Kelantepan

General and Cultural Information
Kelantepan (natively na lüda ca Kälamtäpar or Kälamda /kjælʌmdʌ/) is a language spoken on the continent Suk’adüm in the cold south of Patrona by the Kelantepans (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/ and are treated as single consonants.
 * 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 "you two's stomach", but due+äemse=duäemse "you two's hands".

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
Kelantepan has many cases, represented by suffixes placed after any inverse number marker, occasionally in combination with the few prepositions in the language.

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.

Anomalous suffixes
Some Kelantepan nouns have parts which are appended to the end of a noun, even after any grammatical suffixes. ex. ühä-de "a vision", ühäwäpemde, ühädade, etc. These are either parts of the root or the occasional derivational suffix.

Nominal derivations

 * Diminutive: -ce, päjece "pebble"
 * Augmentative: -su, päjesu "boulder"

Pronouns
The pronouns are of the same form as the possessive affixes, with a couple of exceptions. They can be marked for each case just like any other noun, but in the nominative case they receive a suffix -e. The third person singular pronouns are demonstrative pronouns, with gee meaning "this one" and nae meaning "that one".

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

Articles
Articles are undeclinable particles. The definite article is na. The indefinite article varies by number as kea for singulars, dur for plurals, and jama for plurals. There is also an interrogative article lum which indicates that the noun is what is being asked about in a sentence (and can also be used on pronouns).

The articles are used even for abstract nouns, where they are normally avoided in English (na debä "love"). The definite article is also used before the numbers 1 kea and 2 dur when modifying nouns to distinguish them from the indefinite singular and dual articles.

The use of the indefinite and definite articles is optional with case-inflected nouns when modifying other nouns, and with some proper nouns. And if a phrase is repeated many times in a passage, the indefinite and definite articles do not need to be repeated each time.

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

proximal (ge na), distal (na na)

Quantifiers
Kelantepan's continuum of quantifiers is broken up symmetrically.

no/none, very few/almost no/small minority, some/few/minority (jama), many/small majority, most/almost all/vast majority, all/every

Verbs
Verbs conjugate according to aspect and evidentiality.

Affix order
Stem-Evidence-Aspect
 * Turjäa lum gee. "Is this hurting?"
 * Turjätelu. "Sometimes I feel it hurt."
 * Turjäte warnä. "I'm not hurt!"

Particles
There are many particles indicating grammatical mood, speaker attitude, polarity, and intensity.

Moods: indicative (0), optative (hace), subjunctive/protasis, conditional/apodosis, hypothetical (ähu), imperative (ne)

Polarity: affirmative (0), intensive affirmative (ne), negative (wä(m)), intensive negative (warnä)

Syntax
VSOP

Numbers
Kelantepan numbers were base-18 before introduction of octal mathematics by the Alemarese, and the number words up to 19 remain. Zero was also introduced by the Alemarese.
 * Numbers in the ones place are usually just placed after the eights place and separated by a hyphen (e.g. 45 sampüta-sam), the multiples of eight plus one, except for 9 and 17, are formed with the suffix -ke. ex. 32 ärsampüta, 33 ärsampütake, 34 ärsampüta-dur
 * Multiples of 18 have two names: a base-18 version formed from the non-18 factor followed by -kukum (3 becomes um-, so 54 is umkukum, not *umgükukum), and an octal version. ex. 36 (2018/448) durkukum or ärsampüta-ärsam.