Kxënt'exo Proto-Language

For assistance with reading IPA, see Help:IPA

In order to create the Kxënt'exo language the diachronic method of conlanging was used, which means that first an ancestral form of the language was created (known as a proto-language) and then a process of linguistic evolution was simulated to turn the proto-language into the final product.

The reason the diachronic method is used is because it allows the conlang to have some of the features that are expected to be present in natural languages, such as irregular conjugations, historical spelling, all sorts of complex rules and even different dialects or sister languages. By using this method the conlang will have an appearance that more closely resembles the languages we see naturally developing in the real world.

This page contains information on the way Proto-Kxënt'exo worked. Proto-Kxënt'exo was the language that was spoken at an even more ancestral point in time than Classical Kxënt'exo, which is already an ancient dead language in the fictional setting.

Note that all words that come from a proto-language are written with an asterisk at the beginning, like so: *rimuʃi (dog).

Phonology

Phonetic inventory

Proto-Kxënt'exo has 6 monophthongs:

And 20 consonant phonemes:

Allophony

These phonemes are treated as having no allophonic variation, because the simulated evolution introduces all of them and creates all of the complexity in the language.

Spelling

To see how these sounds were spelled with the Standard Galactic Alphabet see the Historical readings section in Kxënt'exo Orthography.

Phonotactics

The phonotactic rules of Proto-Kxënt'exo are fairly simple, which is to say that the ways you are allowed to put sounds together are fairly limited.

Syllables can only take the shape CV (Consonant-Vowel) which means that:

• Every syllable must start with a consonant, never a vowel.
• No syllable can end in a consonant.
• There can't be any consonant clusters, each pair of consonants has to have at least one vowel between them.

So all Proto-Kxënt'exo words are put together in that way, you will never see any syllable shapes other than CV in the language, so in order to create a valid Proto-Kxënt'exo word, root, or affix you have to keep that rule in mind.

Stress

The stress always falls in the penultimate syllable of the word, that is to say, the second to last syllable is pronounced with more emphasis than the surrounding syllables.

This never changes, so if a word gets a suffix attached to the end of it, the suffix will move the stress in the word, for example:

This means that stress is always perfectly predictable in Proto-Kxënt'exo and it never carries lexical information; there aren't any pairs of words that change only based on their stress pattern.

Transcription

The sounds and words of Proto-Kxënt'exo are usually typed simply using their IPA letters in order to maintain clarity, so a word like /tˤi.ko.seˈka.wə/ would typically be written as *tˤikosekawə, however, for the sake of convenience it's possible to use a romanization system to transcribe the words.

This is useful for people who have a harder time typing the special IPA characters, and as long as the context shows that we're talking about Proto-Kxënt'exo it's clear which exact sound is intended.

The romanization of Proto-Kxënt'exo is fairly similar to that of Classical Kxënt'exo, so a lot of the words will look somewhat similar to their evolved forms.

In this system the word /tˤi.ko.seˈka.wə/ would transcribed as *t'ikosekawë, and the word /ʃəˈka.βu/ would be transcribed as *shëkavu

If you have difficulties typing the diaeresis diacritic for the e vowel (ë) you can use any other diacritic (è, ĕ) or type it as "eh".

Morphology

Class

Proto-Kxënt'exo had 5 noun classes (also known as grammatical genders): animate, dangerous, tools, inanimate and abstract.

The names of each class is fairly transparent, but here's a brief explanation for each one:

• Animate: Living beings, like people, wolves, cats, and fish, this doesn't include very small creatures like bugs or things that don't move a lot, like plants and fungi.

• Dangerous: Things that can cause harm, like fire, lightning, hostile creatures, even rotten food.

• Tools: Things that are man-made, usually serving some sort of purpose, like paper, books, doors, clothing, armor and buildings.

• Inanimate: Things that are seen as inanimate objects that aren't man-made, like pebbles, water, materials, shells, small creatures like bugs, plants and fungi.

• Abstract: Concepts, ideas, things you can't touch or see, like love, fear, thirst, systems and laws. In the cases when you use an infinitive verb as a noun it gets abstract agreement from other words.

Adjectives and determiners agree with the class of the noun they modify.

Nouns and adjectives are composed of a root plus a class suffix. The root basically conveys some sort of vague, general meaning, for example there's a root meaning something like "seeing, vision, visual" and then the more specific meaning is provided by the class suffix that is used.

Here are the class suffixes for nouns:

Here are the class suffixes for adjectives:

It is possible to make multiple related words by taking the same root and only switching out the class suffix, for example:

Note that in Minecraft paper is made out of sugar cane, hence why the same root is used in different classes to mean "sugar cane" or "paper".

There are no strict rules for which suffix to use in the cases where multiple are possible, presumably this is something that happened in an even more ancient stage in the language and has since been lost to time, so feel free to pick whichever form seems more appealing to you when coining or deriving new vocabulary.

Compounding

When compounding two words together you only use their roots and then you add the appropriate class suffix at the end of the word.

For example to compound the word *xətˤiwə (plant, herb, grass) and the word *ɬeɬu (dry) you take only their root, so you add *xətˤi + *ɬe, which results in *xətˤiɬe, in this case the word means dried plant or dead plant, which is an inanimate noun, so an inanimate suffix is added, meaning that the final compound is *xətˤiɬewa.

Derivation

Typically if a word refers to a noun in a certain class the prototypical suffix will be used, for example *xurənu means hut, and it has the *-nu suffix to indicate that it's man-made, however not every noun will have one of the prototypical endings, for example the word *xurətˤi means temple, it doesn't follow any of the default class suffixes and yet it's inanimate.

The reason for this is that there are certain derivational suffixes that take the place of the original class suffix and sometimes these suffixes turn the word into a different class, so the suffix *-tˤi creates inanimate nouns with an added meaning of "great" or "grand", so if you take the root of "hut" *xurə and you add the *-tˤi suffix instead of the typical tool one you end up with *xurətˤi, literally "great hut".

Not all derivational suffixes take the place of the class suffix in the word, some do and others don't.

When choosing a derivational suffix you can think about whether the vague meaning of the root is enough to convey what you're trying to say or if you need a more specific meaning.

If the vague meaning of the root is close enough you can use a suffix that replaces the class mark with no problems, if the new word really wouldn't make any sense at all unless it's derived from a specific word and not the general root then a suffix that doesn't replace the class mark could be used instead.

Keep in mind that it's ok for the final word to be a bit vague, for example the word for book literally means "a group of paper" but because the class suffix got replaced it could just as easily mean "a group of sugar cane", people used the word to refer to books specifically and it was clear enough so no one had a problem with that, in this case the vagueness of the word wasn't an issue.

This could even lead to some fun situations where words for wildly different concepts are identical because they got derived from the same root, so if there was a word for "bundle of sugarcane" in Proto-Kxënt'exo it would be the same as the word for book, with only context being used to disambiguate.

Examples:

I'm still in the process of adding new derivational affixes to the language.

If you need to create any new derivational affixes feel free.

Cases and number

Proto-Kxënt'exo didn't mark grammatical case or grammatical number on any words, those evolved later.

To learn where they come from see Kxënt'exo evolution.

Verbs

Proto-Kxënt'exo verbs had 6 forms:

Syntax

Basic word order

Sentences are structured in a strict VSO order (Verb - Subject - Object) so in a sentence the verb comes first, then the doer of the action and then the receiver of the action, as in "Harvested the villager the potatoes"

The following table displays the order in which words are placed in relation to their modifiers.

When making new affixes it's important to keep in mind which word they originate from (unless the affix is meant to be so ancient that its etymology has been lost to time). If an affix evolved from an adjective then it should be a suffix, because adjectives go after nouns in Proto-Kxënt'exo, not before.

Evolution

To see how Proto-Kxënt'exo evolved into Classical Kxënt'exo see Kxënt'exo evolution.

Other links

• Back to the main Kxënt'exo page