Kutic

Kutic
ḍuq'ap'al
Pronunciation	[ɖuq.ʕɐp.ʕɐɫ]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2023
Setting	Radael
Native to	Irguşta Region, Moshurian Empire
Native speakers	40,000 (400 UH)
Language family	Ebró North Ebró Kutic
Early form	Middle Kutic
Standard form	Central Kutic
Writing system	Apet'ap
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Moshurian Empire
Regulated by	Kutic Congress(Ḍuq'aq'al Ikapo'ap)

Kutic(endonym: ḍuq'ap'al; Kutic: [ɖuq.ʕɐp.ʕɐɫ]) is an Ebró language spoken by the nomadic Kutic people. Their exonym comes from the Ildan word for them, kutinki. In Maranz, the diphthong /ŋk/ became /ʔk/, leading to a sound changed kutikkir, which was borrowed by Moshurian and became Kutic.

Endonym

The Kutic endonym, ḍuq'ap'al, is a combination of the word for home, ḍuq, and the nominative and ablative case suffixes.

ḍuq'ap'al

home-NOM-ABL

The word ḍuq most likely comes from Proto-Ebró *hduhu(w)k, which became Proto-North Ebró *duh(w)k. Other related words include Julok duhukîtu, meaning "civilisation", possibly linking to the prosperous, settled Ebróma civilisation in western Talkoch.

Phonology

Prosody

Stress

In Kutic, stress is placed on the antepenultimate(third-before-last) syllable. For example in the word miqujla("oak wood", Kutic: [ˈmiˌqud͡ʒ.lɐ]), stress is placed on mi-.

Phonotactics

In Kutic, two consonants of the same category can not be placed together, for example two fricatives, such as /s/ and /z/, or two plosives, such as /q/ and /g/, would not be consecutively combinable, although an alternating pattern of said consonants, such as /sqzg/, would be theoretically possible.

However, this pattern does not apply to vowels, where instead open, near-open and open-mid vowels can not be pronounced in an alternating fashion with close, near-close and close-mid vowels, although there are no restrictions on horizontal dimensions, so for example diphthongs such as /aɔ/ or /æɒ/ would be entirely possible.

Mid vowels do not appear in Kutic, although in other Ebró languages which have similar phonotactic rules mid vowels are freely combinable with any other non-mid vowel.

Syntax

Constituent order

Word order in Kutic is free, due to the large amount of suffixes that describe word type, grammatical case and tense, although in general Kutic traders stick to an SOV structure, while more settled Kutic people use anything from an OSV to an SOV structure.

Grammatical cases

Kutic has 8 grammatical cases, indicated with a suffix in the form 'aC.

Grammatical cases

Case	Suffix	IPA
Nominative	'ap	ʕɐp
Accusative	'am	ʕɐm
Genitive	'aq	ʕɐq
Ablative	'al	ʕɐl
Locative	'at	ʕɐt