User:Masako/nkala

A little side language called kamalo.

phonology

consonants

• nasals: /m n ɲ/ m n ny
• plosives: /p t k kʷ ʔ/ p t k kw q
• affricates: /t͡ɬ/ tl
• continuants: /l h~ɦ/ l h
• semivowels: /j w/ y w

All plosives, except the glottal stop, can be prenasalized: /ᵐp ⁿt ᵑk ᵑkʷ/.

vowels

Kamalo only uses three vowels; /a e o/, occasionally they contrast for length. ā ē ō

morphology

Kamalo is an agglutinative and polysynthetic language that makes extensive use of compounding, incorporation and derivation. That is, it can add many different prefixes and suffixes to a root until very long words are formed, and a single word can constitute an entire sentence.

verbs

The kamalo verb is quite complex and inflects for many grammatical categories. The verb is composed of a root, prefixes, and suffixes. The prefixes indicate the person of the subject, and person and number of the object and indirect object, whereas the suffixes indicate tense, aspect, mood and possession.

• wakoyemapotla

wa-ko-yem-ap-otl-a

1sg-3pl-eat-CAUS-DES-NPST

"I want to feed them"

verb modifiers

	non-past	past	nominalizer
-	mal-a to speak; be talking	mal-e to have spoken; talked	mal-o language; speech
-at-	mal-at-a to explain; speak at length	mal-at-e to have spoken a long while ago	mal-at-o lecture; presentation