GitHub - kip-dili/kip: A programming language in Turkish where grammatical case and mood are part of the type system.

Kip

Kip (meaning "grammatical mood" in Turkish) is an experimental programming language that uses Turkish grammatical cases as part of its type system. It demonstrates how natural language morphology—specifically Turkish noun cases and vowel harmony—can be integrated into programming language design.

This is a research/educational project exploring the intersection of linguistics and type theory, not a production programming language.

There is also a tutorial in Turkish and a tutorial in English that explains how to write Kip programs.

For you to get a taste of what Kip looks like, here is an example program that reads a name and prints a greeting:

selamlamak,
  isim için okuyup,
  ("Merhaba "yla ismin birleşimini) yazmaktır.

selamla.

Table of Contents

• Language Features
• Installation
• WASM Playground
• Bytecode Cache
• Project Structure
• Testing
• Morphological Analysis
• License

Language Features

Turkish Grammatical Cases as Types

Kip uses Turkish noun cases (ismin halleri) to determine argument relationships in function calls:

Flexible Argument Order

Because Turkish cases mark grammatical relationships explicitly, Kip allows flexible argument ordering. These two calls are equivalent:

(5'le 3'ün farkını) yaz.
(3'ün 5'le farkını) yaz.

As long as arguments have different case suffixes or different types, Kip can determine which argument is which.

Inductive Data Types

Define algebraic data types with Turkish syntax:

Bir doğruluk ya doğru ya da yanlış olabilir.

Bir trafik-ışığı
ya kırmızı
ya sarı
ya da yeşil
olabilir.

Polymorphic Types

Type variables are supported for generic data structures:

Bir (öğe listesi)
ya boş
ya da bir öğenin bir öğe listesine eki
olabilir.

Pattern Matching

Pattern match using the conditional suffix -sa/-se:

(bu doğruluğun) tersi,
  bu doğruysa, yanlış,
  yanlışsa, doğrudur.

Supports nested pattern matching, binders, and wildcard patterns (değilse):

(bu trafik-ışığının) eylemi,
  bu kırmızıysa, "Dur",
  sarıysa, "Hazırlan",
  yeşilse, "Geç"tir.

Constants

Define named constants with a definition sentence:

merhaba, "Merhaba"'dır.
dünya, "Dünya"'dır.

Effects and I/O

Sequencing with -ip/-ıp/-up/-üp suffixes and binding with için:

selamlamak,
  isim için okuyup,
  ("Merhaba "yla ismin birleşimini) yazmaktır.

Built-in Types and Operations

Integers (tam-sayı):

• Arithmetic: toplamı, farkı, çarpımı
• Comparison: eşitliği, küçüklüğü, büyüklüğü
• Other: faktöriyeli

Strings (dizge):

• uzunluğu - length
• birleşimi - concatenation
• tam-sayı-hali - parse as integer

I/O:

• yazmak / yaz - print to stdout
• okumak / oku - read from stdin

Comments

Literals

5'i yaz.              (* Integer literal with case suffix *)
"merhaba"'yı yaz.     (* String literal with case suffix *)
3.14'ü yaz.           (* Floating-point literal with case suffix *)

Installation

Prerequisites

1. Foma - finite-state morphology toolkit

   • macOS: brew install foma
   • Debian/Ubuntu: apt install foma libfoma-dev
   • Fedora: dnf install foma foma-devel

2. Stack - Haskell build tool

   • See haskellstack.org

Building

Clone this repository, then:

# Quick install (macOS/Linux)
chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh

# Or manual build
stack build

# Install to PATH
stack install

The TRmorph transducer is bundled at vendor/trmorph.fst.

Running

If you have installed to PATH, you can do:

# Start REPL
kip

# Execute a file
kip --exec path/to/file.kip

# Generate JavaScript
kip --codegen js path/to/file.kip

Language Server (kip-lsp)

kip-lsp speaks LSP over stdio. You can run it directly for editor integration:

Editor setup (PATH guidance)

Make sure kip-lsp is on your PATH, or configure your editor to call the absolute path from stack exec -- which kip-lsp.

VS Code (generic LSP extension):

{
  "languageServerExecutable": "kip-lsp",
  "languageServerArgs": []
}

Neovim (init.lua):

vim.lsp.start({
  name = "kip-lsp",
  cmd = { "kip-lsp" },
  root_dir = vim.fn.getcwd(),
})

Emacs (eglot):

(add-to-list 'eglot-server-programs '(kip-mode . ("kip-lsp")))

WASM Playground

A browser playground can be built from source under playground/. It compiles the non-interactive runner (kip-playground) to wasm32-wasi and ships a small HTML/JS harness that runs Kip in the browser.

See playground/README.md for prerequisites, toolchain setup, and build steps.

Bytecode Cache

Kip stores a cached, type-checked version of each .kip file in a sibling .iz file. When you run a file again, Kip will reuse the .iz cache if both the source and its loaded dependencies are unchanged.

If you want to force a fresh parse and type-check, delete the .iz file next to the source.

Project Structure

app/
├── Main.hs            - CLI entry point
└── Playground.hs      - WASM playground runner

src/
├── Kip/
│   ├── AST.hs         - Abstract syntax tree
│   ├── Cache.hs       - .iz cache handling
│   ├── Codegen/
│   │   └── JS.hs       - JavaScript codegen
│   ├── Eval.hs        - Interpreter
│   ├── Parser.hs      - Parser
│   ├── Render.hs      - Pretty-printing with morphological inflection
│   ├── Runner.hs      - CLI runner utilities
│   └── TypeCheck.hs   - Type checker validating grammatical case usage
└── Language/
    └── Foma.hs        - Haskell bindings to Foma via FFI

lib/
├── giriş.kip             - Prelude module loaded by default
├── temel.kip             - Core types
├── temel-doğruluk.kip    - Boolean functions
├── temel-dizge.kip       - String functions
├── temel-etki.kip        - I/O primitives
├── temel-liste.kip       - List functions
├── temel-ondalık-sayı.kip - Floating-point functions
├── temel-tam-sayı.kip    - Integer functions
└── *.iz                  - Generated bytecode caches (if built)

playground/
└── README.md          - WASM playground build notes

tests/
├── succeed/            - Passing golden tests (.kip + .out + optional .in)
├── fail/               - Failing golden tests (.kip + .err)
└── repl/               - REPL interaction tests (.repl)

c/
├── morphology.c        - Foma glue (C)
└── morphology.h        - Foma glue headers

vendor/
└── trmorph.fst        - TRmorph transducer

Testing

Tests are in tests/succeed/ (expected to pass) and tests/fail/ (expected to fail). The test suite also runs a basic kip-lsp roundtrip if kip-lsp is on PATH or KIP_LSP_BIN is set.

Morphological Analysis

Kip uses TRmorph for Turkish morphological analysis. When a word has multiple possible parses (e.g., "takası" could be "taka + possessive" or "takas + accusative"), Kip carries all candidates through parsing and resolves ambiguity during type checking.

For intentionally ambiguous words, use an apostrophe to force a specific parse: taka'sı vs takas'ı.

License

See LICENSE file.