is weakly inflected. The language is somewhat head-final, using prepositions and placing the determiners after the noun, although adjectives do follow the noun too (preceding the determiners if there are any), and the word order is SVO.

The exact noun phrase order is the following:

Numerals precede the noun, the noun precedes the adjective/s, the adjective/s precede the determiner, and the determiner is followed by the postposition if the noun phrase is part of an adpositional phrase. Any noun complements that are adpositional phrases must precede the noun phrase.

Phonotactics
The syllable structure is a mess in the form of (C)V / C(V). Not much is known about the previous stages of the language, but from the writing system it can be gleamed that an old *[ɪ] vowel evolved into *[ɨ~ə] and then disappeared in all cases it followed a consonant (sometimes palatalizing it, paving the way for future digraphs), and becoming [j] after a vowel or at the beginning of the word; and it is deduced that current [i] must've come from an old *[e] that rose after the disappearance of old *[ɪ].

Dialects
There is an undefined Kobold dialect that the kobold show when communicating with non-kobold creatures in this language. It is mostly a handful of pronunciation variations and a few vocabulary borrowings from the (not-yet-created) Kobold Tongue.

The pronunciation changes are as follows:
 * [n] becomes [r] (trilled) in front of a consonant or at the beginning of a word, or [ɾ] elsewhere
 * [ɲ] is realized as [çj] instead

Writing System
The writing system is a semi-syllabary, with glyphs representing V, C, or CV combinations. The romanization of the language goes as follows:

Nouns
There is little inflection on a noun. The paucal marker (for an amount from 2 to 4 elements) is an -x suffix, while the plural marker is the particle kix following the noun. However, when the quantity of a noun is unspecified, the default grammatical number is the paucal one, and the usage of the plural is an implied specification of a big number. Both adding the suffix -x and following the noun with the particle kix is done rarely for emphatic effect, to mean huge or incommensurable quantities.

Or, it can be analyzed as -x being the plural suffix, yet for quantities above 4, a "[singular noun] + kix" construction (similar to English's "a lot of [noun]") must be used instead (with "[plural noun] + kix" being an equivalent to "lots of [noun]").

Determiners and demonstratives
There's one definite article and it's "ik". All proper nouns must be followed by it (Goblin names incorporate it as part of the name, ending in "-ik", like Tkisikkixik, meaning "The Many Cold Mountains").

There is a two-way distinction between demonstratives: Tu and ni are also the first and second person pronouns, while tuku and niku can also be used as "here", "there" adverbs.

Pronouns
As we saw, tu and ni are the first and second person pronouns. The third person pronoun is usik.

Verbs
The language uses zero copula.
 * Future: marked with “-k”.
 * Past: particle “ti” following the verb.
 * Present continuous: particle “xux” following the verb.
 * Past continuous: “ti xux” following the verb.
 * Recent past: “tik” following the verb.
 * Negative: “si” preceding the verb.
 * Imperative: auxiliar verb “ta” preceding the verb.

Syntax
Xak is a catch-all interrogative and relative pronoun meaning "who/what/which"; any question or relative clause construction must take this into account ("where" questions are formulated as "what place" instead; "when" is instead "what time"; ...). In interrogative sentences, xak replaces the noun being asked for; in relative clauses, it follows the connector noun, followed itself by the relative clause replacing the repeated noun with usik or removing it altogether (whichever is clearer).

Yes-no questions (or statements which pose a yes-no dichotomy implicitly unknown by the speaker) must be followed by the sentence-final particle si.

(Vocabulary will be added in a future edit.)

Example text
" She will cook the food if I light the fire. " (Reddit Challenge).

Saik yutkaktak ksus ik xak tu ta ta tkak.

[sa.ik jut.kak.tak ks.sus ik xak tu ta ta‿t.kak]

3PSG cook.FUT food DET REL.PRON 1PSG IMP do fire

Notable etymology:
 * yu-tkakta: Sweet-burning
 * tkak-ta: fire-do