Kti

General
The Ktarh language (Kti: "ktehanarā", /ktɛxanaˈra:/) is one of the major languages on Oktarhazǣm. It is the most widely spoken Dnaric language, with several billion speakers. It is made up of several dialect clusters and one standard variety; the dialects are decreasing in usage due to official government policy. In actuality, Kti is defined as any speech form descending from proto-Ktarh; this definition doesn't include mutual intelligibility amongst the dialects, as the dialects from two distant points can differ quite a lot.

The Ktarh language (most often plainly called "Kti", sometimes called "ktehanarā") can be abbreviated to "" in situations requiring the usage of its formal name (as shown in the tooltip).

Dialectically, Kti is divided into the following clusters and dialects:
 * - Dialects of Tanu
 * - Upper Tanarh
 * - Lower Tanarh
 * - Peninsular Tanarh
 * - Acrolectic peninsular (lingua franca)
 * - Basilectic peninsular
 * - Peripheric Ktarh
 * → Insular dialects
 * - Eastern dialects
 * → Coastal eastern
 * - Inland eastern
 * - Southern dialects

The acrolectic peninsular Tanarh dialect is usually taken as the closest form to standard Kti. This article describes the acrolectic peninsular Tanarh variety. All forms should be taken as standard unless specifically noted not to be so.

Vowels
There are six cardinal vowels (A E U I O Æ) each representing one cardinal phonemic value of /a ɛ u i ɔ ɞ/ and each cardinal vowel has two lengths that have minimal pairs and allophonic variants depending on position.

The vowels /a: ɛ: u: i: ɔ: ɞ:/ remain more constant to their value than their short variants.

They are organised as such in the vowel space:

Allophony
Each of the twelve vowels have allphones that are dependant on their position.

Diphthongs
Dipthongs are combinations of two vowels. They don't change according to position. They're counted as a single long vowel in length. When both a diphthong + peripherial vowel and a triphthong are possible, the former gets chosen over the latter.

The first component of the diphthong is always semivocalic.

Tripthongs
Tripthongs are combinations of three vowels. They don't change according to position. They're counted as an overlong vowel or as a dipthong + short vowel in length. Every triphthong has a central element.

Consonants
Kti has 12 cardinal consonants ( Sh, S, Z, Zh, K, T, D, H, M, N, R, ' ). They are distributed unevenly along five points of articulation, labial, alveolar, postalveolar, velar and glottal.

* These are allophonic variations of an underlying phoneme.

Allophony
The allophonic variations of consonants are far smaller than in vowels. The only consonants that have a variable pronounciation are /k/ and /x/.

Allophony of /k/
The realisation of /k/ as [k ~ kj] is an enviromental feature. [k] and [kj] are in complementary distribution before vowels.

/k/ is realised as [k] before /a/, /u/, /ɔ/ and /ɞ/ and consonants, while [kj] is seen only sometimes before /i/ and /ɛ/. In initial positions, [k] is always pronounced as such, and an analysis of [kj] as an allophone can be considered correct as [k] seems to be the underlying element and therefore the priviledged value.

Allophony of /x/
The realisation of /x/ is far more simple, as [h] is a simple allophonic equivalent of [x] as it occurs only in initial positions. Unlike [k] and [kj] which share one grapheme, [x] and [h] are differentiated in the orthography. Sometimes, when [x] is put instead of [h], it can be assumed that the previous word is linked with the current one via compounding, phrasing or some sort of derivation, therefore giving rise to certain minimal pairs that don't chage the meaning of one word but of a phrase; this phenomenon occurs only in very fast speech. The view that [h] is an allophone of /x/ is still held, though.

Dialectical Variation
The primary variations in Ktarh acrolects stem from two things:
 * 1) The different outcomes of the sound change which came around in the acrolect as "l > r > ʂ; ʂ > ʃ"
 * 2) The different outcomes of the sound change which came around in the acrolect as "{ m d } > $$\varnothing$$ / 'ɛ_aC#"

The first sound change might have happened differently, with results such as a contrast of /r ʂ ʃ/, /l r ʂ/, /l r ʃ/ and even a total levelling of /ʃ~ʂ/ - the acrolect preserves a contrast of /r ʃ/, with /r/ stemming from earlier /l/ and /ʃ/ stemming from both an earlier /r/ and /ʂ/.

The second sound change, much more limited in scope but far more influental in verbs than the first, was either applied or not. It has resulted in pairs of words such as "akemash" and "akēsh" (stemming from "akeash", often heard instead of the second word's prescribed pronunciation)

Phonotacics
Phonotactics of Kti is divided into syllable rules and combinatorics.

Syllables
Ktarh syllables have the following general structure:

Vowels in Kti always border a consonant. Vowels of equal weight can share control over a single consonant between them, thus having it belong to two syllables at once.

Syllables sometimes tend to "hoard" consonants taken from previous syllables, thus sometimes reaching three initials. These consonants, while theoretically part of the first syllable, phonetically become part of the second. It should be noted that a post-vocalic glottal stop resets syllable rules, thus always starting a new syllable after it.

The only allowed final cluster in Kti is /rx/ - it only occurs word-finally as it cannot be followed by a consonant. It stems from a syllable with an earlier, deleted vowel.

Stress
Prosodic stress is very syllable-dependant and there are relatively complex rules that are governed by syllable position and structure.

Stress is pretty regular in that it is generally found in the penultimate syllable unless something else happened. If the word is monosyllabilic, the stress is on the sole syllable. A syllable is counted as "light" if it has a short vowel, and "heavy" if it has a long vowel, diphthong or triphthong.

Stress in Kti follows these rules:
 * 1) Primary stress is always on one of the last three syllables.
 * 2) If all three ultimate syllables are either fully heavy or fully light, stress falls on the penultimate.
 * 3) If one of the three ultimate syllables is heavy and the rest light, stress falls on the heavy syllable.
 * 4) If two of the three ultimate syllables is heavy and one is light, stress falls on the first of the heavy syllables.
 * 5) Secondary stress always falls on the syllable that has a gap of one syllable between itself and the stressed syllable.
 * 6) By this, if the primarily stressed syllable is antepenultimate, the secondarily stressed syllable is always the ultimate.
 * 7) Secondary stress cannot fall on on the initial syllable except if it is heavy.
 * 8) Tertiary stressings occur in relation to secondary stress in the same conditions as secondary stress does to primary.
 * 9) Tertiary stress has a gap between itself and secondary stress of one syllable - if the secondarily stressed syllable is ultimate, tertiary stress falls on the syllable two behind primary stress.
 * 10) Tertiary stress, unlike secondary, can fall on the initial syllable regardless of its weight.

Combinatorics
Ktarh phonotactical combinatorics deals with combinations of vowels and consonant clusters. It deals with the conditions that must be met for any combination to be legal.

The rules are listed as such:
 * 1) /z/ cannot be next to any fricative
 * 2) /ʃ/ cannot be next to /z/ or /x/
 * 3) /t/ cannot be preceded by /n/
 * 4) /t/ cannot be followed by any plosive except /ʔ/
 * 5) /d/ cannot be followed by /r/ and /t/
 * 6) /a/ cannot be next to /ɞ/

Some of these rules might be violated by some core root words but otherwise are avoided in discourse. In Kti, all /*sx/ clusters metathesise into /xs/ non-initially, and receive an epenthetic /ɞ/ between the members in initial positions.

Syntax
Kti is a Verb-Object-Subject language, which means that the first major/important word is (usually) the verb, followed by an optional object, then an optional subject. In Kti, adjectives come before nouns and pronouns, adverbs before verbs and p/articles mostly occur prior to the word they relate to, except when stated otherwise.

Kti differs from the norm of verb-object languages by having a few features most often rather found in object-verb languages:
 * Genitives in Kti usually precede that to which they relate, while possessives usually follow.
 * Adjectives in Kti are either prefixed to the noun or used as verbs if relating to something other than a noun.
 * Numerals and determiners usually preceede that to which they relate.
 * Question particles tend to follow the verb phrase (instead of being initial, as per norm).

Since Kti is an extensively case-marked language, it has such a freedom with the ordering of constitutents that it can undergo hyperbaton without consequence.

Kti is, generally speaking, a left-branching language with a sizeable amount of right-branching forms.

Ktarh verb-form adjectives conjugate as verbs but act as adjectives. An example:
 * "hsōrīrton + ī" (to be black + sky) > " ī" (black sky, it-is-black sky)

Pronouns
Pronouns in Kti are, in essence, fossilised nouns, repurposed postpositions and determiners, and semanitcally bleached "waste" words such as conjuncts and expletives - the second person pronouns are as a whole derived from a set of vocative particles.

They decline as inanimate nouns of the corresponding gender. Most pronouns have one suppletive stem for a specific case, either remnants of the old declensions, analogical levellings or more archaic forms.

Hover over each of the suppletive stems to see which is its specific case (you might even notice a pattern and some correspondences)

General Properties
Ktarh nouns are marked for the following categories:
 * Number
 * Case
 * Animacy
 * Gender

Number In Kti, nouns can be marked for three numbers:
 * 1) Singular, glossed <>
 * 2) Dual, glossed <>
 * 3) Plural, glossed <>

The singular marks for one instance of the noun. This usage can also be used for marking collectives, associative groups or clusters of nouns; this isn't unusual usage. Some nouns can only take the singular marking; these nouns are called. These nouns are usually material nouns, religious terms and astronomical nomenclature.

The dual marks for two instances of the noun. Some nouns can only take the dual marking; these are called. These nouns are usually body part nouns and some astronomical nomenclature.

The plural marks for any quantity that exceeds two. Some nouns take only the plural marking; these are called.

These "one-number" nouns behave as normal nouns in that they still have the properties of case, gender and animacy, and still undergo declension. If such a noun needs to be marked for number other than their inherent, the number may be expressed by introducing another word that does agree in number normally and acts as a determiner, usually an adjective or another noun, that agrees in the noun's stead. If the determiner is a noun, the original noun goes into the genitive case while the determiner usually goes after the original noun. If the determiner is an adjective, it is placed like a normal adjective relative to the noun; the noun then agrees in case as it normally would.

Case
Kti is an extremely inflecting language whose nouns can be in any of its 28 cases. Case in Kti usually reflects grammatical and syntactic relations though some verbs and certain other constructions force the usage of a specific case or a specific set of cases even though they would not usually be present in such a position regularly.

The twenty-eight cases are divided into three categories: The first category includes cases with either meanings of location, motion or time. The second category includes cases whose main purpose is to indicate some of the major thematic relations. The third category of miscellaneous cases includes cases whose functions are drop-outs from the two previous labels.
 * 1) Eleven postpositional cases
 * 2) Nine core cases
 * 3) Eight miscellaneous cases

The following table includes the cases along with their general usage:

There also exists a commitative (glossed ) that has fallen out of common usage. It is used to mark for company, although it is being supplanted by the ornative and instrumental.

Case Stacking
...

Types
There are two noun types in Kti: The difference in these two types is in how they behave under declension. Where regular-types just attach a suffix, clipping-type undergo an ablaut in the last vowel in the manner ~~. This ablaut is called "clipping". There are precisely determined enviroments in which this happens, but the nouns are random in their type placement. Full vowels are lengthened ones, half vowels are short and null represents the lack of the vowel.
 * 1) Regular-type nouns
 * 2) Clipping-type nouns

Declension
Case in Kti is conflated with number; that is, a single Ktarh suffix marks for both the number of a noun and its case. Due to its ancestor's moderately agglutinating nature, many of the suffixes among the declensions share vague resemblance.

Ktarh nouns are declined according to three declensions:
 * 1) Mid-central vowel declension
 * 2) Vocalic declension
 * 3) Consonant declension
 * 4) Bare consonantal
 * 5) Augmented consonantal

The mid-central vowel declension includes nouns that end in any of /ɛ ɛ: a a: ɞ ɞ: ɔ ɔ: ɒy iɞ/ optionally additionally followed by /ʔ/. The vocalic declension includes nouns that end in a vowel optionally followed by /ʔ/; they usually do not include mid-central declension nouns although mid-central declension nouns can decline according to the vocalic pattern. Both these declensions lack a nominative suffix. The consonantal declension contains nouns that end in a consonant. They're divided into bare and augmented nouns, depending on whether they have a suffix in the nominative singular (augmented) or not (bare). No augmented noun undergoes clipping. All vocalic declension nouns can also be declined as bare consonantal nouns if they end in /ʔ/.

While the vowel declensions lack a dedicated nominative suffix, the vowel itself is often taken to be a nominative suffix and is often removed in declensions. This reanalysis is nearly ubiquitous in speech and moderately frequent in writing.

There is a general tendency for first-declension nouns to be feminine and third-declension nouns to be masculine, while second-declension nouns generally have nouns of both genders more or less evenly spread out. While the tendencies are not steadfast for native words which can appear in various gender-declension combinations, they're followed quite closely when loaning words from non-Dnaric sources.

As a general rule, triple consonants simplify to double and double short vowels merge into a single long. A hiatus of one short and one long vowel is generally resolved in two ways: first, if they have different qualities the long vowel supplants the short one; second, if they have the same quality they merge into a single phonetically overlong vowel (written as, for example,  for [a::]). Phonotactically strained, convoluted or invalid combinations are broken up usually with either an echo or a dissonant vowel.

First declension nouns decline using these affixes:

An additional feature of the first declension is lengthening of the last stem vowel in regular-type nouns in some case-number combinations. The lengthening progression is "short > long > overlong". It is optional, rarest in the prolative and most common in the partitive. This lengthening can be summarised as such: The possessive case has a reverse effect in all three numbers: it shortens the last vowel. When the vowel is already short, nothing is done unto it.

Adjectives
Kti has two types of adjectives: the independent and dependent adjectives. The primary difference between these types of adjectives is that the independent adjectives are nouns in function and shape and can stand without an element to modify, while dependent adjectives are exclusively modifiers that require a modified element.

Independent Adjectives
Ktarh independent adjectives are recognisable by their nominative <-arh> ending. Most independent adjectives found in Ktarh are nationalities, language names, ethnicities and such forms. Groups of people can be denoted by their independent adjective if the group as a whole was meant, or if the group the people belong to is one of their defining characteristics.

Independent adjectives decline as inanimate masculines. They are semantically closer to nouns than dependent adjectives and can be used as nouns. Many independent adjectives are derived irregularly from their stems.

Dependent Adjectives
Ktarh dependent adjectives come in three flavours:
 * descriptive gerundive
 * relative gerundive
 * qualitative adjective

Verbs
Verbs are words that describe action, the one who completes the action, time of completion and such.

The verbs are divided into auxiliary and main verbs. Acting auxiliary verbs are used to provide further morphological or semantic info about the main verbs. Main verbs represent the main action and make up the main body count of verbs.

Verbs in Kti are conjugated according to:
 * 1) Object gender
 * 2) Tense
 * 3) Number
 * 4) Person
 * 5) Voice
 * 6) Mood
 * 7) Aspect

Object Agreement
Ktarh verbs have a set of prefixes that agree the verbs to their direct objects only. This feature, called object agreement, gives Kti the status of a borderline polysynthetic language. The prefixes are:

Verbs in Kti agree to their object's gender and animacy - certain combinations lack a form.

These prefixes are optional only in cases when the object is present or previously introduced. If the object has been ommited, the prefixes are obligatory.

Tense
Tenses represent the temporal value of the referenced actions. Tenses branch into simple and more complex. Simple tenses are the basic tenses, self-sufficient and needn't have acting auxiliary verbs. Complex tenses use simple tenses of acting auxiliary and main verbs to be formed, and usually represent actions with certain parts in more than one time.

Among others, the most common tenses are simple present, past, and future tenses in Kti, each expressing their corresponding period, and there are tenses with multiple possible times (future/present for example) which, for example, describe an action which has started in the past and has finished at the time of utterance.

Basic Tenses
Basic tenses are formed by simple affixation to the verb. They are:
 * 1) Present simple
 * 2) Past simple
 * 3) Past aorist

Present Simple
A verb in the simple present (glossed "") describes an action which is happening or has begun now, at the time of utterance. Its perfective and imperfective aspectual forms provide marking for completion. The following table depicts the present simple of the copula (kin):

Because 'kin' is irregular, the table doesn't apply to other verbs, but only to 'kin'. The rules governing Present Simple are different. Let's take the verb 'to love' (kuhiton) for example:

As 'kuhiton' is a regular verb, its suffixes are by extension also regular - it shares its suffixes with other regular verbs. The suffixes for Present Simple are:

Past Simple
The simple past (glossed "") denotes the action happening prior to the present. The action in question may possibly have been completed but its goal wasn't accomplished thus being primarily atelic. The perfective and imperfective mark for the completion of the action. The verb 'kin' in the simple past:

The suffixes for the simple past are:

The verb "s'mnaraiton" (to speak a language) conjugated for all forms:

Past Aorist
The past aorist (glossed "") marks the action beginning in the past and having an unknown duration. It isn't marked for telicity - we don't know whether the goal was accomplished or not. The perfective and imperfective show whether the action can or will be completed or not.

And here is an examle of the verb "irineton" (to be infected with ...) conjugated for the past aorist:

And here are the endings:

If the suffix begins in a long vowel and is attached to a word with a short final vowel, the final vowel is replaced by the suffix's long vowel; if the suffix begins in a short vowel and the word ends with an incompatible short vowel, the suffix's vowel either transforms into the word's final vowel or an excrescent /x/ is added between the two. If the word ends with a long final vowel and the suffix begins in a vowel, an excrescent /x/ is added between the two.

Complex Tenses
Complex tenses are formed via the basic verb forms. These tenses use acting auxiliary verbs in combination with the main verb.

The complex tenses are the Pluperfect, the Future, the Present Periodic, the Past Periodic, the Future Periodic and the Past Inceptive.

Pluperfect
The pluperfect (glossed "") marks the action as happening prior to or at the same time as another action to which it is relative. Standing alone, it indicates a remote past, or rather, has a historic meaning. It is constructed in two ways: it has a compound and an analytic form. Both forms in their basis have the semantically bleached verb "daraton" in the past simple (with a minor variation) and the main verb either in the aorist or present simple (varies from verb to verb) for the analytic form, or its stem in the compound form.

This is the verb "kin" in both forms:

The basic formula is:
 * 1) "daraton" + VERB (/)
 * 2) STEM + "daraton"

Future
The future (glossed "") marks the action as taking place in the future (as in not having happened yet or isn't happening at the moment). It is formed with the optative copula "dūston" in the present together with the present of the verb. It only has an analytic form. The verb "kin" in the future:

An interesting observation on the future of verbs is that the auxiliary part rhymes with its content part (conjugated verb) as they have the same endings. The verb "kuhiton" in the future:

Past Periodic
The past periodic (glossed "") marks the action as happening in increments in the past, but looked at as a whole. The division may be temporal in nature, but also might be structural. It has two forms: an analytic and a synthetic form. The analytic form is formed by conjugating "hdæton" in the past aorist and the main verb in the present, while the synthetic form requires the main verb to be conjugated in the past aorist and  to be prefixed onto it.

The verb "damǣton" (to connect oneself to/with sth.) in both forms of the past periodic:

Present Periodic
The present periodic (glossed "") marks the action as happening in increments at the time of speaking, but looked at as a whole. The division may be temporal in nature, but also might be structural. It has two forms: an analytic and a compound form. The analytic form is formed by conjugating "hmōton" in the compound pluperfect and the main verb in the present, while the compound form requires the main verb to be conjugated in the present and  to be prefixed onto it.

The verb "rūrkaton" in both forms:

Future Periodic
The future periodic (glossed ) marks the action happening in increments of time, usually beginning after the time of speaking. The division may be temporal in nature, but also might be structural. It only has one form, the compound form, made by conjugating the verb in the present and prefixing  onto it.

The verb "suraton" (to choose by vote, to elect) in the future periodic:

Past Inceptive
The past inceptive (glossed ) marks the action to have begun in the past but is still ongoing at the time of speaking. It is formed by suffixing <-(h)ū> to the past aorist. Perfective verbs can't be marked for the past inceptive.

The verb "skakaton" (to wander, to walk without aim) in the past inceptive:

Extra
The extras of Kti's verb system fit in here if they don't fit in other categories

Formality
Kti doesn't have a formality system present in any of its morphological paradigms, but features some remnants of an older system remain in the syntax and lexicon; it's generally considered polite to put the verb in initial position (the normal unmarked form in the language, although it is to a large degree nonconfigurational) and to put the verb before its complements (to further emphasise the verb-initiality).

Compounding and Derivation
Kti, being a language artificially kept in place, almost never tolerates new word formation, therefore to transmit information not formally possible with pre-existing words, word synthesis and derivation are heavily relied upon. Derivation is used to form new words from old ones.

The methods are divided into five categories, complexity ascending: Simple Compounding, Complex Compounding, Simple Derivation, Advanced Derivation and Inversion.

Simple Compounding
The method of simple compounding deals with one nominal word or a verb fused with non-nominal or non-verbial word. Sometimes, due to the nature of syllable structure, additional processes operate.

The process of simple compounding deals primarily with choice of the two words. To understand the choice, one must understand the types of words:

The only words not meant for simple compounding are conjuctions. All other words are eligible for every form of derivation. The only limiting factor in simple compounding is the limited choice of words. If the second word's initial syllable contains two consonants that aren't in a cluster, and the first word ends in one consonant, the second word sheds the first consonant. If both words at the compounding border have only one consonant, the last consonant of the first word dissapears.

Simple compounds can only form with words of differing classes - nominals cannot compound with other nominals by way of simple compounding, but by way of complex (same applies to verbals and particles).

Simple compounds are always head-initial and are made up of only two elements. A specific subtype of simple compound is the noun incorporate.

Noun Incorporation
Kti employs a simple system of noun-incorporation, incorporating nouns which relate to objects into verbs to narrow the verb's scope down and make the object use a more general term, or sometimes, in cases of simple objects, directly incorporating the object.

Noun incorporation in Kti is strictly Verb-Noun and head-left, so that incorporatives such as "pick-pocket", "draw-knife", "chop-tree" are well-formed and behave as normal verbs. Noun incorporation in Kti decreases syntactical valency by one per incorporation, so that bitransitive verbs become monotransitive, monotransitive become intransitive.

There are certain cases where certain simple intransitive sentences can go through incorporation to become impersonal, although such demotions occur only in cases of inanimate subjects.

A good example of noun incorporation is this:

"Nukartei sarum" > "Nukartei"

Both sentences translate to "I drink water", but the first has a seperate object, unlike the second one, which incorporated said object. Both of these sentences are valid.

There are certain irregular incorporated nouns which correspond to outside nouns; also, there are certain cases where noun incorporation doesn't lower valency (tree-cut, when relating to a specific kind of tree).

When noun incorporation results in semantic expansion, no valency decreases occur. A good example:

"Nukartei kæmasarum" > "Nukartei kæmum"

The first sentence means "I drink sugar-water", while the other means "I water-drink sugar"; in this case, "water-drinking" sugar comes to mean "to drink sugar with water". Likewise, " to bread-eat butter" would mean "to eat butter with bread" in English.

Incorporated nouns are always in the nominative, and are inserted after the verb root. If the incorporated nouns formerly forced the verb to take up a gender-animacy marking, the marking is dropped (only happens when there's nothing else to take up the marking).

Incorporates ignore the dropping of consonants.

Complex Compounding
Complex compounding is a process different from simple compounding in that it is used to create words out of components that otherwise belong in the same word class.

Subpages

 * →  Ktarh Naming System
 * →  Ktarh Literature
 * →  Ktarh Dictionary