Kagatoni language
| Kagatoni | |
|---|---|
| kagaṭonye zyna | |
| Pronunciation | [kagatʼoɲe ʑna] |
| Native to | Central Etzavazi Republic (Kagatonah) |
| Ethnicity | Kagatoni people |
Native speakers | ~38 million (4623) |
Crinat
| |
Early form | Old Kagatoni
|
| Verethian script | |
| Official status | |
Official language in |  Central Etzavazi Republic (Kagatonah) |
 Languages of the Central Etzavazi Republic (areas where Kagatoni is the majority in red) | |
Kagatoni (kagaṭonye zyna [kagatʼoɲe ʑna]) is a Ćrinat language spoken in the Central Etzavazi Republic. As the national language of Kagatonah, it is one of three co-official languages of the Central Etzavazi Republic, alongside Talozhi and Mesvadi. Its closest relatives are Bachỹty and Socal.
History
Geographic distribution
Current status
Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | (ŋ) | (ɴ) | ||
| Stop | Plain | p | t | k | q | ||
| Ejective | tʼ | kʼ | qʼ | ||||
| Affricate | Plain | t͡ɕ | |||||
| Ejective | t͡ɕʼ | ||||||
| Fricative | v | s | ɕ ʑ ç ʝ | h | |||
| Approximant | ʋ | l | j | ||||
| Trill | ɾ | ||||||
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Close-mid | [e] | [ə] | [o] |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Open | [æ] | a | [ɑ] |
Kagatoni also has two diphthongs: /ɛi̯/ and /ɔu̯/.
Writing system
Grammar
Typical of Ćrinat languages, Kagatoni is an agglutinative language that relies heavily on affixation. It has a split-ergative morphosyntactic alignment, where nouns can exhibit ergative-absolutive or absolutive-oblique alignment depending on the sentence.
Verbs
Nouns
Kagatoni nouns decline five grammatical cases: absolutive, oblique, genitive, ergative and instrumental. There
| -p, -k | -t | -V (truncating) | -V (non-truncating) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Suffix | Example: imbuk ("dog") |
Suffix | Example: quhlit ("bow") |
Suffix | Example: laṭka ("green (n.)") |
Suffix | Example: ṭo ("swamp") | |
| Absolutive | -∅ | imbuk | -∅ | quhlit' | -∅ | laṭka | -∅ | ṭo |
| Oblique | -e | imbuk-e | -ʲe | quhli-tye | =e | laṭk-e | -ye | ṭo-ye |
| Genitive | -da | imbun-da | -ta | quhlit-ta | -da | laṭka-da | -da | ṭo-da |
| Ergative | -ka | imbuk-ka | -ka | quhlit-ka | -ka | laṭka-ka | -ka | ṭo-ka |
| Instrumental | -qa | imbuh-qa | -qa | quhlit-qa | -q | laṭka-q | -qa | ṭo-qa |
Syntax
Word order
Word order in Kagatoni follows a Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) order. For example, the sentence "I read a book" can be expressed as follows:
Qola
read
nei
1S.ABS
ihe
book-OBL