Alpatho-Hirtic languages

Oronaic
Alpatho-Hirtic
Created by	–
Geographic distribution	Central and far East Europe
Linguistic classification	One of the world's primary language families Oronaic
Proto-language	Proto-Oronaic
Subdivisions	Alpian Carpathian Hirtian

The Alpatho-Hirtic languages, also known as Oronaic, are spoken in regions of the Alps and the Carpathians as well as in the northern part of the Ural Mountains in Russia. The Oronaic family consists of six languages, spoken by approximately 400,000 people.

The name "Alpatho-Hirtic" is made from names of two main branches the Alpathian languages and Hirtian. This term was more popular in the late XX century, but nowadays it is speculated, if the Alpathian languages had a common ancestor distinct from Hirtian, or Alpian, Carpathian and Hirtian are three separate branches; so a new term "Oronaic" became being used more. It derives from Classical Greek ὄρος “mountain” and ναίω “I inhabit” because all three groups are spoken in the mountainous regions. Sometimes "Oronaic" is used while mentioning only the Alpian and the Carpatian groups without including Hirtian.

The Alpatho-Hirtic languages derive from a common ancestral language called Proto-Oronaic Having separated perhaps in the IV millennium BC, they became a diverse group of languages, so their proto-language can not be reconstructed precisely.

Classification

According to the newest picture of this language family, the Oronaic languages are divided into three groups: Alpian, Carpathian and Hirtian. These languages also divide into various dialects creating a dialectal continuum.

Alpian

• Baaye
• Vaand
  • North Vaand, transitional dialect between Vaand and Baaye
  • †South Vaand
  • Central Vaand, or Vaand proper
  • †East Vaand, possibly close to Central Vaand

Carpatian

• West Carpatian
  • †Äzeränci Carpatian, a dialect of West Carpatian or a separate language.
  • Ränci Carpatian
  • Šilli Carpatian
  • Orava Carpatian
  • Prešov Carpatian
• East Carpatian
  • Halicia Carpathian
  • Jīri Carpathian
  • Puohō Carpatian
• †transitional East-South Carpatian
• South Carpatian

Hirtian

• Hirtya

More traditional genealogical classification treats Hirtian as a separate group which diverged first.

Hirtian

• Hirtya

Alpathian

• Alpian
  • Baaye
  • Vaand
• Carpatian
  • †Äzeränci
  • West Carpathian
  • East Carpatian
  • South Carpatian

History

Homeland and expansion

The Alpian and the Carpathian peoples were considered indigenous to Europe for a long period of time. Their homeland is usually placed in the region between Austria and Slovakia or between Slovakia and Ukraine. Archeological data as well as placenames and substrate words support this theory. The situation with the Oronaic Urheimat is not so obvious. There are three main theories. According to the first one, Proto-Oronaic was spoken in the north-western part of modern day Belarus, which is supported archeologically but genetic analysis disproves this theory. Other two theories place the homeland in the Valdai Hills territory and an area between the Republic of Karelia Arkhangelsk Oblast in Russia.

All three branches became separate probably in the III millennium BCE. Archeological data shows that people who spoke those early languages had sparcely populated North-East Europe before they were pushed south or assimilated by other cultures migrating from the east. The speakers of Proto-Hirtian slowly migrated to the north and east until they reached the Urals near the Komi-Zyrians and Nenets people. On the other hand, Alpian and Carpathian peoples moved further south and westwards until they settled in the Carpatians and slowly spread around Alps. Supposedly there were even more languages or even language groups in this family, that are now extinct due to the migration of Indo-European cultures.

Typology

Grammar

Grammatically speaking, Oronaic 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 and Hirtian) 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.