Ëkopion

Ëkopion (/ǂǂʷǀː/, cq:T) is a North Chelydian language spoken by Arthrowheels on the planet Chelys.

Phonology and Romanization
Ëkopion is a language that is entirely comprised of click consonants. It lacks vowels as such, however it has a distinction between "strong" and "relaxed" clicks, where a strong click can only occur once per word, similar to a stressed syllable in a stress-based language. In the romanization, strong clicks are indicated with a capital letter. Ëkopion also has geminated clicks, that is, clicks articulated only following a short pause. When a click is geminated, a <:> will appear in the romanization before said click.

Grammar
Ëkopion has a strict SVO word order and is predominantly head-initial.

Reduplication
Ëkopion makes abundant use of reduplication in its morphology. There are strict rules on how a given root reduplicates. Roots that are only one click long often make use of suppletion in instances where they should reduplicate grammatically.

Initial reduplication
Initial reduplication is applied to a verb to put it into a perfective aspect. When applied to a noun (whether a modifier or not) it indicates that a given noun is collective number.

Final reduplication
Final reduplication can be applied to almost any participant of a phrase to indicate that it is a modifier to the preceeding word (except for adverbs, which are put at the beginning of a clause and applied to verbs).

Syntax
Ëkopion has a fixed word order. A word's part of speech is largely determined by its position in the phrase.

The following sentence would be translated as "The unfriendly animal showed the old person [its] upper teeth".


 * * means that the word in this position must undergo final reduplication.
 * † means that the verb in this position takes the affix -pl (or -:pl if the final root click is stressed) to indicate its role relative to the auxiliary verb.

Auxiliary verbs
There are multiple auxiliary verbs in Ëkopion. Auxiliary verbs can overlap, and two or more auxiliary verbs can be used.