Camalic

Camalic is a small language family spoken in Irta's Northern Africa and Southern Europe. Its urheimat is in Irta Tunisia.

Phylogeny

• Central Camalic
  • Padmanábha
• Peripheral Camalic
  • Camalanàbha
    • Skézaric (placeholder name)

Phonology

Proto-Camalic had the following phonemes:

• e o i u ē ō ī ū ai au ia ua
• p b t d ts k g m n ŋ s θ~ʂ z ð~ʐ ɬ l r w y h
• contrastive stød

Syntax

Proto-Camalic was most likely SOV, and had prefix and suffix conjugations.

Morphology

Nouns

Proto-Camalic had three grammatical genders:

• animate
• inanimate
• caland

The caland gender was made up of nouns that resulted from nominalized participles and adjectives and consisted of both animate nouns (e.g. names of professions) and inanimate nouns. Abstract nouns were usually caland.

There were also three grammatical cases: agentive/instrumental, patientive and genitive. Case was not marked by noun morphology but by preposed particles. The agentive case was marked with the particle *la~li (believed by some to be cognate with Semitic *li- "to" and Indo-European *-(t/dʰ)lom ~ *-(t/dʰ)lis). The genitive case was marked with the particle *i. In Central Camalic (e.g. Padmanábha), influenced by Indo-European and Semitic languages, the case particles are preposed while in Peripheral Camalic (e.g. Camalanàbha), the particles evolved into suffixes in a more typically Eurasian nom-acc system.

Proto-Camalic also had an extensive array of derivational affixes.

The definite article in Proto-Camalic was *sa.

Adjectives

Proto-Camalic didn't have adjectives as a distinct part of speech. Most adjectives in other Camalic languages derive from verbs in Proto-Camalic though some are derived from nouns (e.g. nisba/Hoffmann's).

Verbs

Some kind of stress-induced ablaut/lengthening?