Kosi

Welcome to the Kosi reference grammar and lexicon. It is being constantly revised.

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1. Phonology

• 1.1. Phonemic Inventory
• Kosi's phonemic inventory consists of fifteen consonants and seven vowels, making a total of twenty two phonemes, described below.

• 1.1.1. Consonants
• Kosi has fifteen consonants:

Grapheme	Description
P p	voiceless bilabial stop
B b	voiced bilabial stop
M m	voiced bilabial nasal
V v	voiced bilabial fricative (in some dialects, a voiced labiodental fricative)
Ð ð	voiced interdental fricative (in some dialects, it has merged with d)
T t	voiceless dental stop
D d	voiced dental stop
N n	voiced dental nasal
S s	voiceless dental fricative (voiced intervocalically, unless written geminate; a voiceless postalveolar fricative before i)
C c	voiceless lamino-alveolar affricate (a voiceless lamino-postalveolar affricate when it precedes i)
L l	voiced alveolar lateral
R r	voiced alveolar trill
J j	voiced palatal glide
K k	voiceless velar stop (a voiceless velar fricative intervocalically)
H h	voiceless glottal fricative

• 1.1.2. Vowels
• Kosi has seven vowels:

Grapheme	Description
I i	close front unrounded monophthong
Ü ü	close front rounded monophthong
E e	open-mid front unrounded monophthong
Ö ö	open-mid front rounded monophthong
U u	close back rounded monophthong
O o	close-mid back rounded monophthong
A a	open back unrounded monophthong

Note that vowels in Kosi are backed or fronted in certain environments for certain grammatical purposes; when the vowels i and e are backed, they become Ï/ï and Ë/ë (the unrounded counterparts of u and o respectively), but these vowels are never found in lexical roots.

• 1.1.3. Diphthongs
• Kosi has four diphthongs:

Grapheme	Description
JA ja	palatalized open back unrounded monophthong
JO jo	palatalized close-mid back rounded monophthong
AE ae	open back-close front unrounded diphthong
AU au	open back-close back rounded diphthong

All other vowel combinations are pronounced disyllabically, e.g. heis 'incorrect' = he.is, except geminate vowels, which are pronounced geminate, e.g. dunja 'world (nominative)' + -a = dunjaa 'person (accusative)'.

• 1.2. Stress
• Primary stress falls on the first syllable of a word, secondary stress on the third syllable, and tertiary stress on the fifth syllable.

• 1.3. Syllable Structure
• Kosi's syllable formula is (C)V(C). Most clusters of two consonants are allowed, except consonant+liquid clusters like [bl] and [tr].

• 1.4. Svarabhakti Vowel
• If the addition of an affix to a root or another affix would cause an awkward consonant cluster or if a foreign name contains a difficult consonant cluster, a svarabhakti (epenthetic) vowel i is added in speech only (the name remains the same as in the source language in writing), e.g. Blake is pronounced as if spelled Bileik, Tristan as if spelled Tiristn.

2. Morphology

2.1. Nominal and Adjectival Morphology

• 2.1.1. Argument Roles
• There are three argument roles: agent (subject), patient (direct object), and focus (indirect object). Their corresponding cases:

Case	Suffix	Example
Nominative	-0 (i.e., a null morpheme)	has
Accusative	-a	hassa
Dative	-e	hasse

In equational sentences, both arguments are in the nominative (and thus any modifiers): ih anak 'I am a child'.

• 2.1.2. Oblique Cases
• There are thirty five oblique cases:

Preposition(s) or Phrase(s)	Affix	Example
above, over	-ab	hassab
after, behind	-ive	hassive, ötive
alongside, beside, next to	-ari	hassari
around, surrounding	-ja	hasja, ötja
as, like, similar to	-ken	hasken
before, in front of, prior to	-öm	hassöm, ötöm
between, among	-ki	haski-uliski, ötki-sabki
by means of, via	-i	hassi
compared to, than, pertaining to	-ra	hasra
composed of	-öl	hassöl
down to	-era	hassera
during, in the middle of	-oc	hassoc, ötoc
far from	-aci	hassaci
for, in order to benefit	-aed	hassaed
from, out of, away from, derived from	-il	hassil
in, inside, at	-ahe	hasahe, ötahe
into, towards	-tah	hastah
in exchange for, instead of	-inde	hassinde
left of the listener	-oli	hassoli
left of the speaker	-eli	hasseli
near to	-jah	hasjah
of, associated with	-ü	hassü
on (top of)	-on	hasson
onto	-tan	hastan
outside of	-ahi	hassahi
part of, some, any	-o	hasso
per, for every	-alah	hassalah
right of the listener	-oðe	hassoðe
right of the speaker	-ene	hassene
through, across, beyond, past	-eð	hasseð, öteð
under, below, beneath	-jal	hasjal
until, as far as	-jok	hasjok, ötjok
up towards	-üla	hassüla
with, accompanying	-um	hassum
without, lacking	-ak	hassak

• 2.1.3. Possession
• Kosi has seven possible possessors:

Possessor	Meaning	Ending	Example
First person singular	'my'	-im	hassim
Second person singular	'your'	-at	hassat
Third person singular	'his/her/its'	-u	hassu
First person plural exclusive	'our (but excluding you)'	-öd	hassöd
First person plural inclusive	'our (and including you)'	-ic	hassic
Second person plural	'you guys' '	-üt	hassüt
Third person plural	'their'	-ed	hassed

These endings may be nominalized by standing alone: anakat imü 'that child is mine'. When this is the case, they can take case endings; their accusative and dative forms are irregular, ending in -l and -n respectively (rather than the expected -a and -e). Kosi also has no genetive; instead, the nouns are joined together and the property is put into the third-person possessive declension: man hassu 'a man's house', man hessu 'a man's houses', men hassu 'the men's house', men hessu 'the men's houses'. Kosi has no verb meaning 'to have', either; instead, Kosi uses periphrasis: hassim neb 'I have a house/my house exists'.

• 2.1.4. Plural
• The first vowel of the root is backed if front (i, ü, e, ö) or fronted if back (o, u, a):

Ablaut change	Example
i > ï	sim 'eye(ball)' > sïm
ü > u	tüs 'fire' > tus
e > ë	me 'ocean/sea' > më
ö > o	köpek 'dog' > kopek
o > ö	hojo 'river' > höjo
u > ü	buk 'book' > bük
a > e	ha 'tree' > he

• 2.1.5. Demonstratives
• Kosi has three basic demonstrative-adjectival suffixes that can be attached to nouns:

Demonstrative	Suffix	Example
'this'	-ut	hassut
'that'	-at	hassat
'yon'	-öt	hassöt

These endings may be nominalized by standing alone: amihe atl 'I don't like that'. When this is the case, they can take case endings; their accusative and dative forms are irregular, ending in -l and -n respectively (rather than the expected -a and -e).

• 2.1.6. Concordance Rules
• Adjectives must agree in case and number with the nouns they modify.

Declension of adjectives and nouns is identical. Nouns used with quantifiers require the partitive case: öt 'five' + has 'house' = öt hasso 'five houses'.

• 2.1.7. Comparison
• Kosi has five degrees of comparison:

Type	Meaning	Prefix	Example
Comparative of inferiority	'less'	ja-	janae
Comparative of superiority	'more'	si-	sinae
Superlative of inferiority	'least'	hae-	hanae
Superlative of superiority	'most'	ru-	runae
Equative	'as...as'	kö-	könae

More coming soon...