Proto-Ash
Proto-Ash is the reconstructed protolanguage of Ash, itself derived from Proto-Ash-Ish (henceforth referred to as PAI).
Phonology
The following vowels (with conventional romanisation rather than IPA) are reconstructed:
| Back | Front | Rounded | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Short | *a | *i | *u |
| Long | *a: | *i: | *u: |
The main consonant inventory:
| Labial | Coronal | Velar | Laryngeal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oral | *p | *t | *k | *q |
| Nasal | *m | *n | *ŋ |
Note:
- The "laryngeal" *q may have been a uvular plosive */q/, a glottal stop */ʔ/, a pharyngeal, or something else. In modern Ash it allophonically varies between [ʔ~ɦ~ħ].
- The nasals were likely poststopped or prestopped as they are in modern Ash and because they appear to derive at least in part from */NP/ clusters or prenasalised stops in PAI.
- The bilabial plosive *p was likely derived from */kɰ/ clusters or labialised */k/ in PAI, as Ish seems to preserve this more conservative configuration.
- Likewise the bilabial nasal *m would have come from simultaneously prenasalised and labialised */nPw~ⁿPʷ/ clusters or phonemes.
Additionally the approximants might be viewed as allophones of the corresponding vowels:
| Labiovelar | Palatal | |
|---|---|---|
| Approxmant | *w~u | *j~i |
Clusters of a glide followed or preceded by a regular vowel were allowed, as were any */CC/ clusters.
Proto-Ash does not appear to have had any particular form of stress but later in the development of Ash stress would shift to the last heavy syllable of a phonetic word, resulting in various reductions and elisions of unstressed vowels.
Grammar
Proto-Ash differentiated between nouns and verbs. Ablaut was common between forms.
Nouns
Nouns were inflected for grammatical case inherited from PAI. Reconstructed case forms of *majk "fire":
| Agentive | Subjective | Patientive | Oblique | Relational |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| *majk | *mika | *mika: | *mikan | |
Proto-Ash already appears to have observed animacy like modern Ash, by having no distinct agentive forms for inanimate nouns, e.g. *ti "water":
| Subjective | Patientive | Oblique | Relational |
|---|---|---|---|
| *ti | *tja: | *tjan | |
Verbs
Verbs appear to have had little inflection except on auxiliaries. Reduplicated forms existed, such as *ku~kwa: "to cycle".
There were two primary auxiliary verbs, active *qa: and stative *a:, perhaps best translated as "do" (or "apply") and "be" respectively. These were often used with nouns and have led to many active and stative verbs in modern Ash as well.
| Proto-Ash | Ash | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| *majk=a: | "is fire" | → mea | "burns, feels, consists" |
| *mik-a=qa: | "applies fire" | → nahga (*mi- → *nʲə- → *n-) | "burns, scorches" |
Verb constructions with an auxiliary in transitive phrases was inherited from PAI. The main verb phrase was preceded by the auxiliary phrase, the latter eventually becoming the various agency-marking prefixes in modern Ash.
| Proto-Ash | Ash | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| *qak=mik-a=qa: | "applies fire" | → ảdnahga | "burns it, scorches it" |
| *qat=mik-a:=qa: | "applies to fire" | → ảsnahga | "is burned, is scorched" |
| *qaq=ja/wa mik-a:=qa: | "applies this/that one to fire" | → ảyınahga | "burns oneself, scorches oneself" |
Developments
Soon after this period of the language, Ash would have started to develop a greater focus on verbs than on nouns. Verbs developed more morphology from auxiliaries and the like while the already phonetically similar case endings of nouns collapsed, although remnants can be seen in modern cognates with additional suffixes.
Phonology
The biggest difference between the consonantal inventories of Proto-Ash and modern Ash is the development of affricates in the latter. These derive from clusters.
| Proto-Ash | Ash | |
|---|---|---|
| t͡s | *tj | → *tʲ → *tˢ → (d)s |
| t͡ɬ | *tw | → *tʷ → *tˡ → (d)l |
Inalienable prefix
The modern Ash prefix ın- is a result of rebracketing of the Proto-Ash relational case suffix *-n. While new constructions developed for locatives in general, this fossilised affix narrowed in meaning to refer only to an inalienable relationship between nouns.
| Proto-Ash | Ash | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| *wa-n tu(=a:) | "(is) foot at that one" | → ondoo | "that one's foot" |
Locative verbs
Another remnant of the locative suffix is the vowel nasalisation on some of the locative verbs in modern Ash.
| Proto-Ash | Ash | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| *tja-n=a: | "is in water" | → sa͠a | "is in water/liquid" |
Diachronics
Not every affix derives directly from the Proto-Ash period. There are for instance distinct layers of suffixes that show different levels of reduction depending on the timing of their grammaticalisation. Sometimes a single root is responsible for multiple suffixes.
Several important periods in the history of Ash can be used as milestones. An example is the development of the aforementioned nahga:
| Proto-Ash | Old Ash | Middle Ash | Early Modern Ash | (Modern) Ash |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| *mik-a(:)=qa: | → *nʲì.ga.ʔá | → *nək.ʔá, nəʔ.ká | → *náh.kə | → nahga |
- Old Ash solidifies stress on the last heavy syllable and transforms many consonants through suprasegmentals.
- Middle Ash reduces and elides vowels, yielding near-modern forms but temporarily has a five-vowel system.
- By Early Modern Ash the stress shifts to the root syllable and vowels reduce back to three, resolving schwas to modern qualities.
- Modern Ash reduces some diphthongs from Early Modern Ash to monophthongs but creates new ones by eliding intervocalic consonants.