- Word classes
1.1. Base verbs
1.2. Narrative classifiers
1.3. Pronouns
1.4. Adjectives
1.5. Nouns - Morphology
2.1. Grouping
2.2. Affixes
2.3. Reduplication
2.4. Number and definiteness
2.5. Possession
2.6. Kinship terms
2.7. Evidence and Tense - Word order
3.1. Basic word order
3.2. Verb serialization
3.3. Noun incorporation
3.4. Questions - Numerals
- Closed class
- Base verbs (usually transitive or ditransitive)
- Narrative classifiers
- Pronouns/Demonstratives
- Open class
- Adjectives/descriptive verbs (usually intransitive or avalent)
- Nouns
Adjectives and nouns can easily change into one other, differing mostly in their role in the sentence.
Base verbs are meant to cover most usual actions. They often occur in an construction together with adjectives to be more precise.
The base verbs are:
- talk "taki"
Or any social interaction. - give a gift "pakata"
To give someone a gift is a highly regulated and formal act. It is therefor different form giving someone a tool at work or food because they are hungry. - perceive "ia/ai"
ia is used after the evidential marker pa "paai", and ai after tat "tatia". The use of an evidential makers is mostly obligatory for this verb. - ask, learn, think "tapitataa"
- go "ii"
- ingest "aa"
- give, take, share, put down, pick up "aapii"
Change the location or owner of an object (without any formality). - hold, hug, care "paki"
- affect "kaita"
hit, chop, break, burn - use "kipiki"
- create, plant, cook "kati"
- use mouth "pipiti"
In any way that's not talking or eating. Spit, lick, kiss, smile, utter random noise.
The classifiers (CL) in tikap shouldn't be compared with the ones on finds in many Asian and Austronesian languages. Instead they are inspired by the classifier handshapes used in ASL and many other sign languages. Their main purpose in tikap is to replace actors in a narrative. Thereby they take the place third person pronouns normally take in English narratives. "He wondered where the mountain came form. It wasn't there the last time he visited."
They are usually used in conjunction with pronouns/demonstratives. In the order:
adjective/relative clause - demonstrative/pronoun - classifier
The main categories are:
- Big animals "kapa"
Any kind of animal that can be an actor equivalent to humans. Or is capable to recognize a human as a separate entity. Animals one can interact with.
Humans, pets, mammals, birds, reptiles, large fish, heads - Small animals "pipi"
Any kind of animal that does not recognize humans.
Insects, words, snails, small fish, mushrooms, anemone, microbes - Pair "tipi"
Thing that usually occur in pairs of two or any other small limited number. Some of which English uses the plural by default.
Eyes, ears, arms, shears, pants, glasses - Long "titi"
Long and thin things in general.
Fingers, as single arm, branches, rivers, ropes, hair - Flat "paa"
Surfaces and sheets.
Plot of land, paper, paintings, walls - Container and their content "kap/paki"
Things that serve the purpose of a container or are inside one.
Teacups, bottles, bags, vehicles, liquid in a container, passengers, gases under pressure, information storage devices, places. - Food "pata"
Everything edible when it is important to the discussion that it is edible. - Relations "titata"
Relations, connections, networks.
Language, relatives, social relations, internet, theories. - Thing "kaki"
General classifier for countable nouns.
Did you get the thingy form the thingy for the thingy? - Stuff "kaa"
General classifier for uncountable nouns. Includes abstract concepts like time.
I better put more stuff of the stuff into the stuff.
Which CL to use also depends on the context. If a book falls on your head you would use Thing, if you quote from it, it is a Container.
To talk about a classifier in an abstract sense (as in "I don't know when to use the Stuff-CL") they get prefixed with the Thing-CL.
Pronouns, demonstratives and names can be used as a copula. The third person pronouns are demonstratives at the same time. The third person absent pronoun may also refer to a general group or abstract concepts. e.g. "Time runs so fast, it is always ahead of me."
| pronoun | Gloss | English |
|---|---|---|
| pai | 1 | I |
| taa | 2 | you |
| tapai | inc | you and me |
| kia | 3.proximal | this/they here |
| kika | 3.distal | that/they there |
| kiki | 3.absent | they who are not here, all |
Examples:
ttitit kia katti annoying PROX cat This cat is annoying. (or: These cats are annoying.)
ttitit kiki katti annoying ABSENT cat That cat is annoying. (or: Cats are annoying.)
Adjectives can in their base form be translated as "to be x", in transitive sentences "to cause something to be x". To make it transitive it is usually combined with base verbs, while omitting the base verb is common when the context is clear.
be sleeping & put down > bring someone to bed
Nouns are boring. Therefor classifiers take their place as often as possible.
"Grouping" changes the way consonants and vowel form clusters. Within a root word the order of consonants is fixed, as is the order of vowels. They however can be grouped differently into different syllables.
The root word is written in a CVCV... pattern if possible. For the word "kitap" consonants are: "ktp" and vowels are: "ia".
C: k_t_p kt_p_ k_tp_ _kt_p kt__p
V: _i_a_ __i_a _i__a i__a_ __ia_
Word: kitap ktipa kitpa iktap ktiap
Therefor, for every number of consonants and vowels a root can have there are several patterns the phonology allows.
CV VC (ti it)
CCV CVC (tki tik)
CVV VCV VVC (tia ita iat)
CVCV CCVV VCCV VCVC CVVC (tika tkia itka itak tiak)
CVCVC CCVCV CCVVC CVCCV VCCVC (tikap tkipa tkiap tikpa itkap)
VCVCV VVCVC VVCCV VCVVC CVVCV CVCVV VCCVV
...
Grouping has two main purposes. First to add affixes (see section on affixes), second to indicate which grammatical role the words take in a sentence. For the purpose of marking the grammatical role the core principle is the sonority hierarchy - applied to different scales. In it's simplest form it states that the louder sounds tend to be the center of an element. In the case of tikap /ɨ ɐ/ are more sonorous and /p t k/ are less sonorous. For a syllable this gives a shape of e.g. "kap". One can also apply it to words and therefor have "tikap" instead of "itkpa". Extending it up to the phrase or sentence level we can generate a set of rules on how the individual words should ideally look like. Because of the VSO word order verbs tend to be at the beginning of sentences, they therefor begin with a consonant. Classifiers can start a noun phrase, when they end in a vowel the listener knows that there is something to follow. In contrast, when the CL ends in a consonant the listener know it stands on its own. In this way, the sonority patterns produced by grouping resemble intonation patterns.
Note that, because affixes "agree" with the root word they mirror the forms. A root word ending in a consonant will more likely also end in a consonant even with affixes attached. e.g. ikat pi -ka > ikatipak
When an affix gets added to a word, the word retains its form, the affix however may change to avoid clusters becoming to large. If it is somehow not possible and a consonant or vowel is needed, the previous consonant or vowel is echoed.
Example:
tik- ptaik > tkiptaik
katia -apa > katiapaa
tpik- ptaik > tpikiptaik
katia -apaa > katiatapaa
In the process of reduplication, one reduplicates the consonants and the vowels separately and then puts them together as a word. e.g. tikap does not become tikaptikap but tkipatikap (tkptkp + iaia). If there are to many consonants or vowels to form a phonological correct word, they just get lost in the process.
All nouns are undefined in their number. When a noun is used with a classifier but no number word it is singular. For any other number than one or zero a classifier is needed. A classifier also makes a noun more definite.
To mark a noun possessed the word gets prefixed with the appropriate pronoun. taa-tikap "your teacup"
In a declarative sentence there is a difference between alienable and inalienable possession. For what counts as inalienable let me refer to the listing in this educational video.
Inalienable sentences follows the pattern:
[pronoun of possessor] [possessed noun]
taa kapa
2 head
"This is your head."
In alienable sentences the noun itself has to be possessed. So the pattern is:
[pronoun of noun] [pronoun of possessor]-[possessed noun]
kia taatikap
3 2-teacup
"This is your teacup."
There are no dedicated kinship terms by themselves. Instead they are formed with nouns that describes people plus a possessive pronoun. This is equivalent to English construction as "my man, my woman" to refer to husband and wife. The semantic changes the nouns undergo in this process always involve affection.
piapatii
1-girl/woman
"my girlfriend/wife"
There are also semantic changes for other people marked possessed, "person" becomes "friend", "stranger" becomes "guest". It is also common to use the construction with personal names.
These prefixes attach to base verbs. They are also used on adjectives and nouns when they follow a determiner used as copula. There is no explicit tense marking, but direct and indirect evidence also imply a non-future tense (present or past).
- Direct evidence: pa- own experience, perception, self evident truth
- Indirect evidence: tat- reported speech, reasoning, inferring
- Non-evidence: unmarked reported-reported speech, made up stories, guessing, questions,
Example:
apai kiki tapap, kiki papakata
EXP.perceive 3.DIST house, 3.DIST EXP.broken
I see this house there, it seems to be in ruins.
Reduplicating the base verb forms the cyclic tense. It can be used for processes that has no fixed occurrence in time, but are predictable (like physics), repeating, habitual etc. The cyclic tense does not take evidence marking.
Default word order is Verb Subject Object Indirect-object (VSOI). But it can change to IVSO, or OVS through noun incorporation.
A relative clause gets introduced with "pi".
taapaipai pi apaa aa patiti.
2-child REL water ingest EXP-small
Your child who is water drinking seems small.
Base verbs can be stringed together to indicate successive actions. Note that a descriptive verb + a base verb just narrows down the meaning of the base verb.
Example:
take go dog fish
The dog steals fish and runs away.
To indicate an action that involves a specific object or instrument, the noun can be prefixed to the verb. Giving rise to constructions similar to the English "baby-sitting".
Example:
fish take dog
The dog is fish-taking.
Numbers are represented as a sum of fibonaçci numbers, which is known as Zeckendorf representation. The basic numerals are therefor all fibonaçci numbers.
What advantages such a system might have is yet to be explored by usage.
With a limited phonology as tikap has one runs into the issue to run out of possible words. If one would assign "ti" as 1, no other word could contain "ti" because something like "tika" for 55 could be read as 1+X (ti+ka). To counter that all basic numerals have exactly one "i", which appears as the first vowel.
Using this representation brings the problem, that one needs more and more words the bigger numbers ones wants to express. Tikap therefor uses a overly complex and unnecessary secondary numeral system to generate those roots. For a normal speaker their origin would probably appear opaque. Therefor it is just a useless game and can be ignored.
The system uses is a bijective base 12 representation as this allows to assign all possible syllables of the shape (C)Ca (because i is excluded) to values from 1 to 12 as follows.
| value | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| syllable | pa | ta | ka | ppa | pta | pka | tpa | tta | tka | kpa | kta | kka |
As an example the number 89 ^(base 10) is 75 ^(base 12) (7x12¹ + 5x1). And therefor represented by "tpa+pta", adding the obligatory "i" and normalizing it the word for 89 becomes "tipapat".
| tikap | base 10 | bijective base 12 |
|---|---|---|
| pia | 1 | 1 |
| tia | 2 | 2 |
| kia | 3 | 3 |
| pita | 5 | 5 |
| tita | 8 | 8 |
| piapa | 13 | 11 |
| pitaka | 21 | 19 |
| tikapa | 34 | 2A |
| pipatap | 55 | 47 |
| tipapat | 89 | 75 |
| kikakak | 144 | BC |
We now can form other number using the above mentioned Zeckendorf representation. 100 ^(base 10) becomes 89+8+3 "tipapattitakia".
To those asking "But why?" I answer "You have been warned."