Proto-Yeldhic

Proto-Yeldhic
PY
Created by	Jukethatbox
Reconstruction of	Yeldhic
Region	"Bauba", Quartenary Radael
Era	10,000 UH-3,000 UH
Lower-order reconstructions	Proto-Gadaïc Proto-Ilda-Maranösic Paleoyeldhic Proto-Ossic Proto-Ulmic

Proto-Yeldhic, often shortened to PY, is a reconstructed proto-language of the Yeldhic language family. It is the ultimate root of 86% of Talkochian languages, and is the equivalent of Proto-Indo-European in real life.

The proto-language originates in the work of Arnic linguist Môhwod ða-Téfir, who first formulated the Yeldha Language Theory, which proposed that many very different languages in Talkoch actually descended from one singular language family, which he called the Yeldhic language family after Ancient Yeldha, which he initially believed was the original source of the Yeldhic languages.

Although the theory was initially ridiculed, fellow Tiragii linguist and calligrapher Dól-Pŷçkevç began to find a lot of evidence supporting Téfir's theory. Eventually, Téfir was on his deathbed, and he doubled down on his theory by collaborating with Pŷçkevç as well as other prominent linguists to form the first version of Proto-Yeldhic. Shortly after Téfir's death, the Késkéanya Fûhraritat, the linguistic authority of his home country of Arnah, finally accepted the theory as "very probable".

The main evidence towards the Proto-Yeldhic hypothesis is mostly described in Téfir's initial work on the subject, wriṱen in Moshurian and published in Taráhus due to political instability in his home country, the Tezyém Yéleduhir. In short, Téfir observed that several morphological, phonemic and phonetic similarities could be found within his proposed Yeldhic family of languages.

Variations

The idea of a universal Yeldhic language was floated around for centuries, with the Ildan cosmopolitans, led by Iptor, first theorising a sort of "umbrella language"(vloskās danibāsku) in 1900 BH, so as to unite the many languages of Ilda and Maranösia.

As such, though Téfir's work is the most cited and the most detailed and probable, there are many variations of what one could consider an attempted "Proto-Yeldhic" language, both before and after Téfir.

Zeror's variation

While in the Ildasia secret society, Zeror came upon Iptor's work on the umbrella language, known as the Glossology(Ilda: vloskātia). Intrigued by the cosmopolitan's research, after further researching other languages, he wrote his own Glossology in 191 UH, further developing Iptor's original idea. However, Zeror, though talented, was also quite biased, and thus his Glossology was heavily inspired by Ilda, without really taking into account other languages, save for the reconstructed word here and there.

However, though his work was flawed, it did set the precedent for the development of Proto-languages in Radael. For example, conventions such as marking reconstructed words with an asterisk(*) originates in Zeror's Glossology, as well as even the entire concept of comparative reconstruction to find the original root of a word.

For example, the word *vudas, meaning "sheep", was reconstructed from Ilda usda and Vulgar Maranz vodvadas. The Téfir equivalent of the word is *ʕʷejtu. Though seemingly a radically different word, some aspects that Zeror noticed were factored in, such as a fricative at the beginning and a plosive before the final vowel.

Udas li Tasanqās

Here is the first sentence of Schleicher's fable in Zeror's Proto-Yeldhic:

Vudas, *ediq astama ketwe, aboldois tasanqās, idi ta lo tisinois *ōbeqe badugat, idi ta lo *kuntasolois *doṉsa gotuik li idi ta lo *kuntasolois tumuei *kitil.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Coronal		Dorsal		Glottal	Pharyngeal
				Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Velar	Palatal
Plosive		*p *b		*t *d		*k *g	*c		*ʕ, *ʕʷ
Nasal		*m		*n		*ŋ	*ñ
Fricative	pulmonic		*ð	*s *z	*š *ž	*x		*h
	palatalised			*ś *ź
(Lateral) Approximant				*l		*w	*j

Pharyngeals

Like in Proto-Indo-European, most Yeldhists believe that there were some sounds in Proto-Yeldhic that can not be directly attested from traditional comparative reconstruction. Currently, the only two sounds Yeldhists believe fall into this category are *ʕ, a voiced pharyngeal fricative, and *ʕʷ, its labialised counterpart. Some PY words use *ʕʷ, such as *ʕʷel, probably meaning "good" or "kind". The evidence for the theory is as follows:

• In Etzeá, the closest documented living relative to PY, the sounds /h/ and /w/ seem to be substitutes for sounds that originate in PY, which Yeldhists mostly believe probably corresponded to *ʕ and *ʕʷ.
• In the Ilda-Maranösic languages(Ilda and Maranz), PY words with *ʕ and *ʕʷ seem to have palatalised to form *j and *jw, such as in Proto-Ilda-Maranösic(PIM) *jwel(modern descendants are Ilda yuelas and Maranz jūell), from PY *ʕʷel, or PIM *jwéitu(modern descendants Ilda etos and Maranz wejot), from PY *ʕʷejtu.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	*i	*é	*u
Close-mid	*e		*o
Open		*a

Long vowels

Long vowels in PY are not very common among most branches of the Yeldhic language family, with the exception of the Gadaïc branch, which preserved long vowels in certain languages, like Psér, and Etzeá, the closest living relative to PY.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	*ī	*ḗ	*ū
Close-mid	*ē		*ō
Open		*ā

In other Yeldhic branches, long vowels were either shortened(as in the Paleoyeldhic languages) or omitted entirely(as in the Ulmic languages). Some examples are:

• PY *mēce "watershed"
  • Paleoyeldhic *meksi
    • Moshurian mesk
  • Etzeá mêtye
  • Proto-Ulmic *mce(n)
    • Ormå nncẽ
• PY *ɣōsan
  • Paleoyeldhic *hosan
    • Moshurian oźan
  • Etzeá hôzan
  • Proto-Ulmic *fsan
    • Ormå fsän

Deconsonantification

In many PY-derivative languages, many palatalised consonants, like *ś and *ź, were "deconsonantified", leaving only a voiced palatal approximant, *j. Thus, where there were (probably) palatalised consonants in PY, they were lost in descendant languages.

However, there is still some evidence for the existence of the palatalised consonants. For example:

• The palatalised consonants were preserved in Etzeá, though *ź split into two consonants: j [ʒ] and zz [zʲ].
• In Maranz, the consonant gh [j̥] seem to have been derived from Proto-Yeldhic *ś. This can be especially seen in the word for "four", ighin, which is derived from PY *wiśen.

Prosody

Stress

There is no generally agreed upon stress pattern for Proto-Yeldhic, as stress patterns are so varied among PY descendants that scholars generally agree that a single pattern can not be accurately attested from such a wide data set. Téfir himself did not even bother mentioning stress in the Tezyém Yéleduhir, though this may have been because his native language, Arnic, has no concept of lexical stress. However, the Yéleduhir was written in Moshurian, a language with a strict paroxytonic stress pattern, rendering this theory amusing but unlikely.

Morphology

Nouns

Number

Various theories have been proposed on how grammatical number worked in Proto-Yeldhic. The most referred to is the Fulugisáá theory, which states that grammatical number was deduced by the suffix -i. The theory is named after Fulugisáá Tsó-tso, though many attribute the original theory to Zeror, who stated in 260 BH in his Republic(Ilda: Kopirrās) that,

"[I] have found a pattern among the many tongues of the Plikis, in which they seem to append fully tongued upper open vowels to nouns to indicate many items of the noun[...]

Numerals

Proto-Yeldhic		Moshurian	English
Original Téfir	Modern
*ik	*ik	ik	one
*ir	*bījan	oyamö	two
*ti	*tiði	tikré	three
*hihonâ	*wiśen	igoyà	four
*tikumam	*igoīm	tikoyam	five