Proto-Oronaic: Difference between revisions
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| (č /t͡ʃ/)<ref group=note> dissapears in Alpian, except for *ačə<sub>3</sub>, in which it irregularly gives ch /x/.</ref> | | (č /t͡ʃ/)<ref group=note> dissapears in Alpian, except for *ačə<sub>3</sub> ("liver"), in which it irregularly gives ch /x/.</ref> | ||
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Revision as of 09:22, 4 July 2018
Proto-Oronaic is the reconstructed ancestral language of the Oronaic language family. The exact time, when the language has been spoken, is unknown, but various estimates give the dates from 5000 BCE to 2000 BCE, after which it differentiated into other proto-languages. The exact location of the area of Urheimat is not known, and various proposals have been suggested, but the usually assumed areas are the Valdai Hills territory and plains between the Republic of Karelia and the Arkhangelsk Oblast in Russia.
According to the traditional tree view, Proto-Oronaic diverged into Proto-Alpathian and Proto-Hirtian, hence the other name of the family - Alpatho-Hirtic. However, several attempts to reconstruct Proto-Alpathian were made and these reconstructions differs little from Proto-Oronaic, mostly because of a lack of data, despite the different methods used. Thus it is hard to tell if Proto-Alpathian existed at all and whether it may or may not be separate from Proto-Oronaic. Other modern reconstructions of the split of Proto-Oronaic have three branches (Alpian, Carpathian and Hirtian), while lexical similarities between the first two branches are explaned via geographic proximity and contacts.
Phonology
Like most of the proto-languages, reconstructions of Proto-Oronaic are traditionally not written in IPA but in different alphabet, that can vary in different reconstructions, sometimes followed by the IPA equivalents between slashes (because it is a phonemic reconstruction). The exact pronunciation of these phonemes is unknown, but some approximations were made, based on modern descendants. However, different scholars have different IPA representations, for example the phoneme ś is often analized as a voiceless alveolar stop (similar to English /t/ sound, but not aspirated), since it regularly gives /t/ in Alpian and /t͡s/ or /t/ after back vowels in some Hirtian dialects.
Vowels
Proto-Oronaic had a large vowel inventory, because of vowel harmony and a distinct vowel length, but in non-initial unstressed syllables of most words these vowels were often reduced and probably centralized, and thus merged after the split of the proto-language. Here is a reconstruction of stressed vowels, which did not undergo any reduction.
| Front | Back | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | |||||
| Short | Long | Short | Long | Short | Long | Short | Long | |
| Close | i /i/ | ii /iː/ | ü /y/ | üü /yː/ | ï /ɯ/ | ïï /ɯː/ | u /u/ | uu /uː/ |
| Mid | e /e/ | ee /eː/ | ö /ø/ | öö /øː/ | ë /ɤ/[note 1] | ëë (/ɤː/)[note 2] | o /o/ | oo /o/ |
| Open | ä /æ/ | ää /æː/ | a /ɑ/ | a /ɑː/ | å (/ɒ/)[note 3] | åå (/ɒː/)[note 4] | ||
- ^ this vowels is often analized as mid central rounded vowel /ɵ/.
- ^ could be an allophone of *ïï /ɯː/ before velar consonants as it is distinct only in Hirtian, while Carpathian /ɤː/ is of secondary development.
- ^ not distinct from *a /ɑ/, except for Hirtian.
- ^ possibly an allophone of *aa /ɑː/ before velar consonants.
Sometimes a low back rounded *å /ɒ/ is reconstructed in place of *a, since it regularly gives /o/ in Carpathian. As a separate phoneme *å can be reconstructed on the basis of Hirtian, where it does not change into y /ɨ/ or remains a /ɑ/. In other branches it simply merged with *a. Diphthongs probably did not exist in Proto-Oronaic itself, but appeared very early in its descendents.
Vowel inventory in non-stressed syllables was restricted: only three reduced vowels were present, marked as *ə1, *ə2, *ə3 and sometimes also *ə4, which probably was an allophone of *ə3 The actual realization of them is a question of debate: Vowel harmony also applied to those reduced vowels with *ə1-*ə2, *ë-*ə4 and *ə3-*ə4 contrasts with *ə2 being neutral to both *ə3 and *ə4. Some scholars analize them as following:
| Central | ||
|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | |
| Close-mid | ə1 /ɘ/ | |
| Mid | ə2 /ə/ | |
| Open-mid | ə3 /ɐ~ɜ/ | ə4 /ɞ/ |
Some models propose *ë /ɵ/ in non-initial syllables to actually be a reduced vowel, since it sometimes contrasts ə4 in words with rounded vowels.
Consonants
The consonant system was also larger than in modern Oronaic languages, except for Hirtya. Like modern Alpian languages it had a voiced-voiceless contrast as well as a plain-geminated one. Palatalization was a phonemic feature already in proto-Oronaic, but it was not widespread and palatalized consonants were present only in a few reconstructed words. Some scholars claim palatalized consonants actually being consonant clusters with /j/, but it has not yet been proved for palatalized sonorants. There is a theory, that has become especially popular nowadays, which implies the contrast between dental and alveolar sounds (at least in plosives and fricatives), based on the outcome of these consonants in different branches. Both traditional and new theories are represented in tables below:
| Bilabial | Dental | Palatalized | Postalveolar | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | ń /nʲ ~ ɲ/ | ŋ /ŋ/ | |||
| Plosive | Voiceless | p /p/ | t /t/ | k /k/ | ˀ /ʔ/ | ||
| Voiced | b /b/ | d /d/ | g /g/ | ||||
| Fricatives | s /s/ | ś /sʲ ~ ɕ/ | š /ʃ~ʂ/[note 1] | h /h ~ ɦ/ | |||
| Affricate | c /t͡s/ | ć /t͡sʲ ~ t͡ɕ/ | (č /t͡ʃ/)[note 2] | ||||
| Lateral | l /l/ | ľ /lʲ ~ ʎ/ | |||||
| Trill | r /r/ | ||||||
| Approximant | w /w/ | j /j/ | |||||
| Bilabial | Lamino- dental |
Apico- alveolar |
Palatalized | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n̪/ | ń /nʲ ~ ɲ/ | ŋ /ŋ/ | ||
| Plosive | p /p/ | t /t̻/ | t̺ /t̺/ | k /k/ | ˀ /ʔ/ | |
| Sibilants | s /s̻/ | s̺ /s̺/ | h /h ~ ɦ/ | |||
| Spirants | b /β/ | d /ð/ | g /ɣ/ | |||
| Affricate | c /ts̻/ | c̺ /ts̺// | (ć /t͡sʲ ~ t͡ɕ/) | |||
| Lateral | l /l/ | ľ /lʲ ~ ʎ/ | ||||
| Trill | r /r/ | |||||
| Approximant | w /w/ | j /j/ |
Phonotactics
Like in Proto-Uralic and some other proto-languages initial or final consonant clusters were not allowed, so words could begin and end with a maximum of one consonant only with an exception of few words in Carpathian, which are native or of unexplained origin (like West Carpathian stilli - "to hunt"). Inside word roots, only clusters of two consonants were permitted. The consonants *j and *w could not occure before a consonant cluster, meaning they were not treated as a part of diphthongs like modern Oronaic languages do. Geminate consonants existed and behaved like consonant clusters. These geminate consonants altered with simple ones in a derivative morphological processes. When, due to suffixation, consonant clusters, that were not permitted, arose, reduced vowels were inserted according to vowel harmony between two consonants. But because almost all the reduced vowels were elided in Hirtian, new consonants clusters just simplified, resulting in new alterations.
Consonant gradation may have occurred already in Proto-Oronaic, but, if existed at all, it probably applied only to plosives and some consonant clusters. It developed and spread in all the three branches but later reduced significantly in modern Alpian and Hirtian languages.
Prosody
Unlike Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Uralic, Proto-Oronaic had tones, similar to Yeniseian languages or to Mandarin Chinese. However, there was no contrastive stress as in Indo-European; usually only the first syllable of the root was invariably stressed, while unstressed syllables underwent reduction and later elision in Hirtian or consonant alterations in Alpian and Carpathian. Four tones can be reconstructed in some words. These are the rising tone , marked with an acute accent (á), falling tone, marked with a grave accent (à), low-rising, or falling-rising tone, marked with a caron (ǎ), and an abrupt, or high-falling tone, marked with a circumflex (â or àˀ). The default or neutral tone is not marked. Most word reconstructions do not use any diacritics to mark tones as the exact tones are unknown, since no modern descendants are tonal, except for some Hirtian dialects, which distinguish high and non-high pitch accent, but it is mostly an innovation. There were some tone alterations as well, for example: *köȍˀcü "the moon", which gave keahci in West Carpathian and сю’ə (śu’ə) in Hirtya, had a falling or a high-falling tone, but *köőˀ-tä̌gə1 "moonlight" resulted in kiettäi ("shining") in West Carpathian and сюо’т (śuo’т) in Hirtya.