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 (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 Nominative article, i, is often dropped when it is the first word in the sentence.

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 to it in category. Naturally the starting consonants overlap for some groups, and some groups have several posible 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 5 cases in Tekapton. Cases are formed by changing the article: The Nominative/Essive case acts like Nominative when it is used as the main word of the sentence (not agreeing with any other word). When it is put in agreement with another, it acts as Essive. For example:

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. Objects of an action are put into Genitive, similar to English "destruction of a planet" ("planet" is the object of destruction here). Sometimes, however, the subject and object are reversed, like in "gor galo lekabal". Here a Tekapton speaker appears to use a passive voice, which is actually a very frequently observed way of expression in this language.

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 "(i)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:

i galo lekabal gor

gor ga lekabal lo

i 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:

Haz huton tel - Father is going to say something (lit.: Father is into saying of something.)

Noton telep - I have said everything (I am from saying of thing of all.)

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 hoyse

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

Gor gar sa gadeg? -- Is this your house?

One-Consonant 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") = (I)N + nade

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

Gaden rigor -- this is my house

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

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

n -- I, we (plural)

g -- you, you (plural)

k -- he, they (plural)

m -- she, they (plural)

r -- this, this place

st -- place above

zd -- place below

sk -- place outside

zg -- place inside

sp -- place near

z -- that, that place

p -- everything

l -- thing, something

y -- nothing

s -- what?

tz -- day, time

d -- hand, possession

t -- likeness, sameness

sh -- cause

sht -- result

j -- wish, desire

pt -- ability

f -- need

kt -- theme, topic

Here are some more examples:

Shalo len lar -- I see nothing here.

Goton tes? -- What did you say?

Nafeton tel tug -- I have to tell you something. (lit. I am in need of saying of something to you ).

Ye naptelam ler -- I can't do it. (lit.: I am not in ability of work of this.)

Dictionary
bir - good

bal - youth; newness

birbalo - beauty

gor - house

haz - father

kabal - boy

lo - sight, view

lam - work

ton - speech