Literature talk:Schleicher's fable
Proto-Veraic is the ancestor of Verapamil and Diltiazem. It's part of the "CW complex" spoken in eastern Cuadhlabh.
It's inspired by Old Turkic.
Phonology
Proto-Veraic is reconstructed with the following consonants:
- The voiceless stops *p (labial), *t (dental), *c (palatal), *k (velar) and *kʷ (labialized velar). The Verapamil reflexes of these sounds are the fricatives f, s, hy, h and hw respectively. In Diltiazem, these sounds surface as voiceless aspirated stops, except for *c which becomes th /θ/.
- The voiced stops *b (labial), *d (dental), *j́ (palatal), *g (velar) and *gʷ (labialized velar), which become the stops p, t, ty, c and qu respectively in Verapamil. In Diltiazem, these sounds surface as voiced stops, except for *j́ which becomes kh /x/.
- The nasals *m and *n, and the sonorants *j, *l and *r, which are retained in Verapamil and Diltiazem, except for *j which becomes s in Diltiazem.
- *w and *ŋ, which become v resp. w in Verapamil and v resp. gh in Diltiazem (but /ŋ/ is retained before *k and *g).
These sounds aren't as certainly known:
- *ń, which becomes ny in Verapamil and z in Diltiazem.
- *ř, which becomes zh in Verapamil and sh /ʃ/ in Diltiazem.
Proto-Veraic, like most modern Veraic languages, had five vowels: *a, *e, *i, *o, *u; which can be short or long. Long vowels are written with a macron. There were also two diphthongs: *ai and *au.
Proto-Veraic allowed consonant clusters of up to three consonants before a vowel.
Grammar
Proto-Veraic morphosyntax was somewhat unusual by CW standards:
- unmarked OVS word order (not attested in any modern CW language),
- topic-comment syntax (as in Belen),
- no pro-drop,
- only three tenses (present, past and future),
- generally isolating (modern CW languages are either agglutinating, like Verapamil, or fusional, like Clofabosin).
However, Proto-Veraic also had some grammatical features common in CW languages such as:
- head-final syntax (e.g. postpositions, complementizers after the verb, adjectives and relative clauses before the noun),
- tense agreement,
- no grammatical gender.
Nouns
Proto-Veraic nouns had four cases: nominative, dative, ablative and locative, but no grammatical gender or number.
| *tallo - tree | ||
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | *tallo | |
| Dative | *tallōn | |
| Locative | *tallod | |
| Ablative | *tallōl | |
| *ēruki - pot | ||
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | *ēruki | |
| Dative | *ērukīn | |
| Locative | *ērukid | |
| Ablative | *ērukīl | |
Verbs
The bare verb stem was used for the present tense.
The future and past endings were *-bdi and *-ri respectively.
The auxiliary verb *iwa 'walk' was used for the progressive aspect; it turned into the Verapamil present tense suffix -ːva.
Derivational morphology
- *-ki, used for tools
- *ēru 'to contain' (→ Verapamil éru) → *ēruki 'pot' (→ Verapamil érwi)
- *wilte 'to fly' (→ Verapamil viltë) → *wilteki 'airplane' (→ Verapamil vilti)
Numbers
- īr
- gai
- mīn
- dān
- mār
- tī
The word for seven in Verapamil, atu comes from the verb *ad 'to continue'.
Higher numbers have not been reconstructed.