Kagatoni language

Kagatoni
kagaṭonye zyna
Pronunciation	[kagatʼoɲe ʑna]
Native to	Central Etzavazi Republic (Kagatonah)
Ethnicity	Kagatoni people
Native speakers	~38 million (4623)
Language family	Crinat Central Norcal Kagatoni
Early form	Old Kagatoni
Writing system	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.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes in Kagatoni

		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			r

Vowels

Vowel phonemes in Kagatoni

	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/.

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.

Nouns

Case

Kagatoni nouns decline five grammatical cases: absolutive, oblique, genitive, ergative and instrumental.

Examples

	Final -p, -k		Final -t		Vowel final (truncating)		Vowel final (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

However, some nouns ending in vowels have an "inherent nasal", which reflects a former nasal vowel which was denasalized in all environments except before stops. This nasal is therefore absent from the absolutive case form, but present in all others. Hence, ha "sand" yields hanye, handa, hanka, hanqa instead of *haye, *hada, *haka, *haqa. Also as a consequence, polysyllabic nouns do not elide their final vowel; hence osa "bull" yields oblique osanye and instrumental osanqa instead of *ose and *osaq respectively.

Number

Kagatoni distinguishes between singular and plural number. The plural is marked with the prefix (i)n-.

Examples

	Vowel initial		Voiceless stop initial		Initial m-		Other consonants
	Prefix	Example: osa ("bull")	Prefix	Example: ṭan ("woman")	Prefix	Example: miqna ("month")	Prefix	Example: halga ("metal")
Plural	n-	n-osa	n-	n-ṭan	im-	im-miqna	in-	in-halga

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

Qola nei ihe

read 1S.ABS book-OBL