Lakovic languages

Not to be confused with the Lahob languages.

Lexicon of Proto-Lakovic roots
Swadesh lists for the Lakovic languages
Lakovic languages/Sketchbook

Lakovic
Created by	–
Geographic distribution	Originally Bjeheond, Talma and Txapoalli; today worldwide
Linguistic classification	One of Tricin's primary language families
Proto-language	Proto-Lakovic
Subdivisions	Naengic Häskä Tseer Tumhanic Txapoallian Lakovic Pfiunic Tsrovesh

The Lakovic languages (/ləˈkoʊvɪk/ lə-KOH-vik; Windermere: fi imbrits Lăcof Bjeheondian: [vɪ (ʔ)ɪmˈbrits ləˈkaov]) are a major Trician language family, originally native to Bjeheond. The family is inspired by Semitic, Mon-Khmer and Austronesian languages.

The family is named after *läkoF, the PLak reconstructed word for 'human'. *läkoF is the etymon of Windermere Wen Lăchua '(poetic) Wen Dămea', Tseer lakow 'free', and several other ethnonyms of Lakovic-speaking peoples such as Dak'ox. Template:Windermere sidebar

Todo

Language with dissimilated reduplicated plurals/verbs

some confusion between derivational affixes and trigger/applicatives in Ashanic

an ergative Lakovic language

a Txapoallian Lakovic language with a possessed classifier system

Urheimat

The Proto-Lakovic urheimat is thought to have been Bjeheond, based on the distribution of the family and reconstructed Proto-Lakovic vocabulary for Bjeheondian fauna and flora and tropical rainy and dry seasons.

Phylogeny

Most scholars agree on the following major branches:

• Ashanic
  • Classical Windermere
    • Modern Windermere
    • Sătmașian
    • Trây
    • Pradiul
  • Ciêng
• Tseeric
  • Classical Tseer
    • Modern Tseer
• Häskä
• Pfiunic
  • Tsăloșian
  • Pfiunian (Pseudo-Swiss German)
• Tumhanic
  • Schong
  • Æ
  • Wiebian
• Txapoallian Lakovic
  • Dakʼox (Ejective-y, tonal language)
• Tsrovesh

Phonology

The reconstructed phonology of PLak

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Domed	Palatal	Velar	Laryngeal
Nasal		*m /m/	*n /n/			*ŋ /ŋ/
Plosive	voiced	*b /b/	*d /d/			*g /ɡ/
	voiceless	*p /p/	*t /t/			*k /k/	*Q, *ʔ /ʔ/
Affricate			*c /t͡s/	*ć /t͡ʂ/
Fricative		*F /ɸ/	*s /s/	*ś /ʂ/	*š /ʃ/		*X, *H
Resonant		*w /w/	*l /l/	*r /r/	*y /j/

Little is known about the laryngeals *Q, *H, *X. Some conjectured realizations are:

• Q = /ʔ/ or /q/
• H = /ʁ/ (causes pharyngealized vowels in Æ)
• X = /h/, /x/ or /ç/

The laryngeals may have developed allophones in different environments, leading to conditioned reflexes in daughter lnaguages.

Vowels

i u e o ä a

ä is thought to have been short /a/ or /ɐ/ while a was long /aː/.

Phonotactics

Proto-Lakovic was dominated by CV or CVC syllables. Some prefixes and infixes resulted in CC- initials.

Proto-Lakovic morphology

Should be less like Idavic/Netagin

Root structure

Roots consisted of a sequence of consonants plus an inherent vowel. There was schwebeablaut: the vowel could change position within the root. The roots could be of the form

1. biconsonantal roots alternating between CVC and CCV. Example: sep ~ spe 'to walk'
2. triconsonantal roots alternating between CCVC, CVCC, and CVCVC. Example: ptsun ~ putsn ~ putsun 'to live'
3. 4-consonant roots like cpalg ~ cplag 'to cry out' (Wdm. tspong 'to demand' and tsloc 'to cry out')

Statistically, biconsonantal roots in Lakovic are somewhat more common than in Semitic; triconsonantal roots are derived from biconsonantals via root extensions. One example is *Fedn "animal" and *Fdek "to inhabit", both derived from the root *Fed "to exist".

Various prefixes, infixes and suffixes were added to derive words. Some infixes had 2 allomorphs, either as an infix or as a prefix: C<əC>CVC or C-CVC/C-CVCC.

Three-consonant roots had 3 ablaut grades, traditionally called:

• Verbal grade: CCVC
• Nominal grade: CVCC
• Long nominal grade: CVCVC

The CVCC grade had some reflexes with either the first C assimilating into V or the second C (explain some words like muad, yar or -b, -d finals)

Weak roots

Weak roots such as *yriš 'to think' and *sapQ 'to pull' have irregularities in their allomorphs, like weak roots in Semitic. The weak consonants are y, w, H, and Q.

With week roots, either the verbal stem (e.g. yriš > riš) or the nominal stem (sap' > sap 'to pull, to drag') or both are shortened, and either drops or assimilates the weak consonant.

Nouns

Nouns were pluralized by total reduplication:

• lakof 'person' > lakof-lakof 'people'
• ptek 'flesh' > ptek-ptek 'a large quantity of flesh'

There was an honorific suffix -is/-s. The semantic shift from honorific to feminine was an areal feature of Talman Lakovic languages.

Nouns had no morphological case; genitive noun phrases were formed by concatenation.

Ashanic developed a new associative plural suffix -am, from PLak päm 'that; those' (the -am in Modern Windermere plural pronouns łănam, ănam).

Case markers

Case markers came before the noun:

• xu = direct case (the noun in focus)
• Hit = indirect case

Pronouns

Most branches of Lakovic show evidence for the following PLak pronouns:

• *riH = I
• *bäŋ = we (dual inclusive)
• *śen = thou
• *śens = thou (hon)
• *Qin = s/he
• *Qins = s/he (hon)

PLak had no plural pronouns; it made do with associative plurals or demonstratives instead.

Verbs and adjectives

Proto-Lakovic was a verb-heavy language: verbs contained enough information that a sentence could consist of just a verb, and context made sense of the meaning.

Verbs inflected for triggers, TAM, pluractionality, evidentiality, and gender agreement. Present-day Lakovic languages preserve these inflections to varying levels.

Gender

• wa- = honorific

TAM

• unmarked or li- = imperfective
• -H = perfective
• hem- = change of state for statives?
• various reduplifixes for other TAMs:
  • F(M)ä- = iterative
  • FaL- = intensive
  • ⟨iL⟩, qol-⟨iL⟩- almost X, X a little
  • saL- = inceptive
  • HenFa- = frequentative
  • taFi- = graduative
  • ongFa- = X for oneself, X in advance

Triggers

Triggers (giving the noun in the direct case specific semantic roles) were marked by adding infixes to the verbal grade of the root. Proto-Lakovic had eight triggers:

• agent trigger: unmarked?
• patient trigger: ⟨əp⟩
• destination trigger: ⟨əŋ⟩
• locative trigger: ⟨it⟩
• ablative/cause trigger: ⟨əm/nəm⟩
• instrument trigger: ⟨əg⟩
• benefactive trigger: ⟨əkəm⟩
• comitative trigger: ⟨lis⟩

In most branches (Ashanic, Tseeric, Tumhanic, Pfiunic, Häskä, Tsrovesh), the original trigger system became a set of derivational affixes, much like binyanim (originally marking voice) in Semitic languages. Txapoallian Lakovic reinterpreted the trigger system into a more head-marking, polysynthetic system. Only some modern Eta-Lakovic languages retain a trigger system today.

Nominalization

The most common ways to form deverbal nouns were:

• Using the nominal grade CVCC of the root
• The ⟨ay⟩ infix
• using instrument, place and agent affixes.

Derivational morphology

Schwebeablaut

Three-consonant roots had 3 ablaut grades, traditionally called:

• Verbal grade: CCVC
• Nominal grade: CVCC
• Long nominal grade: CVCVC

Root extensions

There is much evidence that the truly basic roots were CVC~CCV roots, and CVCC~CCVC roots were derived from CVC~CCV via suffixing a third root consonant.

• ngit = to happen
  • ngitw~ngtiw = new

Affixes

• ⟨-s⟩: honorific, nominalization
  • Source of breathy voice ablaut in Wdm.
• ⟨r⟩ prefix or infix: non-volitional or passive verbs
  • Ashanic *⟨àr⟩, Wdm. ⟨ră⟩, ⟨năr/măr⟩
• ⟨ay⟩ = deverbal noun
• ⟨ong⟩ = place noun
• ⟨X⟩ = agentive or instrument
  • Wdm root vowel breathiness
• ⟨aH⟩ = verb forming prefix or infix
  • Wdm initial voicing, sometimes also breathy root vowel
• biH- = agentive
  • Wdm. pă- + voicing (not productive)
  • Tseer ba-
• ha- = resultative (passive in Windermere)
• t- = intensive, denominals
  • Wdm. th- or t- (not productive)
• Qu- = intensive
  • Wdm. th-u-
• ya- = adjectivizer; from ya 'with'
  • Wdm. yă-, Tseer xi-, Häskä yə-
• f- = negative; the opposite or undoing of X
  • not productive in Wdm
  • Tseer ø-

Proto-Lakovic syntax

Proto-Lakovic had flexible word order, but the most common word order was VSO.

Triggers

• spe-H Hit Qopr-is Xu riH (walk-PFV IND height-FEM DIR 1SG) = I walked up high (neutral)
• s<əŋ>pe-H Hit riH Xu Qopris (<DEST>walk-PFV IND 1SG DIR high) = I walked up high (emphasis on "up high")

Copular sentences

Proto-Lakovic was zero-copula (different descendants use different etymologies for the copula).

This caused some triggers to be reinterpreted as noun-deriving affixes in some daughter languages. Demonstration by contrived example, with the instrument trigger:

p⟨ək⟩tuś Hit riH Hit Qin Xu məHokis.

⟨INST⟩stab IND 1SG IND 3SG.M DIR stone-F

I stabbed him with the stone.

was reinterpreted as something like "The stone was my stabbing-instrument [for piercing] him".

Sample text

The Round Table

PLak: ŋiHt ntor mangār se dak kaFt. "meH ra śenam?" dambic pin binta PN. mi qangFnung katkaat nåtaX qemrecal sen Hdān: "šruk day qatsHiw: dak manknas, tap day amHuc tramp, liw qatsalHiw, tak malHuc, n-dHon talak." "Ha-Hna meH ra, sru henFden grāt nataX? dambic pin binta PN. "Gaŋaq, pin Binta: cār bindik panratHaŋ, day Fanpsak pinkawantik nataX yaq pin grāt pi!" "qqaruy šaX-kaFt se caruŋ sen tapal panaw panaw." empsFŋim šaX pin kaFt pin binta PN.