Proto-Oronaic

Proto-Oronaic is the reconstructed ancestral language of the Oronaic language family. The exact time, when the language has been spoken, is unknown, but various estimates give the dates from 5000 BCE to 2000 BCE, after which it differentiated into other proto-languages. The exact location of the area of Urheimat is not known, and various proposals have been suggested, but the usually assumed areas are the Valdai Hills territory and plains between the Republic of Karelia and the Arkhangelsk Oblast in Russia.

According to the traditional tree view, Proto-Oronaic diverged into Proto-Alpathian and Proto-Hirtian, hence the other name of the family - Alpatho-Hirtic. However, several attempts to reconstruct Proto-Alpathian were made and these reconstructions differs little from Proto-Oronaic, mostly because of a lack of data, despite the different methods used. Thus it is hard to tell if Proto-Alpathian existed at all and whether it may or may not be separate from Proto-Oronaic. Other modern reconstructions of the split of Proto-Oronaic have three branches (Alpian, Carpathian and Hirtian), while lexical similarities between the first two branches are explaned via geographic proximity and contacts.

Phonology

Like most of the proto-languages, reconstructions of Proto-Oronaic are traditionally not written in IPA but in different alphabet, that can vary in different reconstructions, sometimes followed by the IPA equivalents between slashes (because it is a phonemic reconstruction). The exact pronunciation of these phonemes is unknown, but some approximations were made, based on modern descendants. However, different scholars have different IPA representations, for example the phoneme ś is often analized as a voiceless alveolar stop (similar to English /t/ sound, but not aspirated), since it regularly gives /t/ in Alpian and /t͡s/ or /t/ after back vowels in some Hirtian dialects.

Vowels

Proto-Oronaic had a large vowel inventory, because of vowel harmony and a distinct vowel length, but in non-initial unstressed syllables of most words these vowels were often reduced and probably centralized, and thus merged after the split of the proto-language. Here is a reconstruction of stressed vowels, which did not undergo any reduction.

	Front				Back
	Unrounded		Rounded		Unrounded		Rounded
	Short	Long	Short	Long	Short	Long	Short	Long
Close	i /i/	ii /iː/	ü /y/	üü /yː/	ï /ɯ/	ïï /ɯː/	u /u/	uu /uː/
Mid	e /e/	ee /eː/	ö /ø/	öö /øː/	ë /ɤ/	ëë (/ɤː/)	o /o/	oo /o/
Open	ä /æ/	ää /æː/			a /ɑ/	a /ɑː/	å (/ɒ/)	åå (/ɒː/)

Sometimes a low back rounded *å /ɒ/ is reconstructed in place of *a, since it regularly gives /o/ in Carpathian. As a separate phoneme *å can be reconstructed on the basis of Hirtian, where it does not change into y /ɨ/ or remains a /ɑ/. In other branches it simply merged with *a. Diphthongs probably did not exist in Proto-Oronaic itself, but appeared very early in its descendents.

Vowel inventory in non-stressed syllables was restricted: only four reduced vowels were present, marked as *ə₁, *ə₂, *ə₃ and sometimes also *ə₄, which probably was an allophone of *ə₃ The actual realization of them is a question of debate: Vowel harmony also applied to those reduced vowels with *ə₁-*ə₂, *ë-*ə₄ and *ə₃-*ə₄ contrasts with *ə₂ being neutral to both *ə₃ and *ə₄. Some scholars analize them as following:

	Central
	Unrounded	Rounded
Close-mid	ə1 /ɘ/
Mid	ə2 /ə/
Open-mid	ə3 /ɐ~ɜ/	ə4 /ɞ/

Some models propose *ë /ɵ/ in non-initial syllables to actually be a reduced vowel, since it sometimes contrasts ə₄ in words with rounded vowels.

Consonants

The consonant system was also larger than in modern Oronaic languages, except for Hirtya. Like modern Alpian languages it had a voiced-voiceless contrast as well as a plain-geminated one. Palatalization was a phonemic feature already in proto-Oronaic, but it was not widespread and palatalized consonants were present only in a few reconstructed words. Some scholars claim palatalized consonants actually being consonant clusters with /j/, but it has not yet been proved for palatalized sonorants. There is a theory, that has become especially popular nowadays, which implies the contrast between dental and alveolar sounds (at least in plosives and fricatives), based on the outcome of these consonants in different branches. Both traditional and new theories are represented in tables below:

Traditional view

		Bilabial	Dental	Palatalized	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m /m/	n /n/	ń /nʲ ~ ɲ/		ŋ /ŋ/
Plosive	Voiceless	p /p/	t /t/			k /k/	ˀ /ʔ/
	Voiced	b /b/	d /d/			g /g/
Fricatives			s /s/	ś /sʲ ~ ɕ/	š /ʃ~ʂ/		h /h ~ ɦ/
Affricate			c /t͡s/	ć /t͡sʲ ~ t͡ɕ/	(č /t͡ʃ/)
Lateral			l /l/	ľ /lʲ ~ ʎ/
Trill			r /r/
Approximant		w /w/		j /j/

New theory

	Bilabial	Lamino- dental	Apico- alveolar	Palatalized	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m /m/	n /n̪/		ń /nʲ ~ ɲ/	ŋ /ŋ/
Plosive	p /p/	t /t̻/	t̺ /t̺/		k /k/	ˀ /ʔ/
Sibilants		s /s̻/	s̺ /s̺/			h /h ~ ɦ/
Spirants	b /β/	d /ð/			g /ɣ/
Affricate		c /ts̻/	c̺ /ts̺//	(ć /t͡sʲ ~ t͡ɕ/)
Lateral			l /l/	ľ /lʲ ~ ʎ/
Trill			r /r/
Approximant	w /w/			j /j/

θ sound

West Carpathian had (or has in case of Ränci dialects) a phoneme /θ/ which is still written "th" and can be reconstructed for Proto-Carpathian. Some of these words, like kuotha "edge, border" have doublets with /ɦ/ - kuoha "corner" and thus could be explained as a hypercorrection or an alteration, created in Carpathian languages. But initial "th" actually has three cognates in Alpian, like thūra "river" which corresponds to dor in Baaye and dure in Vaand, so Carpathian initial /θ/ corresponds to Alpian initial /d/, while Carpathian /h/ almost always corresponds to zero or /f/ in Alpian, with the exception of consonant clusters with /h/, which would usually correspond to /h/ or /x/ in Alpian. Due to a lack of cognates from Hirtian, more data is needed to explain such correspondences. Some scholars believe, that /θ/ was a phoneme from an unknown substrate language, which entered Alpian and Carpathian with loanwords and thus can not be found in Hirtian, while others claim this phoneme resulted in simplification of unaccented syllables with reduced vowels, which did not happen in Hirtian, and actually propose хəсˀур (həsˀur) "gust, current" to be the cognate.

Phonotactics

Like in Proto-Uralic and some other proto-languages initial or final consonant clusters were not allowed, so words could begin and end with a maximum of one consonant only with an exception of few words in Carpathian, which are native or of unexplained origin (like West Carpathian stilli - "to hunt"). Inside word roots, only clusters of two consonants were permitted. The consonants *j and *w could not occure before a consonant cluster, meaning they were not treated as a part of diphthongs like modern Oronaic languages do. Geminate consonants existed and behaved like consonant clusters. These geminate consonants altered with simple ones in a derivative morphological processes. When, due to suffixation, consonant clusters, that were not permitted, arose, reduced vowels were inserted according to vowel harmony between two consonants. But because almost all the reduced vowels were elided in Hirtian, new consonants clusters just simplified, resulting in new alterations.

Consonant gradation may have occurred already in Proto-Oronaic, but, if existed at all, it probably applied only to plosives and some consonant clusters. It developed and spread in all the three branches but later reduced significantly in modern Alpian and Hirtian languages.

Prosody

Unlike Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Uralic, Proto-Oronaic had tones, similar to Yeniseian languages or to Mandarin Chinese. However, there was no contrastive stress as in Indo-European; usually only the first syllable of the root was invariably stressed, while unstressed syllables underwent reduction and later elision in Hirtian or consonant alterations in Alpian and Carpathian. Four tones can be reconstructed in some words. These are the rising tone , marked with an acute accent (á), falling tone, marked with a grave accent (à), low-rising, or falling-rising tone, marked with a caron (ǎ), and an abrupt, or high-falling tone, marked with a circumflex (â or àˀ). The default or neutral tone is not marked. Most word reconstructions do not use any diacritics to mark tones as the exact tones are unknown, since no modern descendants are tonal, except for some Hirtian dialects, which distinguish high and non-high pitch accent, but it is mostly an innovation. There were some tone alterations as well, for example: *köȍˀcü "the moon", which gave keahci in West Carpathian and сю’ə (śu’ə) in Hirtya, had a falling or a high-falling tone, but *köőˀ-tä̌gə₁ "moonlight" resulted in kiättäi ("shining") in West Carpathian and сюо’т (śuo’т) in Hirtya.

Grammar

Morphologically Proto-Oronaic was a polysynthetic language. Despite most of its descendants having nominative-accusative alignment, Proto-Oronaic belonged to an active-stative type of languages, since like modern Hirtya it sometimes marked a subject of an intransitive clause the same way as a subject of a transitive clause, and other time - as a direct object of it. The marking was probably based on a different degree of volition (as in Hirtya). Alpian languages had preserved some traces of it, but nowadays it is obsolete.

Unlike modern Alpatho-Hirtic languages, only four noun cases are reconstructed for Proto-Oronaic. The cases were: nominative/absolutive, ergative, genitive (also called possessive) and oblique. There were three numbers: singular, dual and plural. The singular number was unmarked, while dual and plural had at least four different suffixes each. Grammatical gender is not reconstructable and no Oronaic language does have it even today. Noun articles were unknown. The nouns also had possessive suffixes, one for every number and person. Possessive pronouns did not exist.

Verbs were conjugated at least according to number, person, tense (present and past) and aspect(perfective and imperfective, which can be found in all the modern descendants). Mood markers could possibly exist, but they are not reconsructable. There were separate subjective and objective conjugations, but reflexes of the objective conjugation are found only in the Hirtya language, though there are traces in other languages as well. There was a three-way polarity: positive, negative and uncertain, which fully preserved in Hirtya and to a lesser extend in Carpathian. All three were expressed using different verb roots for some verbs while other more complex verbs showed negation and probability periphrastically, using auxillary verbs, which later developed into suffixes. For example, in East Carpathian the word for "to cook" is poajet, while "not to cook" is expressed with a phrase "not to make food" - šeuhēt and "probably to cook" - šeuhestet. Saying poajēhet instead of šeuhēt is correct, but it would mean "not to know how to cook". It is a very unusual feature among both European and Asian languages and can be found only in some Siberian languages near Hirtya, like Nganasan, which have some negative verb roots, but it doesn't show a periphrastic way of negation.

Vocabulary

Only about 120 word roots can be reconstructed for Proto-Oronaic, if every reconstructed word for the proto-language should be present in all the three branches. If comparing only Alpian and Carpathian branches, the ammount of 400-500 word roots are reconstructed, which is much higher. There are also more than 40 cognates for Carpathian and Hirtian but not for Alpian (some of those cognates are uncertain), and no cognates that are present in Alpian and Carpathian, but not in Hirtian.

The following examples of reconstructed items are considered certain Proto-Oronaic word roots, present in at least one language from all the three branches:

• Pronouns: *mu(n) I, *tu(n) you, *su(n)/*te this *kin/kön who, *wə₁ what.
• Kinship terms: *ěmmè/*ěmbe mother, *ät̺ä father, *ékkə₁ uncle, *neeˀni maternal aunt, *wìˀnə₁ daughter-in-law.
• Body parts: *bàˀjə₃ head, *gèrik-i eye, *wöl(g)ə₂ tongue, *ačə₃ liver, *tis̺ə₁ lung, *dawə breath, *kàc̺ə₃ cough, *kəjontə₄ urine, *kəjgü-(li) tear.
• Basic verbs: *ní-jêl- to hear, *wel- to live, *mïr- to die, *ńidä- to approach, *askan- to step, *s̺uppu- to suck, *t̺ëgu- to eat, *uri- to swim, *kappa- to steal.
• Basic objects and concepts of the natural world: *t̺akc̺ə₃ ice, *sajwə₂ lake, *kööˀcü moon, *(wəb)eedä sun *c̺ec̺ä/*c̺äˀc̺ä water, *rüümü mist, *àsŋə₂(-n) fish *nigə₁ perch *nigkeŋ-si big fish (northern pike), *gooklu(j) star, *öwbə₁ lightning, *pojə₂ birch, *keeˀt̺ü spruce, *kooru pine/fir, *iˀjə₁ bird cherry, *kullu stone, *ńüwrə₂ *wëja egg, *s̺aru raven
• Elementary technology: *sigdə₂ coal, *sukko needle, *kowra to bore, *waŋsa bow, *sujkə₃ arrow, *sopa straw, *ĺëptə₂ cradle, *sovə₄(j) ski, *miiltə₁ fence.
• Basic spatial concepts: *ükə₁ back, *pala half, *ragu side (also bank of the river), *kuwkə₃ long.
• Numerals: têwə₂ pair, *ketäk two, kurə₄ three, *nèw-i four, *luˀə₄ many.