Proto-Flewtish

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Proto-Flewtish
Created byAggelos Tselios
Era2300–1500 BCE
  • Proto-Flewtish
Proto-Flewtish Urheimat.png
Proto-Flewtish Urheimat. The exact borders are obviously unknown, but are assumed to be these due to other languages in the area.
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Proto-Flewtish is the reconstructed common ancestor to all the Flewtish dialects today, spoken somewhere in the southeast of Russia and northern parts Mongolia, all the way to Kamchatka. Since Flewtish is made up of a number of dialects with regional variations, the reconstruction is done by comparing the dialectal "extremes" within the spoken area, usually Kvuppeg Fletwish in Eastern Finland and Chukwan Flewtish near the Ukhta river. It is hypothesized to have been spoken between 2300 to 1500BC, when the first migrations to northwest Eurasia began.

As the Flewtish speakers reached modern day Finland and the Arkhangelsk oblast, their language became the lingua franca of the area, wiping out the local languages that existed there. Due to the harsh conditions of the area, along with the socio-linguistic differences of different areas (eg. Turkic and Uralic tribes often conquered Flewtish-speaking areas by force, creating a new adstratum), Flewtish started differentiating into a series of dialects. The most distant one, Kvuppeg Flewtish (Spoken in Eastern Finland, specifically around the city Kuumu) is still spoken today, after 4000 years, with over 100.000 speakers.

To indicate whether a term is reconstructed, an asterisk (*) is used, eg *ʔanák, *qenpua and *-mep.

History

Proto-Flewtish was initially a series of closely related dialects spoken in the far east of what is today China, Russia, and a slight bit of Mongolia. It's history before that is completely unknown. During the late 14th century BCE, following harsh winters, raids from other tribes in the area, and the need for a better climate, Proto-Flewtish speakers started a conquest in the entirety of Siberia. By the time they reached what is now south Yakutia, they were well aware of speakers of other popular proto-languages (for example Proto-Turkic, Proto-Uralic and Proto-Indo-European), and so, they decided that the best idea would be to move westwards until they reached the sea.

Phonology

Proto-Flewtish is generally agreed to have had the following consonants in it, with the exception of the velar fricatives which may've been introduced later from aspirated stops, similar to Greek and other languages. The language possibly didn't differentiate between aspirated and non-aspirated consonants directly; Rather, consonants became aspirated only when they weren't within a consonant cluster and were followed by back or mid vowels.

The list of phonemes below may appear significantly larger than for most languages, due to the amount of dialects of Flewtish since the ancient years. Regardless, the existence of *o, *e and the velar fricatives seem questionable: They only appear in a few dialects relatively recently and only under rare circumstances, hence they may have been missing from Proto-Flewtish.

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Palat. Velar Uvular Glot.
unv. vce. unv. vce. vce. unv. vce. unv. vce. unv.
Nasal *m *n *ɲ *ŋ
Ejectives *p’
Stops *p *pʰ *b *bʰ *t *tʰ *d *dʰ *k *kʰ *g *gʰ *q
Fricatives *f *v *s *z *j *x *h
Liquids *l

Vowels

Vowels, on the other hand, are more complicated: There are 8 vowels reconstructed within Proto-Flewtish, but Modern Flewtish only has 6 (And some dialects have a schwa as well). In addition, the phonotactics of Proto-Flewtish indicate that nasal vowels did exist at some point, but were lost early in the first migrations.

Front Center Back
rnd/unr. unr. unr.
Close *y *yː *i *iː *u uː
Mid *e *eː *ə *əː *o *oː
Open *a *aː

Stress

Proto-Flewtish was either a tonal (Each syllable had a specific tone) or a pitch accent (Change in the pitch of a syllable was used to indicate stress), like Modern Flewtish. The former is less likely as no traces of it remain in the language apart from vowel length.

Grammar

Syntax

Modern day Flewtish has a very weak, almost non-existent distinction between verbs. This is a relatively late evolution, as Proto-Flewtish included much more extensive verb inflection. Still, the use of pronouns before verbs to indicate the subject is a recent addition of the southern dialects, exactly due to the weak distinction between a verb and an object. As a result, Proto-Flewtish was probably less of a polysynthetic language and slightly closer to an analytical one, where the most conservative dialects still lean towards.

Animation distinction & Gender

Most Flewtish dialects have preserved a system of "animacy agreement", similar to how genders work in IE languages. The actual usage may vary, but in general, if the object of the sentence is animate, or/and the verb of the sentence involves showing animacy, all three parts of the sentence must take an animate suffix to indicate the sentence talks about something that is alive. Given that, Proto-Flewtish is reconstructed to have differentiated between animate and inanimate nouns, and, as a result, may have developed genders early on that survive to this form. The exact way they worked isn't yet understood, but it's assumed to have been similar to Proto-Indo-European.

Morphology and inflection

Proto-Flewtish had a series of root words, from where it derived most of its vocabulary. The vocabulary section includes some of these. The combining of roots to form new words is the main source of roughly 80% of the reconstructed vocabulary and 88% of the modern Flewtish vocabulary, excluding lexical borrows. As such, Proto-Flewtish was most likely a polysynthetic language, or an agglutinative one.

As a polysynthethic language, inflection for most grammatical aspects was done using affixes, usually a syllable (Or even a plain consonant sometimes). This is preserved in all but the western Flewtish dialects. For example, the sentence "I would like to buy a bed" in Flewtish is "фала̄жконкроватўльгѡо", composed of the following morphemes:

фал- (Indefinite article, prefixed into the word)
а̄ж- (To wish)
кон- (Indicates a wish (Not the verb itself))
кроват- (Bed)
ўль- (To buy)
гѡо- (I, used to indicate the subject of the verb)

Nonetheless, Proto-Flewtish did have a system of apophony present for indicating tenses. Unlike PIE, Proto-Flewtish changed the pitch (And as a result, often the length) of a syllable to show whether an action is ongoing or not. Combined with the reconstructed affixes *-mep, *opʰ- and *-xep, Proto-Flewtish contained as many as 12 tenses.

Noun cases

For Proto-Flewtish, 11 cases have been reconstructed. Cases in Flewtish are equivalent to English prepositions, however the ablative case is reconstructed to have had an independent morpheme outside the word to indicate whether the object was moving or not.

Proto-Flewtish grammatical cases
Case name Proto-Flewtish suffix Descendants
Genitive *t-, *-te(n) *-d, *-den
Accusative *-m -n
Locative *-mu -mu
Vocative *-he Kvuppeg Flewtish -ej
Adessive *-no Old Flewtish -on
Dative *e-, *-zeɣ (e(t)-), -se(g~k)
Ablative (*un-) *-s on, -s
Essive -ziɣ -i
Translative *-ot Kvuppeg Flewtish -ot
Intrative *pv- -pob (ṕ-), -pop
Superessive *o-, *-on (Merged with the locative)

Vocabulary

A series of words have been reconstructed through verified cognates in most Flewtish dialects. The IPA is used to denote the phonemic values of these words. The double "greater than" signs mean the meaning hasn't changed. Finally, the words take a hyphen in the end, to indicate that they are usually used with another morpheme (As Flewtish is a polysynthetic language):

Numerals

Proto-Flewtish numerals
Proto-Flewtish Modern Flewtish English
*zârg Sal One
*ʔɘwǘn Āy Two
*déjɘn Degn Three
*zàsp Sax Four
*ndôjɘn Dogn Five
*ʔávɘp Awepp Six
*ʔévə Ewe Seven
*jüsqǘ Eight
*ʔanák Nakk Nine
*kərbùsp Karposht Ten
*let- loð- To count
*liqa- lik- To add
*teva- ṫa- To remember days

Kinship

Kinship terms in Proto-Flewtish
Proto-Flewtish Modern Flewtish English
*bʰəberp vetrep Father
*mɘma mama Mother
*qonʔjop kongop Brother / sister
*ʔɘvobʰə(berp) ewovep Grandfather
*ʔɘvomɘ(ma) ewoma Grandmother
*zeve sive Son
*zevta sifa Daughter
*qenpua kepwa Cousin

Food

As Flewtish speakers lived a hunter-gatherer nomadic lifestyle, they had a series of words for hunting activities. Due to their extensive contact with Turkic and Mongolic tribes during that era, many of these words survive only in older attestations or Kvuppeg Flewtish (The most conservative dialect).

Food and related terms in Proto-Flewtish
Proto-Flewtish Modern Flewtish English
*otvəp Kvuppeg Flewtish twäpp Food
*gʰonf ɣoń Water
*kiqegp Old Flewtish 𐰚𐰃𐰤𐰍𐰅𐰯 (kingep) Wheat
*qovɘp kwepp Meat
*zqapvo- skaṕ- To cook/to bake
*jepve- ɣeṕ- To eat
*zlepve- sceṕ- To drink
*qpoʔge- Kvuppeg Flewtish qog- To go for hunting
*akpɘv- akeṕ- Hunt
*ypvoq- uṕog- To chase an animal
*jeʔkt- ɣegd- To find a lost animal

Animals

Animal terms in Proto-Flewtish
Proto-Flewtish Descendants English
*darqop dakrop Tiger
*nepovɘ neoṕe Bear
*qpevɘg peweg Dog
*mɘu mau (?) Cat
*mvaʔdɘrqop Kvuppeg Flewtish ḿadäkpo Kitty
*dʰreɣup ðejup Hedgehog
*ʔikʰop (?) ȳhop Horse
*kepvɘʔlo Chukwa Flewtish кепьло (keṕlo) Worm
*ɣuvog juwo Bull
*qɘɣog ḱewo Chicken
*pʰiɣuvog Kvuppeg Flewtish fijuwo Ox
*xetʔmɘ xetuḿ (Siberian) salmon
*detpo- tepo- To domesticate

General Vocabulary

Proto-Flewtish Vocabulary
Proto-Flewtish Modern Flewtish descendants English meaning
*kwə gwo, -gwo (>>) Indicating 1st person
*sy tu, -tu (>>) Indicating 2nd person
*ytwog uvok, -(j)üg (>>) Indicating 3rd person
*aɣmoː aŋɣo- (To restock) To collect, to amass
*əɣhop- eğōp- (>>) Water
*emhôp- eɱō- (Conscience) Thought
*kʱəm- ɣem- (Sea) Body of water
*awɘtʰ- aveð- (>>) Fire
*gyməp ege (>>) Near(by)
*senh- seň- (To see) Eye
*tʰem- eđm- (>>) Day
*edʰxmo- eðmog- (>>) Cold
*kloŋ- glugn- (>>, language) Tongue
*ndipʰ- diṕ- (>>) To give