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/[note 1] | ëë (/ɤː/)[note 2] | o /o/ | oo /o/ |
| Open | ä /æ/ | ää /æ/ | a /ɑ/ | a /ɑː/ | å (/ɒ/)[note 3] | åå (/ɒː/)[note 4] | ||
- ^ this vowels is often analized as mid central rounded vowel /ɵ/.
- ^ could be an allophone of *ïï /ɯː/ before velar consonants as it is distinct only in Hirtian, while Carpathian /ɤː/ is of secondary development.
- ^ not distinct from *a /ɑ/, except for Hirtian.
- ^ possibly an allophone of *aa /ɑː/ before velar consonants.
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 three 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.