Tekapton

Vowels
Combinations -ai-, -ei-, -oi- and -ui- form diphtongs [aɪ], [eɪ], [ɔɪ] and [uɪ].

Phonotactics
The stress in Tekapton words usually falls on the last syllable.

Nouns
In Tekapton's unique grammar every word is grammatically a noun. Some of these noun-words describe a real object (person, house, car etc.), others refer to abstract categories (beauty, good, evil), and some describe actions or states (seeing, running etc.) However, in the grammar there is very little difference in how these types of nouns are treated.

Each noun in a Tekapton sentence is preceded by an article. The article defines the word's case and number, and is agreeing with the main word. If there are no dependent words between the word and it's article, the article and the noun are written as one word. Otherwise, the dependent words are placed between the article and the main word. The article for singular Ergative case is empty most of the time but it is still there when the noun changes to plural.

For example:

Categories
Nouns in Tekapton have a category, or generalized gender. The category is determined by the first consonant(s) of the word, and nouns dependent to this word have to agree with it. Naturally the starting consonants overlap for some groups, and some groups have several possible starting consonants.

Categories group things that are loosely related to each other by a certain criteria. For example

and some others. Of course, due to historical reasons, sound changes, foreign words etc. some categories contain words that do not seem to belong there.
 * men (father, brother, son) or persons of certain profession or quality
 * women (mother, sister, daughter)
 * animals
 * insects
 * long things (hair, thread, rope, road, river)
 * thin things (finger, stick, branch, pencil, tail, horn)
 * flat things (leaf, page, plate, lake)
 * things that have a horizontal surface (table, floor, ceiling, sky, bed)
 * vertical things (building, wall, fence, tree)
 * round things (ball, eye, sun, moon)
 * things that stick out (hill, thorn, nose, ear)
 * collections (forest, book, week, dust)
 * materials (wood, flesh, soil, metal)
 * small things (crumb, dot, particle, star)
 * food
 * liquids (water, milk, ink, blood)
 * solids, hard things (rock, brick, ice)
 * containers (box, bag, cup, room, boat, car)
 * (b-, p-, f-) qualities (good, evil, wrong, right, beauty, difference, size, height, warmth, fun)
 * (n-, r-) states (posession, ability, love, life, death)
 * (d-, t-, tr-) transitions (movement, becoming, change, start, finish)
 * (l-, t-) actions (sight, delivery, payment, attack, control)
 * (s-) places (place in, out, around, above, under)
 * colors
 * number (few, many, one, two, three)

Cases
There are 6 cases in Tekapton. Cases are formed by changing the article:

Examples:

Kabal kagor - The boy is in the house

Gor gar gigor gekabal -- This (house) is the boy's house. (lit: The house in here is the house of the boy)

Gor galo lekabal - The boy sees the house (lit.: The house is in the view of the boy)

kabal kabir - a good boy

Inessive
As you can see, English adjectives and present-tense verbs are usually translated into Tekapton using Inessive. Thus you say "in view" to translate "see", "in beauty" to translate "beautiful", and so on.

When there is no object to the action, the pattern Subject-in-State/Transition is used. The Subject in this case is in Ergative, and its article is usually omitted. With the object present, the pattern changes to Object-in-Action-of-Subject. The subject in this case follows the action and is put in Absolutive (Genitive); the object stays in front and is in Ergative.

This pattern agrees with the general way sentences are formed in Absolutive/Ergative languages. At the same time, it looks like something that is a rather natural way of expression of an English speaker. E.g. you say "I am in power" but "this is in my power". Also, when a house is burning, you might say "the house is on fire"; if you are burning the house, it is "the house is on fire (set) by me". You might say "I am in (the process of) viewing" but "this is in my view" and so forth. This way of expression directly corresponds to how Tekapton phrases are constructed.

It might be helpful to look closer at the agreement of words in one of the above examples, e.g. ""gor galo lekabal". Here "galo" ("in view") is agreeing with "gor" ("house") and it is therefore has article "ga-". Similarly "lekabal" ("of the boy") is agreeing with "galo" and therefore its genitive article "le-" starts with the first letter of the main word, "l-". One can illustrate that using color:

 g or g a l o l ekabal

Finally, it is worth mentioning that the order of words can be different in these phrases. The following are good Tekapton phrases as well:

galo lekabal gor

gor ga lekabal lo

ga lekabal lo gor

You can see here how the article is written separately from the main word when dependent words are put in between.

Allative and Ablative
Similarly to Inessive, when Allative and Ablative are used with words that mean states, transitions or actions, they indicate perfective or future tense. For example:

Luton lehaz - Father is going to say something (lit.: Something is into fathers speech.)

Poton ten - I have said everything (Everything is from speech of mine)

Plural
To put a word into plural, one has to add -ma to its article.

For example:

gor gekabal (the boy's house) -- gor gemakabal (the house of boys) -- magor gemakabal (the houses of boys)

Negation
To express negation, the particle "ye" is added. For example,

Kabal ye kagor -- The boy in not in the house

Questions
To form a question, one uses the particle "she", e.g.

Gor gar she gadez? -- Is this your house? (lit. House in here in your posession?)

Consonant-Only Words
There are a number of words in Tekapton that have no vowels in their root. Such words are always written together with their article, and their dependent words can not come before them. Moreover, if a dependent word immediately follows such consonant-only word, and is agreeing with it, then, instead of repeating the consonant twice, both words are fused together. For example

Nade -- I go (lit. "I am in movement") = N + nade

Here N means "I" (root n), which is fused with nade "in movement" (Inessive article na, agreeing with n, + root de).

Nade dur -- I go here (I am in the movement into there)

The word dur is made of the Allative article du (agreeing with de), + the consonant-only root r "here, this place".

Rigor gaden -- this is my house

Gaden means "my" and is a fusion of gad (in-possession, agreeing with gor) + den (of-me, agreeing with d for possession). Rigor can be literally translated as "this is a house" and is the fusion of of r (this), and rigor (is-a-house, agreeing with r for "this").

Below is the list of the most commonly used all-consonant roots:

n -- I, we (plural)

z -- you, you (plural)

k -- he, they (plural)

m -- she, they (plural)

r -- this, this place

st -- place above

sht -- place below

sk -- place outside

shk -- place inside

sp -- place near

s -- that, that place

p -- everything

l -- thing, something

y -- nothing

sh -- what?

tz -- day, time

d -- hand, possession

t -- likeness, sameness

g -- cause

zg -- result

j -- wish, desire

pt -- ability

f -- need

v - help, use

kt -- theme, topic

Here are some more examples:

Yalo len lar -- I see nothing here. (lit. Nothing is in my view in here.).

Shoton tez? -- What did you say? (lit. What is from your speech?").

Lafen feton tuz -- I have to tell you something. (lit. Something is in my need of speech to you).

Ye rapten ptelam -- I can't do it. (lit.: This is not in my ability of doing.)

Dictionary
a - and

ak - air, smell, weather

atz - five

alu - blue color (tzatzialu)

an - white color (tzatzian)

bal - youth; kabal - boy

bay - fun

ben - order

bi - height; bibeyu - small height

bir - good state; birbalo - beauty

bul - sweet taste

byn - cold

'd - hand; posession (ablative: give)

da - truth, right

dag - head

de - movement

dir - size; dirdeyu - small size

don - sound

dinak - left hand side

dikar - right hand side

er - permission

fir - dirt; firfayak - cleanlyness

gez - error, mistake

go - leg, foot

gor - house

gur - animal

jal - money

jag - control, service, slavery

jil - metal

jin - randomness, crazyness

hash - silence

haz - father

hen - bug, insect

hon - brother

ishar - snake, lizard

'k - man, person, someone

ke - part, piece

kis - disappointment; sour taste

kol - child; kikol - son; mikol - daughter

kus - salt

lay - food

lam - work, deed

lap - obstacle

le - life

lep - anything

lesh - hatered

lo - sight, view

'm - woman, girl

maz - mother

mon - sister

'n - I

naz - number; nazneyu - small number

netz - finish, end

nim - oil; tenim - smoothness, slipperiness

oh - but

or - spirit, soul

'p - everything

pash - sadness, boredom (= orapir)

pekva - anger, bitterness

peshva - fish

pir - bad state

po - old age

'pt - ability, power

'r - this, here (place)

rak - container

raz - heat

remash - friction, roughness

's - that, there (place)

sak - material, substance

se - place

'sk - outside

sol - wall (vertical surface)

'sh - what?

shat - way

sham - chance, attempt

shir - collection

'shk - inside

ta - love

tan - dress, cover (ablative: undress)

tar - rest

ton - speech

tza - color, paint

tzir - death

'v - help, use

va - surface, table, floor

ver - origin

vuz - one

ya - nothing

yed - absence

yor - earth, land

yu - particle, speck, crumb

zam - name

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