Kjaxono language

Kjaxono is a language belonging to the [placeholder?] language family, primarily spoken in [South Bellic Zone] and in small communities across Brausia.

Phonology

See main article: Kjaxono phonology

Consonants

Kjaxono's consonant inventory of 41 phonemes is typical of other [...] languages, featuring a palatalized distinction in most of it's consonants, and rich employment of uvular sounds.

Consonant phonemes of Kjaxono

		Bilabial		Alveolar		Velar		Uvular	Glottal
		Plain	Palatalized	Plain	Palatalized	Plain	Palatalized
Nasal		m	mʲ	n	nʲ	ŋ	ŋʲ	ɴ
Plosive	Unvoiced	p	pʲ	t	tʲ	k	kʲ	q	ʔ
	Voiced	b		d		g	gʲ	ɢ
Affricate	Unvoiced			t͡s	t͡sʲ	k͡x	k͡xʲ	q͡χ
	Voiced	b͡β		d͡z	d͡zʲ
Fricative	Unvoiced			s	sʲ	x	xʲ	χ	h
	Voiced	β		z	zʲ			ʁ
Liquid				l	ʎ			ʀ

Notes

• The status of /ʀ/ is extremely variant among Kjaxono speakers. It can be alveolar, post-velar, or even dental. In some speakers, it has merged with the voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/.
  • Most speakers pronounce /ʀ/ as /ʀ̥/ word-finally. This is not a universal phenomenon; [.efawifaewjiegjiwg]
• Fairly irregularly, some speakers pronounce /ʎ/ as a post-palatal lateral approximant /ʎ̞/. This occurs most commonly when in the same syllable as a uvular sound.
• /β/ and /ʁ/ are occasionally devoiced at the start of words.
• /s/ and /sʲ/ are pronounced word finally as dento-alveolars, /s̟/ and /s̟ʲ/, or even as dentals /s̪/ /s̪ʲ/.
• /x/ is usually pronounced as /ɣ/ when between front vowels (i.e /i(:)/, /æ/, and /e:/).

Vowels

	Front		Back
	Short	Long	Short	Long
Close	i	i:	u	u:
Open	æ	e:	o	o:

Grammar

See main article: Kjaxono grammar

Kjaxono is a decisively agglutinative language, with plentiful fusional and polysynthetic characteristics. Kjaxono, along with other languages of the [...] language family comprise the only example of languages with a morphosyntactic alignment of transitive-intransitive - with the agent of an intransitive verb being inflected for an intransitive case. This feature is one of the most notorious features of Kjaxono. Otherwise, Kjaxono nouns rather simply decline for only 2 cases - transitive and intransitive, as previously stated. In addition, while not explicitely inflected, Kjaxono nouns also have 2 numbers - singular and plural. Kjaxono has three grammatical genders, of which are called types by Kjaxono linguists. These genders are usually referred to as Kjai, Umare, and Inanimate. Kjaxono has six articles, accounting for definiteness/indefiniteness, and Kjaxono's three genders. These articles are suffixed onto the end of the nouns they modify.

Verbs are by far the most inflecting part of speech in Kjaxono. In some cases, they can represent entire sentences by themselves - see §6 Verbal System.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns in Kjaxono

	Singular					Plural
	First-person	Second-person	Third-person			First-person	Second-person	Third-person
			Kjai	Umare	Inanimate			Kjai	Umare	Rubin
Transitive	ce	ǐŋce	kjace	hamce	żoxe	cet	ǐŋcet	kjacet	hamcet	żoxet
Intransitive	ceb	ǐŋbe	kjabǒ	hamǒcb	żǒxbe	ceżt	ǐŋbet	kjabǒt	hamǒżt	żǒxbet

Nouns

As stated previously, Kjaxono nouns inflect for two cases, and 2 numbers. The transitive case is unmarked, and marks the subject of a transitive verb. The intransitive case is marked by the suffix -(ie)b. The intransitive case marks the subject of an intransitive verb. The intransitive cases sometimes takes slightly different marking based on the final phonemes of the noun it is attached to. Generally, if the noun ends with 2 or less consonants, only -b is attached; otherwise, -ieb is attached. Grammatical number is marked via the addition of a numeral one or two after the noun, for the singular and plural numbers respectively. In addition, if an article is attached onto a noun, the noun changes slightly to agree with the article's gender.

Case

Aside from Kjaxono's morphosyntactical alignment, case in Kjaxono is fairly straightforward. As previously stated, Kjaxono nouns inflect for two cases - the transitive and intransitive. The transitive case is unmarked and the intransitive case is marked by the suffix -(ie)b. This case's form is somewhat irregular - pronouns in the intransitive case are transparently different from their normal forms. In addition, they take slightly different forms when being applied to proper names, and inanimate nouns.

The rules for applying the intransitive case for nouns are fairly straightforward.

Intransitive case

	Romanization	IPA	Example	Meaning
Nouns ending with a single consonant, or vowel	-b	/b/	miagqub	cat
Nouns ending with two or more consonants	-ieb	/ie:b/	bhqǔngqieb	village
Proper names ending with a single consonant, or vowel	-bh	/b͡β/
Proper names ending with two or more consonants	-abh	/æb͡β
Inanimate nouns ending with a single consonant, or vowel	-ab	/æb/	qa'roab	building
Inanimate nouns ending with two or more consonants	-abh	/æb͡β	aicŋabh	tree bark

Some speakers of Kjaxono have merged the rules for proper names and inanimate nouns with those from ordinary nouns. This is more common in [insert dialect here], but can be found across [South bellic zone].

Verbal system

See main article: Kjaxono verbs

Verbs are the most complex part of speech in Kjaxono. It is by far the most difficult aspect of Kjaxono for new speakers of the language to learn, due its system-wide irregularity and general difficulty. Oftentimes, conjugation can encode all of the information needed to parse a sentence. The verbal system of Kjaxono consists of 5 different conjugations, which are called systems by most linguists. Kjaxono verbs conjugate for 4 tenses - past, hodiernal, present, and future - 7 aspects - perfective, momentane, prospective, imperfective, progressive, stative, and gnomic - 4 moods - indicative, conditional, potential, and hypothetical - 3 types of evidence - direct, reportative, and assumptive - and 3 voices - active, middle, and passive. A feature not present in any other language aside from other languages within the [...] language family is the optional marking of definiteness and or indefiniteness, in regards to person marking. Hard to precisely define, they can mark for extremely specific scenarios with little equivelant in any other language. All together, Kjaxono verbs have by far the most inflection and nuance of any part of speech in Kjaxono.

Due to the complexity of the subject, Kjaxono's verbal system entails its own seperate article.

Syntax