Kxënt'exo grammar

For assistance with reading IPA, see Help:IPA

Note: since this website can't display the font for the Kxënt'exo alphabet I describe the orthographic forms between curly brackets {} as described in the Kxënt'exo Orthography page.

Kxënt'exo is a head-initial, agglutinative language that uses predominantly prefixes to inflect its words.

Kxënt'exo verbs are marked for tense, aspect and mood, the nouns, adjectives and determiners are marked for grammatical case, and animate nouns mark grammatical number.

The language features noun class (also known as grammatical gender), the two classes are animate and inanimate. Adjectives, articles and determiners have to agree with the class of the noun they're modifying.

The default word order of Kxënt'exo is SVO (Subject - Verb - Object), this word order is the same as the one English employs.

Sentences are influenced by animacy, so despite the word order being SVO a sentence like "the rock falls on me" would not be normal, it would seem very weird in Kxënt'exo because rocks (being inanimate) are not allowed to be the subject of the sentence, so strategies like passive voice and causatives are employed to make sure the animacy of the nouns aligns with the word order.

I'd like to add lots of examples in Kxënt'exo with interlinear glossing and everything, but I need to work on the language a bit more before I do that.

Nouns

Class

The nouns are all divided into two classes (also known as grammatical genders), they are animate and inanimate.

Animate refers to nouns that are seen as active or alive in some way, while inanimate refers to nouns that are seen as passive or static. All nouns are categorized into either of these two groups, and sometimes the animacy of a noun may not seem intuitive, certain living beings like bugs and plants tend to be categorized as inanimate, while some non-living things like thunderstorms and fire are categorized as animate (dangerous things tend to be classified as animate, to learn why see Kxënt'exo evolution).

The class of the noun is not always marked in the base form of the noun itself, that is, while some languages like Spanish might have certain word endings that hint at the class of the word (like -o, -ma, -aje, - for masculine, -a, -ción, -ía for feminine) Kxënt'exo doesn't always have indicators like these, and the class has to be memorized (though it can be guessed in a majority of cases).

Historically Proto-Kxënt'exo used to have 5 classes: animate, dangerous, tools, inanimate and abstract, these used to be marked on the noun with specific suffixes. For more information see Kxënt'exo proto language.

The class markers ended up being eroded away and most of them are no longer pronounced at all, though they are all still visible in the orthograpy of the language.

The surviving suffixes are:

The surviving suffixes that contain a vowel are a pretty storng indication that the word isn't stressed on the last syllable, but instead has penultimate stress, like in the name of the language: Kxënt'exo /k͡xənˈtʼe.χo/.

The silent class suffixes that are still spelled are:

Keep in mind that these suffixes show up in the base form of the words, that is, in the singular. In inanimate nouns these suffixes show up in ever form of the word, for animate nouns they may not show up in dual or plural inflections.

Number

Only animate nouns mark for grammatical number, that is, inanimate nouns have one form regardless of if you're talking about one of a thing or multiple of a thing, while animate nouns have a few different forms depending on the number of things being talked about.

The three grammatical numbers of Kxënt'exo are singular (1 of a thing), dual (2 of a thing), and plural (3 or more of a thing).

For example:

The dual is always formed by taking the singular form and adding the suffix /-(t)ə/ {-dy} at the end, if there's any silent letters at the end of the singular form they get dropped, so "cat" is spelled like {jakex} but "2 cats" is spelled like {jakedy} removing the silent {x}.

The plural is a bit more tricky because it's an older form, you always add the prefix /ɬi-/ {li-}, but then the ending of the word might change in different ways.

If the last syllable of the singular word has a stop, affricate, or nasal as the consonant, and then it has any vowel except /a/ then the last vowel is dropped entirely.

If the consonant is a glide and the vowel isn't /a/ then both the consonant and the vowel are dropped entirely.

When the stress landed on the syllable that gets deleted then the stress moves one syllable back.

However if the consonant in the last syllable is clustering the result is a bit unpredictable, and these rules don't apply to nouns that used to be in the dangerous class in the protolanguage but evolved into animate nouns, those keep the ending of the word the same and they only add the /ɬi-/ {li-} prefix.

Case

Nouns mark for grammatical case, which cases they allow depend on whether the noun is animate or inanimate.

Inanimate

Starting with inanimate nouns, they have only 3 different cases, the nominative, genitive and locative case, I'll explain each using the word "t'eko" (rock) as an example.

The nominative case is used when the noun is the subject of the sentence, i.e. it's performing the action (which is a rare usage in Kxënt'exo, since speakers tend to avoid saying sentences where inanimate nouns perform an action).

• A rock fell onto the floor

The nominative case is also used when the noun is the object of the sentence, i.e. it's experiencing the action (this is the much more common usage of inanimate nouns).

• A bird carried the rock

The genitive case is used for marking that the noun possesses something or to indicate some sort of relationship with another noun, like material, origin, or description.

• The rock's shadow

• The wall made of rock

• The creature from the rock

Note: this phrase is likely to be interpreted as "the creature made of rock" instead, this is because of the meaning of the words used in the example, if the genitive noun was a location or some sort of place where you could imagine a creature emerging from (like a burrow or a cage) then it would be more likely that it would get interpreted as "the creature from the burrow". Whether the genitive is interpreted as indicating material or origin depends on whether the noun is a material or a place, to disambiguate you could paraphrase to indicate the intended meaning.

• The study of rocks

And finally the locative case is used to indicate location, it's the equivalent of English's "in", "on", "at", or "by".

• I am on a rock

• A couple of cats were by that rock

• The creature was in this rock

The Genitive case is always made by adding the prefix /ja-/ {xa-} to the base word.

The locative is made by adding the prefix /ku-/ {gu-} however it can change depending on the circumstance.

If the next vowel is /i/ or it's an /e/ that is positioned after an ejective or uvular fricative then the prefix becomes fronted /kʉ-/ {gui-}, though there are some words that unexpectedly front the prefix even though they may not look like they would because of historical reasons.

And finally if the word starts with a fricative or a nasal the vowel of the prefix gets dropped and it just becomes /k-/ {g-}.

Animate

Animate nouns have 4 different cases, the nominative, objective, genitive and vocative case, I'll explain each using the word wolf as an example.

Note: animate nouns do not have a locative form.

The nominative case is used when the noun is the subject of the sentence, i.e. it's performing the action.

• the wolf ran to the door

The objective case is used when the noun is the object of the sentence, whether it is a direct object or an indirect object, i.e. it's experiencing the action.

• The person tamed the wolf

The genitive case is used for marking that the noun possesses something or to indicate some sort of relationship with another noun, like origin, or description.

• The wolf's collar
• The sound coming from the wolves
• The book about wolves

And finally the vocative case is used to directly address or call someone.

• Wolf! come here!

And of course, animate nouns also have grammatical number, so here is the full declension pattern for one word:

The case marker goes to the left-most position in the word (because plurality evolved first) so the plural of the genitive is /jaɬi-/ {xali-} with the genitive /ja-/ {xa-} before the plural /ɬi-/ {li-}.

The genitive follows the same rules as with the inanimate nouns.

The objective prefix is /mi-/ {mi-} unless the word starts in /j/, in which case it turns into /ni-/ {ni-} and the /j/ gets deleted, and if the word starts with a non-clustering affricate, fricative or stop the prefix becomes a generic nasal /n-/ that assimilates to the same place of articulation as the consonant after it.

The vocative prefix is /kɬu-/ {glu-} and it behaves similarly to the locative one, i.e. if the next vowel is /i/ or it's an /e/ that is positioned after an ejective or uvular fricative then the prefix becomes fronted /kɬʉ-/ {glui-}, though there are some words that unexpectedly front the prefix even though they may not look like they would because of historical reasons.

Younger native speakers use /kɬu-/ {glu-} as the only vocative prefix, basically getting rid of all of the umlaut forms and making it so there aren't any variations on the prefix, this is something that dusty grammarians and prescriptivists decry and point to as a sign that "the youths are ruining language" or whatever.

The reason some speakers do it is because the vocative is already quite a rare form, so it's not likely that you'd hear it very often, and so it's just less relevant for people to remember the nuances of when it's supposed to be fronted and when it's not supposed to be, so for a lot of younger speakers it's simpler to just say /kɬu-/, even in the vocative plural, which has a /-ɬi-/ affix and so it would normally always be /kɬʉ.ɬi-/ for all nouns.

Modifiers

Class

This section hasn't been written yet.

Case

This section hasn't been written yet.

Verbs

Inflections

This section hasn't been written yet.

Syntax

Basic word order

The default word order of Kxënt'exo is SVO (Subject - Verb - Object) which is to say that in a sentence the doer of the action goes first, then the verb, and finally the one receiving the action, as in "The villager harvested the potatoes".

The reason why the subject is at the beginning of the sentence even though it didn't use to be historically is because subjects are almost always animate, and animate nouns are given a greater importance and emphasis, so the word moves to the beginning of the sentence.

Inanimate nouns are generally not allowed to be subjects, it's possible but Kxënt'exo speakers would find it weird, so if you want to say a sentence about an inanimate noun you would generally rephrase it so that the subject is animate, for example you might rephrase "the rock is on the floor" to "I see the rock on the floor" and "the rock fell on her" to "She was hit by a falling rock".

The order of modifiers in relation to the words they modify is almost the same as it was in Proto-Kxënt'exo.

The only difference is that the possessor now goes before the noun, because possessors are usually animate, and so they're given more importance by getting moved further to the front.

Other links

• Back to the main Kxënt'exo page