introduction

Kala is a personal conlang (actually more of an artlang), not attached to any conworld or conculture.

borrowing

Kala borrows extensively from various natural languages. This is a very small sample of borrowings:

kala – to speak, talk, converse; from Arabic takallama
na – I, me; from Arabic ʾanā
pato – duck (Anatidae); from Spanish pato
tsenka – orange; from Chinese chéng
uasi – to take, get, acquire; from Lakota wasichu
myonta – to allow, permit; from Finnish myöntää
a – to be, exist, yes; from Japanese aru

phonology

consonants

Where ~ appears, it indicates free variation between phonemes.

Consonants
	Labial	Alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Glottal
	Labial	central	lateral	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m (m)	n (n)		ɲ (ny)
Plosive	p~b (p)	t~d (t)			k~g (k)	ʔ (`)
Affricate		ts (ts)	t͡ɬ~tl (tl)	t͡ʃ (ts)
Continuant		s (s)	l~ɾ (l)	ʃ (s)		h~ɦ (h)
Semivowel				j (y)	w (u)

Prenasalized: /ᵐp ⁿt ᵑk/
Labialized:/pʷ kʷ mʷ nʷ ʃʷ hʷ t͡ʃʷ/
Palatalized: /pʲ kʲ mʲ hʲ/

Note: Because of its small phoneme inventory, Kala allows for quite a lot of allophonic variation. For example, /p t k/ may be pronounced [b d ɡ] as well as [p t k], /s l h/ as [ʃ ɾ ɦ], and /t͡s t͡ɬ/ as [t͡ʃ t͡l]; also, vowels may be either long or short.

vowels

Vowels
	Front	Central	Back
Close	i~ɪ (i)		u~u: (u)
Mid	e~ɛ (e)		o~o: (o)
Open		a~a: (a)

Kala has five vowels /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/ and /u/. Each occurs in both stressed and unstressed syllables. Phonetic nasalization occurs for vowels occurring between nasal consonants or when preceding a syllable-final nasal, e.g. tsunka [ˈt͡ʃũᵑka] ('bug').

diphthongs

Phonetically, Kala has only two diphthongs, both falling; [aɪ̯] and [aʊ̯], but there are five syllables that can be analyzed as rising diphthongs; [wa], [we], [ja], [je], and [jo]. The two triphthongs [waɪ̯] and [jaʊ̯] are very rare but should be noted as possible.

syllable structure

Kala syllable structure is ((N)C)(y, u)V(F). As in most languages, CV is the most common syllable type, accounting for the majority of Kala lemmas. The finals /n/, /m/, and /k/ are grammatical and indicate adverbs, plurals, and negatives, respectively. They only occur word finally. So, nkapa (alcohol) is permitted, but nakpa is not; kyopo (fear) is acceptable, but koypo is not, etc. There is a limited set of syllables allowed by Kala phonotactics, similar to Japanese or Chinese. They are listed here: Syllable Chart, or here.

/l/ cannot occur word initially (except in loan words and toponyms).

word order

The basic structure of a Kala sentence is:

AGENT--PATIENT--VERB (or SOV)

The agent is the person or thing doing the action described by the verb; The patient is the recipient of that action. The importance of word order can be seen by comparing the following sentences:

mita tlaka anya - dog man see - The dog sees the man.
tlaka mita anya - man dog see - The man sees the dog.

In both sentences, the words are identical, the only way to know who is seeing whom is by the order of the words in the sentence.

nouns

Nouns can be marked plural by -m (or -lo if the consonant in the final syllable is /m/). The collective plural is tli-.

Gender is not normally marked but can be by -na (FEM), -ta (MASC), or nouns such as naka, tlaka, nahi, or tahi (the woman, the man, the girl, the boy), etc.

determiners

Determiners precede the noun they modify in Kala. Kala makes a three-way distinction. Typically there is a distinction between proximal or first person (objects near to the speaker), medial or second person (objects near to the addressee), and distal or third person (objects far from both).

itla (i-) - this (near me)
uatla (ua-) - that (near you)
yetla (ye-) - that (over there)

The demonstratives can be prefixed to any noun to show deixis.

Quantifiers follow the noun that modify.

kua (-kua) - all; every; whole
oli (-li) - each; every
ula (-la) - whatever; any; some
mi (-mi) - few; little
nke (-k) - none
mpa (-mpa) - many; much; a lot
maha - more; plus
ohi - less; fewer

pronouns

Kala agent pronouns are often omitted when the person is obvious from context. There are four persons in Kala. The 4th being inanimate, or indefinite. There is a special pronoun na'am which is used as the 1st person plural exclusive, meaning "We, but not you." The 3rd person plural is irregular, all other pronoun decline regularly. Pronouns do not inflect for gender; if gender is significant, one can use words like naka, tlaka, nahi, tahi (the woman, the man, the girl, the boy), etc.

na - 1st person
ta - 2nd person
ha - 3rd person
tla - 4th person ("it", "one")

Modifiers:

-m - plural
-nku - reciprocal (only attaches to plural pronouns)
e- - patient
-i - reflexive
-yo - possessive

Other pronouns include:

tlokua - everyone, everybody
kola - someone, somebody; whomever, anyone, anybody
tlok - no one, nobody
nokua - everything
nola - something; whatever, anything
nok - nothing

verbs

Verbs in Kala are either active or or stative. Active verbs solely denote actions and occurrences and never states in Kala. Stative verbs are the words that modify nouns in an attributive and often adjectival way. They often express a state like a quality or result.

tense

Kala has three simple tenses; past, present, and future. Present tense is unmarked. However, past (-ye) and future (-tli) tenses can be modified to include immediate future ("is about to..."), distant future ("will...in a long while"), recent past ("just ..."), and remote past ("...a long while ago"). These distinctions are made with the augmentative and diminutive endings -ha and -hi.

The present tense can show immediacy by using the adverb ima, "now; at this time":

ima mita ina - now dog eat - The dog is eating right now.

If a temporal adverb is used, the tense suffix may be omitted.

Example: yomaye nam ina - yesterday 1pl eat - We ate yesterday.

eme
	Kala	gloss	English
Present	mita ina	dog eat	The dog eats.
Past	mita inaye	dog eat-PST	The dog ate.
Recent Past	mita inayehi or -hye	dog eat-REC	The dog just ate.
Remote Past	mita inayeha	dog eat-REM	The dog ate a long while ago.
Future	mita inatli	dog eat-FUT	The dog will eat.
Immediate Future	mita inatlihi or -tlai	dog eat-IMM	The dog will eat soon.
Distant Future	mita inatliha	dog eat-DIS	The dog will eat a long while from now.

aspect

There are four aspects in Kala. The progressive, also called the continuous [CONT], this is used to express an incomplete action or state in progress at a specific time. It is marked with -nko, from nkoso - "to continue; proceed; progress". The perfecive aspect indicates that an action is completed [PFV]. It is often translated by the English present perfect (have done some-thing). It is marked with -pua, from opua - "to end; finish; complete". The inchoative aspect refers to the beginning of a state [INCH]. It is marked with -mu, from mula - "to begin; start; initiate". The frequentative aspect refers to a repeated action [FREQ]. It is marked with -nua, from nua - "frequent; often; regular".

ti'a
	Kala	gloss	English
Progressive	mita inanko	dog eat-CONT	The dog is eating.
Perfective	mita inapua	dog eat-PFV	The dog has eaten.
Inchoative	mita inamu	dog eat-INCH	The dog begins to eat.
Frequentative	mita inanua	dog eat-FREQ	The dog eats often.

mood

The negative mood (always marked finally) is indicated by the suffix –k or –nke (when the last syllable contains /k/).

mita inayek - dog eat-PST-NEG - The dog did not eat.
mita mokunke - dog sleep-NEG - The dog does not sleep.

adjectives

Kala does not have adjectives as a distinct part of speech. Instead, many intransitive verbs can be used as adjectives, in which case they follow the noun they modify.

adverbs

Temporal adverbs in Kala precede the verb phrase they modify. Other adverbs follow the verb or adjective they modify and are explicitly marked by -n.

prepositions

Prepositions are placed before the noun or noun phrase, and the prepositional phrase is placed after the noun being modified, or, if used adverbially, after the verb or at the beginning of the sentence.

conjunctions

There are three coordinating conjunctions in Kala and three correlative conjunctions:

ma - and; also
ua - or
ehe (me) - but; yet

yema - both X and Y
ue - either X or Y
uenke (uek) - neither X nor Y

questions

There are two types of questions: Polar, those which may be answered "yes" or "no," and those which require explanations as answers. Any statement can become a polar question by adding the interrogative particle ka at the end of the sentence. The other type of question contains a correlative pronoun and is followed by ka.

User:Masako/pataka

Contents