BorgLizard

gloss and ipa provided here, along with a quick play-by-play of how the sentences actually work, since this language is extremely isolating.

gonna provide the text version here for my friends desktop users, but there will be images at the end for mobile folks since the formatting will be foogled on that end

JULIAN

lat tta lajak srǫten læt̠ t:æ ˈlæ.d͡zæq çɾəˈt̠ɛŋ̥ 2S.M.ST TP think what

You(emphasized) think what?

GARAK

layǫ yoo so ſooyejel sotįl rinna yaaj læ.jə jɔ˞ çɔ ˈɰ̥ɔ˞.jɛ.d͡zɛl ˈçɔ.t̠əl riˈŋʷæ jæ˞d͡z 1S.M.ST 3S.IN.PRS OBJ ploy good not be

GARAK CONT.

tekl lajak Joliyan tʰɛql ˈlæ.d͡zæq ˈd͡zɔ.li.jæŋ̥ very think Julian

I think it is not a very good ploy, Julian.

Kaadąsi pronouns come in masculine, feminine, and inanimate forms, and decline based on number(singular and plural), person(first/second/third), and the tense of their verb(present, past/stative present, future). So by using the past/stative present first and second pronouns <layǫ> and <lat> instead of their regular present equivalents <ye> and <yen>, it emphasizes that the sentences mean "I/you think", instead of "I/you am/are thinking of something". The third person inanimate pronoun <yoo> encompasses both regular present and past/stative present.

Using the topic particle <tta> in such a simple sentence is just a way of placing grammatical emphasis on top of Julian's tone of voice here, basically a baked in vocalized italics. Cardassian as a whole uses markers similar to Japanese for parts of a sentence, so <tta> is similar (but not the same) as the topic marker <wa> in Japanese, and the object marker <so> is similar to the object marker <o> respectively.

Modifiers- adjectives and adverbs- come right after the word they modify. Below I've marked up the sentences the way I have since uhhh forever? This version is written out based on the bicameral modern script I've made for Kaadąsi, which capitalizes pronouns, proper nouns, and the main verb(s) of a sentence.

The primary subject of the sentence is underlined one, and verbs twice. Arrows are showing a modifier, and pointing to what they modify. So despite being technically a part of an internal clause, sotįl/good modifies ſooyejel/ploy, rinna/not modifies sotįl, and so on.

Kaadąsi standard word order is SOV. The glossing TP means topic marker, and OBJ means object marker.

Image down here for for gloss/ipa for my mobile friends