Alpatho-Hirtic languages: Difference between revisions

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==Typology==

===Grammar===

Grammatically speaking, Oronian languages show a large variety. Here are some of the typical grammatical features of these languages:

*case system in nouns (Carpathian also declines its adjectives); cases are marked with suffixes (usually agglutinatively, except for Alpian). The number of cases is different in each language:

**Baaye: 3 cases, 4 in articles

**Vaand: 4 cases, (7 if including case-like suffixes)

**West Carpathian: 11 cases

**East Carpathian: 13 cases (15 if to include nonstandard cases)

**South Carpathian: 9 cases

**Hirtya: 8 or 9 cases depending on dialect

*nominative case always ends in a vowel (or ended in case of Alpian) or a derivative suffix

*plural number if often formed with an addition of an infix

*location of an object is indicated via a special locative suffix in various cases (or postpositions as in Baaye)

*a lack of grammatical gender in nouns, personal endings and even pronouns

*different roots for some positive and negative verbs (like East Carpathian ''šammet/ehčet'' "to see"/"not to see")

*use of possessive suffixes, expressing possession via genitive

*several plural (and dual for Hirtya) markers, like -j (-i), -k, -n/-ng. In Carpatian however only a few words have other markers than -k

*the concepts like "to be", "to have", "to do", "to wish" and some others are represented by suffixes attached to an object of a sentence

*nouns, used with a numeral, are singular if they refer to things which form a single group (Vaand ''gou jies'' ("three years", literally "three year")

===Phonology===

Phonology is very different among three groups. In spite of this, there are still some common features:

*large vowel inventory with distinct long and short vowel quality (except for South Carpathian, which instead has reduced vs full vowel contrast)

*vowel harmony is absent or residual in all the modern languages but was fully present in their older stages without any neutral vowel (except for Proto-Alpian which kept '''i''' neutral)

*various diphthongs which alter with monophthongs (usually long vowels) when declining. In Alpian this turned into ablaut and spread onto most vowels. In South Carpathian this feature is residual and almost disappeared

*lack of phonologically contrastive tone (Hirtya preserves a glottal stop after a vowel which had a glottalization, Old Carpathian dialects had some tonal distinctions). All the languages, except Hirtian have a non-phonemic stress on a first syllable, but their ansestral languages all had tones and moveable stress patterns. Hirtya still preserves some of these patterns

*consonant contrast or gradation which remain to the greatest degree only in West and East Carpathian and to a lesser extend in Alpian. Hirtya has a consonant alteration in derivation of nouns and adjectives, while South Carpathian lost it almost entirely

*palatalization was lost only in Alpian probably under the influence of Old German or a different Indo-European language spoken in that area previously. However it is inconsistent among different languages and even among dialects, which means, that palatalization was weak and depended on a vowel quality.

===Lexicography===

A basic Proto-Oronaic vocabulary, consisting of words for family members (mother, sister, son), body parts (head, heart, tooth, eye), nature objects(star, fire, water, stone, branch), basic verbs (go, live, fall, see, hear, know) and pronouns (I, you, who), numerals two and three, can be reconstructed, but many of these words lack regular phonetic correspondences due to a large timescale of the proto-language and a small number of credible materials on the Hirtya language.

===Comparison===

[[Category:Language families]]

Alpatho-Hirtic languages: Difference between revisions

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