User:Frrurtu/Sandbox

Phonology

Consonants

Proto-Rttirrian had a fairly small consonant inventory; however, it was much more flexible than its daughter languages with regards to clusters. The following consonants are reconstructed:

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Retroflex	Pharyngeal?
Nasal	*m /m/	*n /n/			*rn /ɳ/
Plosive	*p /p/ *b /b/	*t /t/ *d /d/		*k /k/ *g /g/	*rt /ʈ/ *rd /ɖ/
Fricative	*f /ɸ/ *v /β/	*s /s/ *z /z/
Affricate		*ch /t͡ʃ/
Approximant	*w /w/		*y /j/		*rl /ɭ/ *rr /ɻ/	*l1 *l2

• The exact pronunciation of the consonants transcribed as l₁ and l₂ is unknown.

• Among the descendants of Proto-Rttirrian, these two sounds survived only in Proto-South-Rttirrian, where they merged into a single phoneme, */ʟ/. That phoneme corresponds to /l/ and many instances of the low tone in Gaju, and corresponds to /w/ and diphthongal /u/ in Rttirri. In all other descendants of Proto-Rttirrian, l₁ and l₂ disappeared as consonants and survive only in their effects on surrounding vowels.
• Some linguists posit that they were pharyngeal approximants [ħ] and [ʕ], pointing to the fact that they generally had a backing effect on surrounding vowels in branches other than South Rttirrian. Others note that these backing effects were not uniform, and suggest that only l₂ was pharyngeal while l₁ was something like the velarized lateral [ɫ], or a lateral fricative [ɬ~ɮ].
• Evidence that l₁ was some type of fricative comes from the fact that the vowel a was allophonically raised when adjacent to f, v, s, and z, as well as l₁, but the relevance of this observation is disputed. The realization of the vowel u was not affected by either consonant, suggesting that they were probably not velar.

Vowels

Proto-Rttirrian had a simple three-vowel system:

	Front	Central	Back
High	*i /i/		*u /u/
Low		*a /ä/

• The low vowel a was probably fronted and raised allophonically to something like [æ~e] adjacent to fricatives and l₁.
• The high back vowel u was probably lowered allophonically to something like [ʊ~ɔ] adjacent to velar consonants.

Grammar

Proto-Rttirrian had a moderate degree of fusional inflection.

Verbs

The following verb endings were used:

	Person
	1st		2nd		3rd
	Sing.	Pl.	Sing.	Pl.	Sing.		Pl.
					Anim.	Inan.	Anim.	Inan.
Past	*l2an-
Present	na- *na-	ma- *mam-	kβ- *akf-	tsa- tsam-	gʲa- *gyu-		ʈa- *rtam-
Future
Tense #4

• The exact function of the fourth tense is unknown; it may have been a perfect aspect, an aorist, or something else entirely. It evolved into two verbal moods in Proto-South-Rttirrian and took on various tense and aspect functions in other descendants.
• An i- was used to begin the stems of transitive verbs. By analogy, this would cause object pronouns to be affixed to the verb in Proto-South-Rttirrian.

Auxiliary verbs

Ample auxiliary verbs were used. Some of these took on chronological meanings and came to supplant the original tense inflections. Similarly, certain past-tense and future-tense verb prefixes would become auxiliary verbs.

Nouns

Pronouns were suffixed with *-i for the accusative.

See also

• Gaju
• Rttirri
• Verse:Rttirria