Proto-Settameric

Proto-Settameric
PS
Created by	–
Setting	planet Liifam
Era	3000–3500 years ago
Language family	Aiwanic languages Settameric languages Proto-Settameric
Early forms	Proto-Aiwanic Proto-Klesuic
Language codes
ISO 639-3	none

Proto-Settameric (abbreviated PS) is the proto-language from which all languages, spoken on the planet Liifam, are descended. It is generally estimated to have been spoken around 3,000 years ago, but on the question of where it was spoken, there is less agreement, since no archeological evidence of that period has been found so far. The Settameric family, which is a branch of the much larger Aiwanic macrofamily, is usually divided into three large subgroups: Eastern, Western, and Southern Settameric, which are considered to be genetic groupings, however all three had probably been very close to both the proto-language and each other and broke apart very soon. It is one of the most fully reconstructed proto-languages of the Aiwanic family, because its daughter languages are all quite conservative. Its ancestor was Proto-Klesuic, a language of ancient scripts, a dialect of which was attested, but there is not enough information to know much about that language, even its phonology is not well understood.

Introduction

I started making the Aiwanic languages in 2018 for my short sci-fi stories, but they were not genetically related at first. Then I created a fictional history of a small star cluster, located in our galaxy, where all those stories take place and just came up with the idea of a planet colonisation (to explain, why all those planets are inhabited by humans). Not much is known about the Old Aiwanic language itself apart from the fact that it existed, as none of the colonies retained the old level of technological development and almost everything about the period before a mysterious event (usually called "the Event" for simplicity) remains unknown.

History

Most Settameric languages are similar enough that their genetic relatedness can easily be recognized. The Southern branch is the most divergent among all three, but in its earlier stages it still show similarities to other branches. Many languages share a great number of word roots and even cognates with almost exact meanings, though with some languages it is not as obvious because of various sound changes they underwent. The homeland of the protolanguage is commonly placed near the Kahaaler mountain range to the west of the Northern continent, however this a matter of debate, because the earliest archeological remains was found in several places throughout the Northern continent. Certainly, those, who spoke Proto-Settameric, had a more advanced means of communication, than the current inhabitants of the continent, and the loss of those technologies led to the separation of the main dialects. It is unclear how those dialects developed later, but most of them probably became extinct, while others could have become a substrate to modern languages, spoken in those areas.

Phonology

Vowels

Proto-Settameric had seven basic vowels, three (or four) of which had long counterparts, for a total of ten (or eleven) vowels. The only difficulty with this reconstruction is the vowel *ää, as it is unclear whether it could only be long or could also have a short counterpart. All instances of the short *ä appears either word initially or before a velar fricative. Both long and short *ä appear rarely, compared to other vowels. According to another theory, *ää was a long counterpart to *ə, which adds symmetry to this vowel system.

	Front		Central	Back
	Short	Long		Short	Long
Close	i	ii [iː]		u	uu [uː]
Mid		ee [eː]	ə		oo [oː]
Open	(ä [æ])	ää [æː]		a [ɑ]	aa [ɑː]

Consonants

Proto-Settameric had a quite large consonant inventory, but it is still small, when compared to reconstructions of its earlier stages. There are 48 consonants in total. The consonant denoted as *nj likely had two allophonic realizations: [ɲ] word-initially and [ŋ] elsewhere, with a few roots later getting doublets in some branches, like *njool/*ŋool “to fly”, or *njapʰee/*ŋapʰ “dying, death”. In addition, a consonant denoted as *ɣʷ merged with *w in all languages, except for two Northwestern languages, where it merges *ɣ instead. Though apparently the change was not conditional, so *ɣʷ is very likely to be a separate phoneme, even though its non-labialized counterpart *ɣ was likely an approximant [ɰ] rather than a fricative (there were no other voiceless fricative apart from these two consonants). Still, the exact realization of *ɣʷ is unknown, but it should have been distinct from *w. A phoneme, written as *r, was likely a tap [ɾ], or an approximant [ɹ], rather than a trill.

		Labial	Dental	Denti-Alveolar	Postalveolar/Palatal	Velar		Uvular
						plain	labial	plain	labial
Nasal		m	n		nj [ɲ]	(ŋ)
Plosive	unaspirated	p	t	c [t͡s]	č [t͡ʃ]	k	kʷ	q	qʷ
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	cʰ [t͡sʰ]	čʰ [t͡ʃʰ]	kʰ	kʷʰ	qʰ	qʷʰ
	glottalized	pʼ	tʼ	cʼ [t͡sʼ]	čʼ [t͡ʃʼ]	kʼ	kʼʷ	qʼ	qʼʷ
Fricative		f	θ	s, ł [ɬ]	š [ʃ]	x	xʷ
Approximant	Voiced	w	d [ð̞]	ɾ	j	ɣ [ɰ]	ɣʷ
	glottalized	wʼ		ɾʼ, lʼ	jʼ	ʟʼ
Lateral Approximant				l	lj [ʎ]	ʟ