Wakensi

Wakensi is a language belonging to the Cramarian family of languages. It has some oddities and peculiarities that set it apart from even more closely related Cramarian languages. One such is the use of an introductory particle at the beginning of sentences which marks whether it is a question or a statement. Also it relies in heavy prefixing rather than suffixing. Apart from this, the Cramarian morphology is pretty transparent.

Phonology

Wakensi phonology is pretty straughtforward.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n~ŋ
Stop	p b	t d		k g	’ [ʔ]
Pre-nasal	mp mb	nt nd		nk ng
Fricative	f v~w	s			h
Approximant			j
Liquid		l r

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open		a

Morphosyntax

Nouns

Nouns are indeclinable and are only inflected for number and construct state. The language has only two grammatical numbers: singular and plural, and expresses possession through the use of the construct state. Plurals are handled in a pattern:

Noun	Singular	Plural
Pattern	CVC	C1i-C1VC
e.g.: "god"	tomb	titomb
e.g.: "cat"	nau	ninau

However note that the plural of tman, "man", is titmin, "men".

Possession

Wakensi uses the construct for possessive constructions, which is suffixed to the possessed noun. The construct is <-‘i>.

Example:

nau’i tman “the man's cat”

hun’i tan “the sister's dog”

There are two possession in Wakensi, alienable and inalienable, which are only marked when using a personal pronoun. The construct form makes the alienable possessive, the inalienable possessive is formed prefixing the pronoun to the noun.

Example:

katomb “your god”

wotan “my sister”

mbegaba “our father”

The inalienable possessive means that the object possessed constitutes a part of the person possessing it. While the alienable shows that the object only has some kind of possessive realtionship to the noun.

Example:

woso “my flesh” (the flesh that constitutes me)

so’i woh “my flesh” (as in the flesh in my plate)

Pronouns

The prefixed pronouns are as follows:

	Singular	Plural
First	wo-, woh-	mbe-, mb-
Second	ka-, k-	kika-, kik-
Third	m. wi- f. wa-, w-	m. wiwi- f. wiwa-, wiw-

The third person neutral takes the femenine “wa-“ pronoun, also it is the default for a group of different genders.

And the independent pronouns:

	Singular	Plural
First	woh	mbee
Second	ka	kika
Third	m. wi, f. wa	m. wisi, f. wasi