Proto-Northeastern
| To Be Continued... NeonFox is still working on this article. The contents are incomplete and likely to undergo changes. |
| Proto-Northeastern | |
| Period | c. -6000 YP |
| Spoken in | Northeastern Bay region |
| Total speakers | |
| Writing system | none |
| Classification | Northeastern languages |
| Typology | |
| Basic word order | VSO |
| Morphology | fusional |
| Alignment | NOM-ACC |
| Credits | |
| Created by | Neon Fox |
Of uncertain date, Proto-Northeastern had already split into an entire language family by the time the first Mediundic peoples arrived around the Northeast Bay of Tuysáfa. It was probably not a direct daughter of the first Primundic language of the area, given the time lapse of some seven thousand years between the Primundic and Mediundic migrations--more than enough time to produce Earth's Indo-European family, from Hindi to Russian to Italian to Gaelic.
Akana natives would look at PNe as equivalent to, say, the more plausible reconstructions of Nostratic: the only way for them to get at it is by reconstructing from reconstructions. It was spoken by the Cɛbaun Kīn.
Phonetics
The stops of PNe have a three-way contrast: voiceless, voiceless aspirated, and voiced. Aspirated consonants are indicated with dotted letters: ṗ ṫ k̇
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | m | n | ŋ | |||
| Stops | p ṗ b | t ṫ d | k k̇ g | |||
| Fricatives | f | s | c [ç] | h | ||
| Trill | r | |||||
| Approx. | w | l | y [j] |
PNe has rather a lot of vowels--nine of them, each with phonemically distinct long and short forms. Long vowels have a macron: ɛ̄ All vowels use their IPA symbols.
| Front Round | Back Unround | Back Round |
|---|---|---|
| i | ɯ | u |
| e | ɤ | o |
| ɛ | a | ɔ |
Possible dipthongs are ai, au, īa, ūa, ūi, ēu, ɛu, ɯ̄a, ɤ̄i, ɔi, and oi.
In theory, the syllable structure of PNe is simple, (C)V(C). However, matters are complicated by the language's extreme permissiveness in consonant clusters, which may take the place of any simple consonant. Aspirated stops, h, w, and y may not appear word-finally, and no cluster may contain both a voiced and an unvoiced stop. Other than that, pretty much anything goes. Two-consonant clusters are the most common, as in twālti, "rabbit", but three-consonant clusters are not uncommon and there are even four-consonant clusters in a fair number of words: swenṫsk, "knife blade", is an easy example.
Stress falls on the first syllable with a long vowel, if any, and on the last syllable of the root otherwise.
Nouns
Nouns in PNe belong to one of four genders, commonly referred to as human, animate, created, and other. The human gender includes any being capable of thinking, including humans, spirits, and ghosts. Some domestic animals are also included in this gender. The animate gender includes other animals, plants, and some natural forces such as fire and storms. The created gender is composed of items made or significantly altered by humans: tools, substances such as string and cloth, buildings, etc. The other gender, as its name implies, is a catchall for everything else, including natural features and abstract concepts.
Rather as in English, there are only two cases, nominative and accusative. However, whereas English's cases are vestiges marked only on pronouns, the PNe cases still apply to all nouns. (An interesting quirk of this system caused some confusion in early reconstructions: in the human and animate genders, the least-marked form of the word is the nominative singular, but the accusative singular is the least-marked in the created and other genders. This may point to a split-ergative system at some earlier point in the language's development, but if so there are no other traces of it remaining.)
| Nom Sing | Nom Pl | Acc Sing | Acc Pl | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "ancestor" | ŋowl | ŋowl-un | ŋowl-ɛ | ŋowl-ad |
| "natural spirit" | yāma | yāma-un | yāma-(r)ɛ | yāmā-d |
| "stag" | rɤ̄in | rɤ̄in-is | rɤ̄in-a | rɤ̄in-ɯn |
| "rabbit" | twālti | twālt-īs | twāltī-a | twālti-(r)ɯn |
| "knife blade" | swenṫsk-u | swenṫsk-(a)p | swenṫsk | swenṫsk-ot |
| "spindle" | kmastē-u | kmastē-p | kmastē | kmastē-(r)ot |
| "forest" | alɔis-o | alɔis-t | alɔis | alɔis-ɔt |
| "cave" | casfe-(r)o | casfe-t | casfe | casfe-(r)ɔt |
There are a number of phonological adaptations visible on this table. When the final vowel of a noun matches the initial vowel of an ending, the vowel is lengthened. Vowels that can combine to form a legal dipthong do so, and if they'd form a legal dipthong with the first vowel lengthen it does. When there's no way to produce a legal dipthong, insert an epenthetic R before the case ending. Finally, as 4-consonant clusters appear to be as far as PNe is willing to go, endings that would produce 5-consonant clusters are instead preceded by A.
Pronouns
Verbs
The verbal system of PNe is heavily aspect-based. Tense qua tense is either completely inferred or indicated by using explicit time words: ṗalt os "I walk" vs ṗalt os lilɯl "I walked yesterday."