| Kauf's proto-language | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Agglutinative | ||||||||||||
| Alignment | Ergative | ||||||||||||
| Head direction | Initial | ||||||||||||
| Tonal | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Declensions | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Conjugations | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Genders | 1 | ||||||||||||
| Nouns decline according to... | |||||||||||||
| Case | Number | ||||||||||||
| Definiteness | Gender | ||||||||||||
| Verbs conjugate according to... | |||||||||||||
| Voice | Mood | ||||||||||||
| Person | Number | ||||||||||||
| Tense | Aspect | ||||||||||||
| Meta-information | |||||||||||||
| Progress | 0% | ||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| Creator | [[User:|]] | ||||||||||||
Classification and Dialects
Phonology
Consonants
Marek's phonology for Kaufman
| Bilabial | Labio-dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Velar | Pharyngeal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n nʷ | ŋ | ||||
| Plosive | p b | t d tʷ dʷ | k g kʷ gʷ | ||||
| Fricative | ɸ | f | s sʷ | ʂ ʂʷ | ħ ħʷ | ||
| Affricate | tɬ tɬʷ | tʂ tʂʷ | |||||
| Approximant | ʋ ʋ̥ | ɰ ɰ̥ | ʕ ʕʷ | ||||
| Lateral | l lʷ | ɫ ɫʷ | |||||
| Lateral fric. | ɬ ɬʷ | ||||||
Vowels
| Front | Near-front | Central | Near-back | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ɨ | ɯ u | ||
| e ø | |||||
| Mid | o | ||||
| ɛ | |||||
| Low | ɑ ɒ |
Naturally, there's also a tone system. Every vowel has three tones: high [á], low [à] and neutral [a]. Labialization is triggered by the disappearance of a rounded vowel and by a consonant preceding any tonal rounded vowel (note [ɸ] and [ʋ] are the labialized versions of [f] and [ɰ]- though [ʋ] does occur independently, while [ɸ] does not.
Diphthongs include any vowel followed by any short mid-to-high vowel. The first vowel must be in a different place of articulation than the second.
Phonotactics
Legal onsets consist of C, C [+app/lateral], [+obstruent] [+pharyngeal], [+fricative] [+obstruent] ([+app/lateral]), [+obstruent] [+nasal +heterorganic] and nothing.
Nuclei only consist of vowels. Only one tonal vowel may exist per root.
Legal codas include C [+plosive], [-obstruent] C, and nothing.
Both approximants and fricatives agree in voice with a preceding plosive (note that ʕ serves as a voiced ħ and vice versa.) Outside of this rule, voiced fricatives do not exist- approximants, however, do distinguish voicing in independent positions.
Writing System
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