Proto-Flewtish
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| Proto-Flewtish | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Aggelos Tselios |
| Era | 2300–1500 BCE |
| |
 Proto-Flewtish Urheimat. The exact borders are obviously unknown, but are assumed to be these due to other languages in the area. | |
Proto-Flewtish is the reconstructed common ancestor to all the Flewtish dialects today, spoken somewhere in the southeast of Russia and northern parts Mongolia, all the way to Kamchatka. Since Flewtish is made up of a number of dialects with regional variations, the reconstruction is done by comparing the dialectal "extremes" within the spoken area, usually Kvuppeg Fletwish in Eastern Finland and Chukwan Flewtish near the Ukhta river. It is hypothesized to have been spoken between 2300 to 1500BC, when the first migrations to northwest Eurasia began.
As the Flewtish speakers reached modern day Finland and the Arkhangelsk oblast, their language became the lingua franca of the area, wiping out the local languages that existed there. Due to the harsh conditions of the area, along with the socio-linguistic differences of different areas (eg. Turkic and Uralic tribes often conquered Flewtish-speaking areas by force, creating a new adstratum), Flewtish started differentiating into a series of dialects. The most distant one, Kvuppeg Flewtish (Spoken in Eastern Finland, specifically around the city Kuumu) is still spoken today, after 4000 years, with over 100.000 speakers.
To indicate whether a term is reconstructed, an asterisk (*) is used, eg *ʔanák, *qenpua and *-mep.
History
Proto-Flewtish was initially a series of closely related dialects spoken in the far east of what is today China, Russia, and a slight bit of Mongolia. It's history before that is completely unknown. During the late 14th century BCE, following harsh winters, raids from other tribes in the area, and the need for a better climate, Proto-Flewtish speakers started a conquest in the entirety of Siberia. By the time they reached what is now south Yakutia, they were well aware of speakers of other popular proto-languages (for example Proto-Turkic, Proto-Uralic and Proto-Indo-European), and so, they decided that the best idea would be to move westwards until they reached the sea.
Phonology
Proto-Flewtish is generally agreed to have had the following consonants in it, with the exception of the velar fricatives which may've been introduced later from aspirated stops, similar to Greek and other languages. The language possibly didn't differentiate between aspirated and non-aspirated consonants directly; Rather, consonants became aspirated only when they weren't within a consonant cluster and were followed by back or mid vowels.
The list of phonemes below may appear significantly larger than for most languages, due to the amount of dialects of Flewtish since the ancient years. Regardless, the existence of *o, *e and the velar fricatives seem questionable: They only appear in a few dialects relatively recently and only under rare circumstances, hence they may have been missing from Proto-Flewtish.
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Palat. | Velar | Uvular | Glot. | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unv. | vce. | unv. | vce. | vce. | unv. | vce. | unv. | vce. | unv. | |
| Nasal | *m | *n | *ɲ *ŋ | |||||||
| Ejectives | *p’ | |||||||||
| Stops | *p *pʰ | *b *bʰ | *t *tʰ | *d *dʰ | *k *kʰ | *g *gʰ | *q | *ʔ | ||
| Fricatives | *f | *v | *s | *z | *j | *x | *ɣ | *h | ||
| Liquids | *l | |||||||||
Vowels
Vowels, on the other hand, are more complicated: There are 8 vowels reconstructed within Proto-Flewtish, but Modern Flewtish only has 6 (And some dialects have a schwa as well). In addition, the phonotactics of Proto-Flewtish indicate that nasal vowels did exist at some point, but were lost early in the first migrations.
| Front | Center | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| rnd/unr. | unr. | unr. | |
| Close | *y *yː *i *iː | *u uː | |
| Mid | *e *eː | *ə *əː | *o *oː |
| Open | *a *aː |
Stress
Proto-Flewtish was either a tonal (Each syllable had a specific tone) or a pitch accent (Change in the pitch of a syllable was used to indicate stress), like Modern Flewtish. The former is less likely as no traces of it remain in the language apart from vowel length.
Grammar
Syntax
Modern day Flewtish has a very weak, almost non-existent distinction between verbs. This is a relatively late evolution, as Proto-Flewtish included much more extensive verb inflection. Still, the use of pronouns before verbs to indicate the subject is a recent addition of the southern dialects, exactly due to the weak distinction between a verb and an object. As a result, Proto-Flewtish was probably less of a polysynthetic language and slightly closer to an analytical one, where the most conservative dialects still lean towards.
Animation distinction & Gender
Most Flewtish dialects have preserved a system of "animacy agreement", similar to how genders work in IE languages. The actual usage may vary, but in general, if the object of the sentence is animate, or/and the verb of the sentence involves showing animacy, all three parts of the sentence must take an animate suffix to indicate the sentence talks about something that is alive. Given that, Proto-Flewtish is reconstructed to have differentiated between animate and inanimate nouns, and, as a result, may have developed genders early on that survive to this form. The exact way they worked isn't yet understood, but it's assumed to have been similar to Proto-Indo-European.
Morphology and inflection
Proto-Flewtish had a series of root words, from where it derived most of its vocabulary. The vocabulary section includes some of these. The combining of roots to form new words is the main source of roughly 80% of the reconstructed vocabulary and 88% of the modern Flewtish vocabulary, excluding lexical borrows. As such, Proto-Flewtish was most likely a polysynthetic language, or an agglutinative one.
As a polysynthethic language, inflection for most grammatical aspects was done using affixes, usually a syllable (Or even a plain consonant sometimes). This is preserved in all but the western Flewtish dialects. For example, the sentence "I would like to buy a bed" in Flewtish is "фала̄жконкроватўльгѡо", composed of the following morphemes:
фал- (Indefinite article, prefixed into the word)
а̄ж- (To wish)
кон- (Indicates a wish (Not the verb itself))
кроват- (Bed)
ўль- (To buy)
гѡо- (I, used to indicate the subject of the verb)
Nonetheless, Proto-Flewtish did have a system of apophony present for indicating tenses. Unlike PIE, Proto-Flewtish changed the pitch (And as a result, often the length) of a syllable to show whether an action is ongoing or not. Combined with the reconstructed affixes *-mep, *opʰ- and *-xep, Proto-Flewtish contained as many as 12 tenses.
Noun cases
For Proto-Flewtish, 11 cases have been reconstructed. Cases in Flewtish are equivalent to English prepositions, however the ablative case is reconstructed to have had an independent morpheme outside the word to indicate whether the object was moving or not.
| Case name | Proto-Flewtish suffix | Descendants |
|---|---|---|
| Genitive | *t-, *-te(n) | *-d, *-den |
| Accusative | *-m | -n |
| Locative | *-mu | -mu |
| Vocative | *-he | Kvuppeg Flewtish -ej |
| Adessive | *-no | Old Flewtish -on |
| Dative | *e-, *-zeɣ | (e(t)-), -se(g~k) |
| Ablative | (*un-) *-s | on, -s |
| Essive | -ziɣ | -i |
| Translative | *-ot | Kvuppeg Flewtish -ot |
| Intrative | *pv- -pob | (ṕ-), -pop |
| Superessive | *o-, *-on | (Merged with the locative) |
Vocabulary
A series of words have been reconstructed through verified cognates in most Flewtish dialects. The IPA is used to denote the phonemic values of these words. The double "greater than" signs mean the meaning hasn't changed. Finally, the words take a hyphen in the end, to indicate that they are usually used with another morpheme (As Flewtish is a polysynthetic language):
Numerals
| Proto-Flewtish | Modern Flewtish | English |
|---|---|---|
| *zârg | Sal | One |
| *ʔɘwǘn | Āy | Two |
| *déjɘn | Degn | Three |
| *zàsp | Sax | Four |
| *ndôjɘn | Dogn | Five |
| *ʔávɘp | Awepp | Six |
| *ʔévə | Ewe | Seven |
| *jüsqǘ | Xü | Eight |
| *ʔanák | Nakk | Nine |
| *kərbùsp | Karposht | Ten |
| *let- | loð- | To count |
| *liqa- | lik- | To add |
| *teva- | ṫa- | To remember days |
Kinship
| Proto-Flewtish | Modern Flewtish | English |
|---|---|---|
| *bʰəberp | vetrep | Father |
| *mɘma | mama | Mother |
| *qonʔjop | kongop | Brother / sister |
| *ʔɘvobʰə(berp) | ewovep | Grandfather |
| *ʔɘvomɘ(ma) | ewoma | Grandmother |
| *zeve | sive | Son |
| *zevta | sifa | Daughter |
| *qenpua | kepwa | Cousin |
Food
As Flewtish speakers lived a hunter-gatherer nomadic lifestyle, they had a series of words for hunting activities. Due to their extensive contact with Turkic and Mongolic tribes during that era, many of these words survive only in older attestations or Kvuppeg Flewtish (The most conservative dialect).
| Proto-Flewtish | Modern Flewtish | English |
|---|---|---|
| *otvəp | Kvuppeg Flewtish twäpp | Food |
| *gʰonf | ɣoń | Water |
| *kiqegp | Old Flewtish 𐰚𐰃𐰤𐰍𐰅𐰯 (kingep) | Wheat |
| *qovɘp | kwepp | Meat |
| *zqapvo- | skaṕ- | To cook/to bake |
| *jepve- | ɣeṕ- | To eat |
| *zlepve- | sceṕ- | To drink |
| *qpoʔge- | Kvuppeg Flewtish qog- | To go for hunting |
| *akpɘv- | akeṕ- | Hunt |
| *ypvoq- | uṕog- | To chase an animal |
| *jeʔkt- | ɣegd- | To find a lost animal |
Animals
| Proto-Flewtish | Descendants | English |
|---|---|---|
| *darqop | dakrop | Tiger |
| *nepovɘ | neoṕe | Bear |
| *qpevɘg | peweg | Dog |
| *mɘu | mau (?) | Cat |
| *mvaʔdɘrqop | Kvuppeg Flewtish ḿadäkpo | Kitty |
| *dʰreɣup | ðejup | Hedgehog |
| *ʔikʰop (?) | ȳhop | Horse |
| *kepvɘʔlo | Chukwa Flewtish кепьло (keṕlo) | Worm |
| *ɣuvog | juwo | Bull |
| *qɘɣog | ḱewo | Chicken |
| *pʰiɣuvog | Kvuppeg Flewtish fijuwo | Ox |
| *xetʔmɘ | xetuḿ | (Siberian) salmon |
| *detpo- | tepo- | To domesticate |
General Vocabulary
| Proto-Flewtish | Modern Flewtish descendants | English meaning |
|---|---|---|
| *kwə | gwo, -gwo (>>) | Indicating 1st person |
| *sy | tu, -tu (>>) | Indicating 2nd person |
| *ytwog | uvok, -(j)üg (>>) | Indicating 3rd person |
| *aɣmoː | aŋɣo- (To restock) | To collect, to amass |
| *əɣhop- | eğōp- (>>) | Water |
| *emhôp- | eɱō- (Conscience) | Thought |
| *kʱəm- | ɣem- (Sea) | Body of water |
| *awɘtʰ- | aveð- (>>) | Fire |
| *gyməp | ege (>>) | Near(by) |
| *senh- | seň- (To see) | Eye |
| *tʰem- | eđm- (>>) | Day |
| *edʰxmo- | eðmog- (>>) | Cold |
| *kloŋ- | glugn- (>>, language) | Tongue |
| *ndipʰ- | diṕ- (>>) | To give |