Krīpoti

Krīpoti (or Kripoti) (Krīpoti:  krīpoti /kriːˈpo.ti/ is a Kripet language spoken in Krīpetēpla.

Krīpoti 
Language family	Kripet
Early form(s)	Proto-Kripet Kripeqet
Writing system	Lepeqēklih Alphabet
Official status
Spoken in	Krīpetēpla
Speaker
Demonym	Kripoti-speaking
Technical information
Usage	Native Language Administrative Language

Name in other languages:

• Śácamþaśá: sotiporiq Qripátisá /'qripɒːtisɑː/

Phonology

Different dialects of Kripoti have slightly different phonemic inventories, with most differences being in the palatal series. The following sections all refer to the standard dialect.

Consonants

Kripoti has 31 consonants:

		Labial	Dental/Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasals		m	n		ɲ	[ŋ]	[ɴ]
Stops		p b	t d			k g	q	ʔ
Fricatives		f v	s z	ʃ [ʒ]	ç [ʝ]	x	ʁ	h
Affricates			t͡s d͡z	t͡ʃ d͡ʒ	c͡͡ç ɟ͡͡ʝ
Trills/Approximants		w	r		j
Laterals	Approximant		l
	Fricative		ɬ [ɮ]
	Affricate		t͡ɬ

Sounds in square brackets are allophones:

• /ʃ/, /t͡ʃ/, /ç/ and /ɬ/ are voiced after voiced obstruents;
• Nasals assimilate with the following non-glide, non-glottal consonant. [ŋ] and [ɴ] are allophones of any nasal before velar and uvular consonants.

Furthermore, /z/ and /d͡z/ only contrast with their voiceless variants when they are not next to an obstruent.

Nasals are partially devoiced ([m͡m̥], [n͡n̥]) before /h/, and voiceless ([m̥], [n̥]) after /h/.

The exact pronounciation of /h/ before another consonant is debated, with some claiming it to be realized as preaspiration of the following consonant.

Consonants are never geminated.

Vowels

Kripoti has four vowels, with a fifth vowel (/u/) appearing in loanwords only. All vowels in Kripoti may be either long or short.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i iː		u uː
Mid	e eː		o oː
Low		a aː

Two-vowel sequences are always separate syllables, as Kripoti has no diphthongs.

Stress

Stress in Kripoti always falls on either the last or the second-to-last syllable, and it mostly follows the following rules:

• If the last syllable of a word has a long vowel, or the word is a noun in the vocative case, or the word is a sentence-final interrogative pronoun, stress falls on the last syllable;
• If the last syllable of a word has a short vowel, stress falls on the second-to-last syllable.

However, due to the fact that historical long vowels shortened next to other vowels, if the last two vowels are next to each other stress is unpredictable. Some minimal pairs are attested, especially in verbs, such as potizea~potizeá, respectively the present and the past forms of the verb "to agree".

Syllable structure

Syllables in Kripoti must follow the (C)(S)V(h)(C) structure, where C is any consonant, S is any approximant, trill and fricative except for /ʁ/, V is any vowel and h is the sound /h/. Elements in parenthesis are not required.

Orthography

This section is a work in progress

Krīpoti uses its own writing system, the Lepeqēklih alphabet. The Krīpoti version of the script is the same used by its ancestor Kripeqet, with 36 letters and three diacritics, but some letters have changed pronounciation, while five are unused.

The native orthography accounts for both stress and vowel length, and the former is marked on all words with more than one syllable, even those with regular stress.

Romanization

This section is a work in progress

Krīpoti has multiple romanization systems, all of which are regulated by the Krīpahra Institute of Linguistics.

Grammar

This section is a work in progress

Krīpoti is a very synthetic language, with nouns, pronouns, verbs and demonstratives featuring rich morphology. There is no separate adjective class of words, as that function is covered by nouns. There is no grammatical gender. Morphology is agglutinative, and some suffixes replace the final vowel of the root.

Nouns, pronouns and demonstratives inflect for case and number. The suffixes are the same, but in the case of demonstratives and pronouns (especially the latter) there are many irregularities. There are irregular nouns as well, but they are very few. Nouns are also divided in three animacy classes: animate, inanimate and abstract.

Verbs inflect for subject, tense, aspect and mood. Subject, aspect and mood are indicated by prefixes that are attached to the stem in this order, while tense is indicated by using either the present or past stem of the verb. In most cases, the past stem is the present stem suffixed with -ha (the old past suffix), but about a third of the verbs have a slightly irregular past stem, often due to a vowel changing or lengthening, and few verbs have a suppletive past stem, remain unchanged or have no past tense at all.

Syntax

Although it has free word order, the default word order is SVO, but it can be changed for many reasons, including emphasis. Additionally, animate nouns are usually put before inanimate and abstract ones, and inanimates are usually put before abstract nouns. This can easily create OSV or (more rarely) OVS sentences when the subject is inanimate and the object is animate.

Possessors go before the possessees, determiners and numerals go before the nouns they refer to, and other modifiers go after the nouns they refer to. Unlike English, Krīpoti uses postpositions, rather than prepositions.