Grammar
Grammatical Gender
Kaiteri do not use male and female grammatical gender because the sexes look so similar. However, they do use gender:
- Animals
- Sentients (millenia ago, this only referred to Kaiteri)
- Non-animals, including plants, abstract ideas, and anything that cannot have a sense of belonging (1-21-10)*.
Grammatical Number
Kaiteri has a singular, dual, small group plural (sentients and animals), large group plural (sentients and animals), non-group plural (items and things that cannot know they are a group) (12-13-09, 1-21-10, 2-4-12)*.
Pronouns
Singular: I, you, he/she, it
Plural: we-dual, we-small-group, we-large-group, you-dual, you-small-group, you-large-group...(2-4-12)*
Verbs
Past
Future
Progressive (ongoing/habitual)
Passive, described as “floating”
Vocal Patterns in Kaiteri
The multitude of meaningful elements in Kaiteri allows the Kaiteri to create several vocal patterns that emphasize and reinforce what is important to the Kaiteri. They use one syrinx to convey meaning (where humanoids simply use sounds) and one to convey the vocal pattern that comments on the meaning. While humanoids tend not to hear it, each Kaiteri has their own slight variation on all the patterns:
- Greetings or Mihimihi - Greetings are loud and prolonged in Kaiteri culture. The greetings can be even more elaborate if Kaiteri want to honor or impress the newcomer, and the greeting pattern differs based on how close a friend the newcomer is to the speaker. It is based on a loud version of the happy pattern.
- Courting - This is called the “cooing” pattern. It includes an alternation of long and short notes.
- Demanding - Pre-fledglings can be very demanding when they are hungry and food does not appear in the first second, or if the parent is more than a foot away and the child is scared. This pattern is loud and piercing. It includes a combination of quick alternating long and short tones. Adult Kaiteri also use it to signal danger.
- Family - This pattern can be either a less extreme version of the happy pattern, or if a child is hungry, it can be a demanding pattern.
- Groups or friends -
- Happiness or Korihi - This pattern is quick and includes the greatest variation in relative pitch. Those who are joking also use this pattern.
- Honor, respect - The pattern includes alternating high and low tones of nearly equal duration and is called a “bowing” pattern.
- Sadness -This is also used when concentrating, as when learning a language, or when one is alone. It is a quiet pattern that is nearly a monotone (1-21-10, 1-23-10*). Kaiteri also try to use this when speaking to non-Kaiteri who are trying to learn the Kaiteri language because it more closely approximates non-patterned languages.
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*Date of discovery.