Capças Tumon

Capças Tumon was made for the Working Backwards 2022 event in 1 day.

Foreword (July 31, 2022)
I found out about this challenge just 19 hours before the end of the event, so it became a bit of an impromptu 1-day conlang challenge for me, which was quite a fun experience. I unfortunately didn't have the whole day to dedicate to this endeavor, so the language is, in its current state, quite incomplete, and I worry that my haste may have left numerous errors in the use and description of the language. I've done my best to proofread what there is, but it is in the nature of a challenge of this pace for errors to be made in the pursuit of quantity, and I will do my best to improve the quality as I find these potential issues on review of the language in the coming days.

Vocabulary Translations

 * 1) SLK stands for Súpu Lá-Kòtee, a source of many loanwords (see Classification and Dialects)
 * 2) CT stands for Capças Tumon, or Tumonese
 * 3) See key below

Vowel Harmony Key

 * H - high vowel (I, u)
 * M - mid vowel (e, o)
 * L - low vowel (æ, o)
 * A - neutral or u
 * _N - prior vowel or none in the case of a vowel attached to it
 * (repeated letter) - long version

Classification and Dialects
Capças Tumon (IPA: /ˈc͡çapças ˈtumɔn/, English: Speech of the Tumon), anglicized as Tumonese, is a language spoken across the eastern coasts of the continent Sowalé. This document takes a specific interest in the version spoken in the city-state Cipala Kupaan (English: Port of Cipala), where a plurality of speakers reside. It is a part of the Tomwanya language family, though it has heavy influence from Súpu Lá-Kòtee, which was the de-jure lingua franca of the surrounding region for approximately 710 years, roughly 200 years before the development of modern Capças Tumon as described in this document.

The name Capças Tumon comes from the word capças, the adjectival form of "speak"; and the endonym "Tumon," which itself comes from the Súpu Lá-Kòtee word lá-Tomwányà, meaning "boat-makers' country," as Tumon sailors were known for their extravagant vessels far before the state itself was encountered by the Lá-Kòtee. Technically, the name refers to the speakers, and not the language itself, but as a language is its people, they are often used interchangeably.

Phonology
Tumonese has 18~19 basic consonants and 5 basic vowels, in addition to variations for harmony and vowel length. It exhibits a high degree of vowel harmony, along with a correlated consonant-vowel harmony system. Words are split into three types according to their harmony: ħa, or "light" words, ul, or "heavy" / "dark" words, and umħa, or "colorful" words. Colorful words tend to, but do not always, contain both light and dark syllables, and are always loanwords, while words that exhibit specific light or dark harmony with affixes represent the long-term native vocabulary.

Light Consonants

 * 1: nasals are palletized before high/mid front vowels (e.g. /nu/ vs /nʲi/), and devoiced before and after other devoiced consonants (/ɔŋgu/ -> /eŋ̥͡ki/)
 * 2: the graphemes "b" and "d" both exist in Tumonese due to inheritance from Súpu Lá-Kòtee, and are pronounced identically to "p" and "t," as there is no voicing distinction within front (alveolar/labial) sounds in Tumonese.
 * 3: the phoneme /ħ/ exists only in loanwords

Dark Consonants
The dark consonants are mostly the same as the light, apart from a removal of the dentalization of the alveolar series, and the following specific alterations:

c: /c͡ç/ -> /k/

r: /r/ -> ř (only exists in native words)

g: /k/ -> /g/

ǧ /ɣ/ -> /g͡ɣ/

l /ʎ/ -> /lˠ/

Vowels
As a general rule, vowels take on their long form in the first syllable if there are no other long vowels in the root word.

/æ/ and /a/ represent the same core vowel, but /æ/ exists in words with light harmony.

Phonotactics
Consonant pairs are not limited, though they are more likely to appear in pairs no larger than two, and plosives do not tend to follow other plosives.

Vowels are always monophthongs, and vowel pairs are thus split into two syllables.

Stress is determined by length, and tends to fall on the first syllable, with exceptions for certain native terms that have different stress patterns historically. If there are no other stressed syllables in a word, stress falls on the first syllable.

Harmony
(TBA. Conceptualized, but not fully described.)

Romanization
When a grapheme represents different light and dark phonemes, the light version is listed on the left of a pipe (|), and the dark version is listed on the right.

Syntax
Sentences are ordered in strict SOV order. This is further broken down by phrases as:

(TBA)

Verbs
Verb phrases follow the somewhat unintuitive structure:

[adverbial participle] verb-agreement [adv] [modal verbs] [negation]

Because adverbial participles signify the major action, they come before the verb itself, while all other modifiers follow the verb in the above order.

Person Marking
Verbs can be marked with both subject and object agreement. When possible, this often means subjects will be dropped in favor of using the agreement to convey information about them.

TAM Marking and Co-Verbs
The unmarked form of the verb is in the present simple. Other TAM forms are marked with assisting verbs, while the main verb is made into an adverbial participle. Many verbs can be made into co-verbs in that way, while the simpler tense-marking modal verbs oo and aǧç (representing the future simple and perfective respectively) simply follow the verb like an adverb. An example of both kinds of multi-verb constructions follows: Luoke oon aǧç caňgire žaan Loçtan puoto. Luoke oo-n-aǧç ca-ňg-ire ža-an Loçtan puo-to. Moment come-3SG.S-PF adj-go_by_boat-1PL force-3SG Loçtan island-for. The moment has come that our sailing is forced (by the moment) towards the isle Loçtan. The time has come to sail to the Isle of Loçtan. In this example, aǧç modifies oo, saying that the moment will come in the future, while ža modifies ňg, indicating the causal relationship between the first clause and ňg, the action.

The Prefix "Ca"/"Cu"
(Description TBA)

The Verb "Ža"
(Description TBA)

Nouns
N-ADJ [Possessor] (TBA)

Vowels key for affixes:

 * H - high vowel (I, u)
 * M - mid vowel (e, o)
 * L - low vowel (æ, o)
 * A - neutral or u
 * _N - prior vowel or none in the case of a vowel attached to it

Languages key:

 * OT - Old Tumonese
 * MT - Middle Tumonese
 * SLK - Súpu Lá-Kòtee
 * NT - New coinage within Tumonese