Far East Semitic

Inspiration: Old Chinese, Heleasic, Akkadian, Amharic

In Irta, Far East Semitic is one of the major branches of Semitic. Proto-Far East Semitic was a prestige language of Southeast Asia. It's in a clade with Akkadian. It was first observed to be related to other Semitic languages by the linguist Eimh-Cla' Fian, himself a native speaker of both Cuam and Far East Semitic.

Loans from Old Chinese and Sino-IE in addition to the usual SEA families (except Austronesian)

Todo

Verner's law in random words? plax "to open" <- *pdax <- *phthax

lhor "king", mëlkh "prince"?

(ğurayb >) qraib "crow, raven"

hlān 'language'

nəphəs "soul"

nəphle "to fall"

bəihl "egg"

qe "egg" in Hmooblang (from a substrate)

Lots of dvandvas

Final tav likes to become -h/breathy voice

bayh: world/homeland (for a coincidence with bith)

šmay 2ərətlh: world

Gmad = to resist

Gəmed = to support (same sense as Arabic 3amada)

yiθ = there is, liθ = there is not (yiθ becomes 'have' in later languages: *nā yiθ phkar 'I have cows')

Gabəd 'slave'

laqhəm 'fish' (< 'food')

t=ār 'bird'

ts⁼pʰur 'bird'

Family tree

• Proto-Far East Semitic (~ 500 AD)
  • Far East Semitic/Tonal Semitic: A language with two tones from the register split and lots of preinitials. Irta's only tonal Semlang.
  • hyperconservative Far East Semitic

Far East Semitic is phonologically one of the more conservative branches of Semitic, with different reflexes for almost all the consonants of Proto-Semitic. Morphologically, though, it is the exact opposite -- it is a rather typical Southeast Asian sprachbund language even in the proto-stage.

Phonology

Consonants:

• p b t ṭ d k q g ħ ʕ -> ph b th t d kh k g x ɣ~ɢ
• m n l r w y -> m n l ɹ w j
• θ θ̣ ð s ṣ z ś ṣ́ š x ɣ h -> θ θ ð s ts z~dz l̥ tl̥~ts (from koineization) š qʰ q h

Vowels: i ɨ u e ə o a ā

p shows up by assimilation or in loanwords from Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan languages.

ɣašt, θian, l̥āθ, ɚbaɣ, qhamš, šɨš, šbaɣ, šmān, dɨšq, l̥əl

11: l̥əl had, 12: l̥əl θian, etc.

θina, l̥əθa, ɚbɣa, qhəmša, šɨša, šbəɣa, šməna, dɨšqa, mə'a əlp 100,000: ləkš 100,00,000: kot

-> aws, xiam, hlaus, plaub, qhaab, sws, pha, hmaum, dwg, hloj

Orthography

Most Far East Semitic languages are written with an abugida inspired aesthetically by Ahom. The consonant letters are based on the Proto-Sinaitic abjad.

One FES language historically used a Chu Nom-like system.

Grammar

Far East Semitic is only vestigially triconsonantal.

Nouns

Far East Semitic has noun classifiers but no grammatical gender. Noun classifiers are also used as definite articles though ðə is also commonly used, especially in the literary language.

ah - classifier for people, from the feminine form of numbers in PSem

mušab - classifier for places

Animate plurals are marked with postposed wɨl (which is more of an associative marker).

Derivation

Singulatives are formed with bɨn-.

kʰətʰāb: agentive

Verbs

As in English, Far East Semitic verbs are analytic with some vestigial ablaut; participial (with m-) and verbnoun (with t- and other grammaticalized noun derivations) forms are common, as in modern Aramaic dialects. It's relatively unpredictable which Semitic verb root was assigned to which pattern (but it should correlate with the semantics of the noun patterns before they turned into verbs, e.g. agency)

Derivation

Morphologybthat corresponds to binyanim in other Semitic languages are more concatenative and are used as triggers:

• G-stem: xtab, xtob, xtib (agent trigger)
  • D-stem: kʰətʰVb as opposed to xtVb should become an iterative?
• N-stem: nə·xtVb (patient trigger stem)
• S-stem: šə·xtVb (instrument/cause trigger)
• t-stems: tə·xtVb (reciprocal)
• locative trigger: θə(m)-xtVb (from *þamma 'there', cf. Gàidhlig ann when fronting an adjunct)

the pa'al / pi'el distinction surfaces as initial clusters vs minor syllables

mə- prefix for derived nouns -> prenasalization in the quasi-Hmoob language

Some former VN patterns (also noun patterns)

• kʰətʰıb
• xteb, xtib
• xtub, xtib for adjectives
• tə·xtVb
• kʰətʰib, kʰətʰub, kʰətʰāb

Inflection

particles for aspects like Wdm (mɨn for perfect tense etc)

bə xtib nākʰ = I write

min xtib nākʰ = I wrote

l̥aʔ xtib nākʰ = I will write

Pronouns

• 1sg nā~nākʰ~ni
• 2sg əntu~kʰmu

Plural pronouns were formed with the associative marker wɨl (< *wa-illu 'and these') or kʰol (from *kullu 'all'):

• 1pl: nākʰ wɨl~nākʰol
• 2pl kʰmu wɨl~kʰmu kʰol~kʰmɨl

Largely replaced with rank pronouns in descendants in non-intimate speech except in the hyperconservative FES language, where directional adverbs are sometimes used instead of pronouns

Syntax

Proto-Far East Semitic syntax is close to Tagalog. It's a VSO language. Modern Far East Semitic languages though have a much more similar syntax to Thai, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew or Arabic.