Affanonic
| Affanonic | |
| Period | c. -200 YP |
| Spoken in | Affalinnei |
| Total speakers | unknown |
| Writing system | unknown |
| Classification | Isles languages Affanonic |
| Typology | |
| Basic word order | V-last, topic-comment |
| Morphology | fusional/agglutinating |
| Alignment | NOM-ACC |
| Credits | |
| Created by | Basilius |
Affanonic, the language of the Affanons, belongs to the Isles family. Around -200 YP it was the dominant language in the Kingdom of Affalinnei, situated on the Affalinnei Peninsula on the southern coast of NE Peilaš, west of the area where Lotoka was spoken. Affanonic is considered the first language of the Isles family whose speakers contacted the continental nations of Peilaš.
Genealogy
- Proto-Isles (c. -2000 YP)
- Affanonic (c. -200 YP)
Features
Some phonetic features of Affanonic that distinguish it from most of the other Isles languages (e. g. front rounded vowels and restrictions on consonant clusters) are often cited as Sprachbund traits uniting Affanonic with the neighboring Lotoka and Doroh.
The morphological system of Affanonic is peculiar in combining near-total erosion of inflection in verbs with sophisticated nominal morphology: the language is traditionally described as having 31 cases in singular and plural (the actual number of forms being still greater since one of the traditional "cases", the substantivized genitive, is in fact a derived noun with complete declensional paradigm of its own).
The most notable feature of Affanonic verb is a consequential opposition of "lexical perfectives" to "lexical imperfectives" based on semantic telicity. The verbal paradigm is rich in analytical forms, both finite and non-finite.
The syntax of Affanonic is rather conservative, mostly preserving the final position of the finite verb in a clause and discourse-oriented ordering of the nominal constituents which were characteristic of Proto-Isles.
Names
The word “Affanonic” is derived from affanon, self-designation, 'an (ethnic) Affanon, a person of Affanonic ethnicity', which is a synchronically transparent compound based on affa 'Eastern' and non 'person'.
See also