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• Macro-Kgáweq’ languages
• Primitive Kgáweq’
•  Átlaw languages
•  Kgáweq’ languages
•  Kgáweq’
•   Eastern Kgáweq’
•   Western Kgáweq’
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• Isolates & Lesser Families

META

Kgáweq’ had a rather arbitrary reason for existence. In one of my classes at OU, we were assigned a book to read, namely The Seed Is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper 1894 - 1985 (van Onselen, 1996). One of the unintended takeaways from that book was that I was exposed to Dutch and Afrikaans; pertinently, I saw that they romanized the phoneme sequence /kx/ as <kg>, and I thought that was really cool. I therefore cooked up a language where <kg> was a legitimate digraph.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Xander Vedejas for designing the first iteration of the Kgáweq’ script, based on a stenciled sample of…I think it was Tamil? In any event, I eventually developed it significantly away from the original specifications, but the aesthetic lives on.

IN-UNIVERSE

The Kgáweq’ live north of the River Sobadegh in southwest Matanhír, where their lands form a southern extremity of the local holdings of the Tim Ar Empire on the mainland. The Kgáweq’ language itself is of recent standardization; it's developed sufficiently that intelligibility problems between the various dialects are common. However, the writing system is still parsable for most speakers regardless of dialects--the native orthography bears some resemblances to Tibetan in that respect.

Phonology

Consonants

Kgáweq’ has the following consonants:

	ALVEOLAR	FRONT VELAR	BACK VELAR	RADICAL
NASAL	n
STOP	t t’ d	k k’ g	q q’	ʔ ’
AFFRICATE	ts ts’	kx kg kx’ kg’	qχ qg qχ’ qg’
LATERAL AFFRICATE	tɬ tl tɬ’ tl’
FRICATIVE	s			h
LATERAL FRICATIVE	ɬ ł
RESONANT	l	j y	w	ʕ r

A persistent allophonic process is that l becomes a fricative following either of t t’; this is reflected in the romanization (tl tl’).

Vowels

Kgáweq’ has the following vocalic system. Vowels could either be plain voiced, which is not indicated with a diacritic, or creaky-voiced, which is indicated using an ogonek:

	DIPHTHONG	FRONT	CENTRAL	BACK
HIGH	iə iʌ	i		u
MID	eə eʌ	e	ə	o
LOW	aə aʌ		a

Stress is indicated using an acute accent if the vowel is plain voiced and using a hacek or caron, replacing the ogonek, if it is creaky voiced.

Vowel harmony

Kgáweq’ exhibits height-based vowel harmony. In this paradigm, there are two contrasting height values, high and low (or, as known to Kgáweq’ grammarians, the u-state and the o-state). The choice of which vowel set to use is motivated by either the stressed vowel of the root (in western dialects) or by the vowel in the ultima (in eastern dialects).

Citation forms for affixes in the prefix slots (see below) will be cited in the o-state. In a nod to Kgáweq’ orthography proper, posttonic vowels in the root and in suffixes will be cited in their values in eastern dialects, whichever state they may inhabit there.

Morphophonemics

Harmonic clusters

Sequences involving adjacent stops and affricates with each other will tend to agree in voicing and ejectivity. The hierarchy of assimilation is voiced > voiceless > ejective, that is to say, if a stop or affricate in a sequence thereof is articulated in a manner to the left of that of the other element of the sequence, it will move rightward and assimilate in articulation to it.

Examples of this include the perfective indicative marker t-, e.g. in the word ’ʌyųt’q’úsʌkg’ 'I threw it', it occurs immediately preceding an ejective stop (the q’- in q’úsʌkg’ 'throw') and assimilates in ejectivity to it.

Stop-lateral sequences

It is very common for voiceless stops plus l or ł to convert into affricates, e.g. t’ + l > tl’, q + l > qg. In particular, voiceless stops plus ł tend to develop into ejectives--e.g. q + ł > qg’ (as one source of ł is a historical sequence of glottal stop plus *l).

Glottal stops before voiced stops

Glottal stops also tend to convert a following voiced obstruent to an ejective. For instance, tlo’- 'NEG' + go- 'between' > tlok’o-.

Hiatus

Kgáweq’ does not tolerate hiatus in its affixes and resolves the issue in one of several ways.

If a suffix ends in a creaky-voiced vowel and precedes another vowel, the first vowel loses its creaky voice, ejecting it into a coda -n, e.g. ą- 'failure' + a- '1SG.SBJ' > ana-.

Failing that, if the hiatus involves one of the vowels a e i and one of the central vowels a ʌ or their creaky-voiced counterparts, in that order, the sequences coalesces into one of the permissible diphthongs aʌ eʌ iʌ. If the second element is creaky-voiced, the resultant diphthong becomes creaky-voiced as well.

Before one of a ʌ, the vowels o and u simply become w.

In other cases, it is the first vowel or diphthong that changes. The back vowels o and u become w, in an expansion on the previously-relayed rule; the remaining vowels and diphthongs become y.

Animacy hierarchy

Like many languages, word order in Kgáweq’ is subject to an animacy hierarchy, though that of Kgáweq’ is more involved than most:

Verbs

In Kgáweq’, the verb is the most complex word class, with nine prefix slots and one optional suffix. The general verbal template is:

-7	-6	-5	-4	-3	-2	-1	±0	+1
NEG	PVB	success	SBJ	VER	OBJ	TAM	ROOT	QUAL

Slot -7: Negation

Slot -7 is where negation, if indicated, is marked. The negative morpheme is tlo’-.

Slot -6: Preverbs

In slot -6 one finds the preverbs.

These elements can stack:

Slot -5: Success

In slot -5, one finds a peculiarity of the Kgáweq’ idiom, the success affix. This affix tells to what extent an action was successful (or not).

We will look at each affix in turn and examine their meanings.

ą-: Failure

The failure affix differs from the straight negative in that it indicates that the action was attempted but not achieved. It is not a true conative (though the language does have one; see below) as it makes a judgment as to the outcome of the action, but it is not a negative either as it implies effort towards the goal was expended.

g-: Accidental success

The prefix g- indicates that an action was accidental or was successful by accident.

When used with the negative morpheme tlo’- in slot -7, g- connotes that the action involved was deliberate.

k’-: Barely successful

This affix informs the listener that the action in question--though successfully completed--was only just so.

se-: Almost or near success

The prefix se- indicates that an action, though unsuccessful, was nearly achieved.

t’-: Partial or incomplete success

Objectives that were only partially achieved are signified by the prefix t’-. This affix indicates that some degree of success was achieved, even if the ultimate objective was not reached.

tl-: Conative, unknown outcome

Conatives indicate that an action was attempted, but make no judgments or assertions about whether the activity in question was completed.

wo’-: Total success

This affix is never senso strictu required, but can be employed to indicate or emphasize the completedness of an action or task; it is commonly used as an answer to questions in the conative.

(-’)s-: Catastrophic failure

The catastrophic failure prefix implies that not only was the action unsuccessful, it was unsuccessful in a very, very adverse way. The implication is that significant negative consequences or a significant negative outcome resulted directly due to the action.

This prefix is unique in that it has a glottal stop that surfaces when postvocalic or turns a preceding stop or affricate ejective; this glottal stop is absent otherwise--cf. daʌtsogyǫgotólęs 'had they been mining it' versus daʌts’ogyǫgotólęs 'had they been utterly disastrously trying to dig things out of the ground'.

Slot -4: The subject

In slot -4 of the verbal template exists the subject. The function of the subject is usually straightforward, marking the agent of transitive verbs and the experiencer of intransitive verbs, though interplay with the version affix can modify this tendency (see below).

Slot -3: Version

The -3 slot of the Kgáweq’ verbal complex marks version, a function that has implications for the valence and argument structure of the verb at hand.

Subjective version

If a verb indicates subjective version, it functions as a sort of autobenefactive, reflexive, or middle. The actor benefits themselves or is themselves affected by the action in some way.

A number of verbs have meanings in the subjective version that would be covered by separate words in English--or French: tl’áwł 'know, comprehend; understand, master' covers savoir without version and connaître with subjective version.

Objective version

Inversion

Causative version

Oblique version

Slot -2: The object

The object is found in slot -2. Unlike the subject marker, it does not distinguish number; that information, if necessary, is expressed by another argument.

Alternatively, an object noun may be incorporated here. This occasionally has semantic bearing on the verb; in these cases, incorporation may induce the ability to mark a new direct object using the version marker in slot -3. There are limits: One cannot incorporate a so-called "complex", i.e. derived using a relativizer, noun but only "simplex" noun roots. Roots incorporated into slot -2 are subject to the same morphophonemic processes as any other affix.

Slot -1: TAM

The nearest prefix to the verb marks the tense, aspect, and mood of the verb in question. There are sixteen such affixes--four each of aspects (momentane, imperfective, continuative, perfective) and moods (indicative, subjunctive, interrogative, and imperative) in combination.

There is no specific tense-marking in Kgáweq’--such implications vis-à-vis what would be expressed by tense in other languages are implied by the specific combination of aspect and mood used in Kgáweq’.

The perfective imperative has a connotation of 'don't do that!', 'you'd better not do that!', or 'stop doing that!'.

Slot ±0: The root

The root needs little by way of introduction or description; it's the root of the verb.

Slot +1: The qualifier

The lone suffix in this paradigm, the qualifier makes a judgment about the size or scope of the referent.

The qualifier comes in especially handy when deriving nouns using a relativizer.

Conjunctions

Kgáweq’ features two distinct types of conjunctions, nominal and verbal, that behave differently.

Nominal conjunctions

Nominal conjunctions in Kgáweq’ tend to be fully-fledged verbs; these verbs are transitive and can take version or qualifier affixes. The most common of these verbs are listed below:

A simple conjoined phrase functions as a simple, but nonetheless complete, sentence:

Such constructions can be expanded upon or used in a fuller sentence through the use of a relative affix in the appropriate slot on the verb (for the sake of brevity, conjunction words will simply be glossed as the conjunction and not fully broken down).

These can be strung together to conjoin more than two items: sął ’ǫryǫněʌts ’iq’ ’eʌryǫněʌts tlus ’eʌryǫněʌts dosatl’á’ ’iʌtsiʌrʌgwǔni’ 'air and water and fire and soil surround us'.

Color terms

Kgáweq’ divides the spectrum up thus: rósto’ 'white', ’ǫdáq 'red', qǫr 'yellow', tlal 'green', kgǐsʌt 'blue/black'. These are not adjectives, however, but rather are transitive verbs; they can be conceptualized as having a more literal meaning 'to have an X-colored object'.

If you want to say that an object is a certain color, there are two strategies you can use. The first is to use the inversion marker in slot -3:

The second is to use the appropriate prefix in conjunction with the marker for subjective version:

Both are acceptable in Kgáweq’ proper; which strategy is employed varies by region and by individual.