February 2019 CDN Speedlang

This is my entry in miacomet#5194's speedlang challenge on the CDN. I heard about it kind of late and was busy so I did it in a day.

Tentative name: Kadu.

Syllable and word structure
Syllables are CV(C). Word-internally the coda may be a nasal (notated |N|) or lateral (notated |L|) that acquires the place of articulation of the following consonant. Word-finally the coda may be a nasal or lateral (usually realized [ŋ] or [ʟ]), a voiceless stop, or /r/. The vowel /ɨ/ does not occur word-finally except in single-syllable pronouns. The sequences /lɨ/, /ʎɨ/, /ʎi/, /ji/, and /wu/ do not occur. |L| does not occur before laterals.

The half-voiced plosives only occur word-internally.

Verbs
Kadu has a small closed class of verbs, between around 60 and 200. The trouble is that Kadu verb morphology is complex and essentially unanalyzable. Many verbs appear to have similar meanings and differ only in person or aspectual categories. There is somewhat regular suppletion for subject agreement and most verbs occur in "locutor" versus "non-locutor" forms. Some verbs do not make this distinction.

There is also a general distinction between punctual and durative verbs. ‘Punctual’ generally includes perfectives, instantaneous events, and a sort of aorist; ‘durative’ subsumes imperfectives, habituals, states, and experiential perfects. This is more easily demonstrated:

¹ A type of hat associated with sorcery performed after a woman gives birth to ritually cleanse her and the child, generally the woman's old sister or close older female friend wears it.

Causatives are formed by partial reduplication of the first consonant of the word + the vowel o. Their use is quite productive.

Adjectives
Adjectives are a small closed class with four members: tɨn ‘good’, tandan ‘big’, man ‘other’, and tañi ‘true’. tɨn and tandan can be reduplicated, meaning ‘really big’ or ‘really good’.

Nouns
Nouns constitute the bulk of the Kadu lexicon and are organized into at 5 mostly posture/shape-based classes. Noun class is indicated predominantly by agreement with pronouns, which also function as referential articles. The noun classes with their associated pronoun are given below:

- I kɨp Standing adult male humans. - II bar Standing female humans, standing children, trees, things that are significantly taller than they are long. - III ke Sitting humans, bushes, things approximately bush-shaped or otherwise of more or less equal dimensions in both length and height, celestial objects. - IV pɨ Laying humans, things that are significantly longer than they are tall. - V tɨ Things that are usually handled with the hand, typically small.