Lahob languages
| Lahob | |
|---|---|
| Lahobic | |
| Created by | – |
| Geographic distribution | planet of Calémere: northern Evandor and most of Mārsūtram |
| Linguistic classification | One of the world's primary language families
|
| Proto-language | Proto-Lahob |
| Subdivisions |
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The Lahob languages (also Lahobic) are a language family on the planet of Calémere; its Urheimat is in the far northern part of Evandor, where the greatest diversity among them is still found; the most spoken language of the family is however Chlouvānem, spoken (along with its daughter languages) across large areas of Greater Evandor (in the continent of Márusúturon or Mārsūtram), with its own heartland more than 10,000 km away.
The family takes its name from Łaȟoḇszer, language of the Łaȟoḇ people, the largest and first studied in the Lahob heartlands.
Lahob languages nowadays are divided into five or six branches, four of which only spoken in a small area along the Orcish Straits and the tundra/taiga border:
- Pwaɬasd-Ngos languages, including Tundra Pwaɬasd, Forest Pwaɬasd (sometimes included in a Macro-Pwaɬasd language), Zerfek, Nehsy, and Ngos;
- Central Lahobic languages, including Łaȟoḇszer (the language that gave its name to the family), Łokow, Yełeshian Lawo, and Shershan Lawo;
- Tlengastic languages, including Coastal Tlengast, Hilly Tlengast, and Bänme;
- Woŋom-Baan languages (sometimes considered as a sub-group of the Tlengastic branch), including Woŋom, Baan, and Selmeš.
These four languages are part of the so-called Subpolar Evandor Sprachbund, sharing features among them and with a few neighboring Kordegic languages and the easternmost rural dialects of Gathura.
The other two branches are spoken by groups that migrated southwards in prehistoric times:
- Šlokhowdeš is an isolate among the larger Lahob family, spoken in a hilly area in the Baran river basin in north-central Greater Evandor. Probably it is the only surviving language of a formerly larger branch.
- Chlouvānem languages include Chlouvānem and all its descendants. Despite being by far the most spoken of the whole family and having the longest documented history, it took a long time to recognize the Lahob origin of Chlouvānem, due to many factors (including the long distance (some 10,000 km) from the Lahob homeland, the enormous lexical influence of other languages, the genetic difference between the Chlouvānem and other Lahob speakers (though mainly due to interbreeding with other peoples) and the fact all other Lahob languages have a very different morphology, changed in more than 5000 years; Chlouvānem is morphologically extremely close to Proto-Lahob).
Proto-Lahob is the reconstructed common ancestor of all Lahob languages on the planet of Calémere. It was spoken about 5000 years before the present in the northern part of Evandor, along the coasts of the Orcish Straits - which today divide the "human" part of the continent from Gurdugal, the "orcish" part.
Among Calémerian linguists, Proto-Lahob morphology is very difficult to reconstruct, as all branches apart from Chlouvānem have only been studied in the last century and have morphological traits very different from Chlouvānem, and have all undergone radical changes in nominal and verbal morphology (it is however interesting to note that some Chlouvānem daughter languages have progressed independently in a similar way); vocabulary and especially phonology are however much better understood.
The name of the language family - properly spelled Łaȟoḇ in Łaȟoḇszer, and pronounced [ɬaˈχɔβ] is a reflex of the Proto-Lahob word *ɬakʰober, meaning "people", which it is one of two roots normally used in forming ethnonyms - the other being *wānəme "tribe, group, horde". These two roots are reflexed in almost all languages, and in many ethnonyms:
- *ɬakʰober as ethnonym for e.g. the Łaȟoḇ (Łaȟoḇszer means "Łaȟoḇ language"), Łokow, Lawo, Šlokhow; also reflexed as e.g. tlekweˤ in Coastal Tlengast, tlokweʁ in Hilly Tlengast (both "family"), chlakhmeh (tribe) in Chlouvānem;
- *wānəme as ethnonym for e.g. the Bänme, Woŋom, Baan, and the -vānem part in Chlouvānem; also as e.g. onom (group) in Łaȟoḇszer and womme (village) in Šlokhowdeš.
Names for the proto-language and for the language family in Lahob languages are almost non-existant apart from Chlouvānem, as most of them are native languages of traditional populations (a substantial number being hunter-gatherers), and calques from Western languages (mainly Gathura) are used; in Chlouvānem the family is called Lahūbumi dældai and Proto-Lahob is Olahūbumi dældā — the term Lahūbai for the Lahob people being a borrowing from Cerian Lahóbe.
Common characteristics
Due to the presence of Chlouvānem languages and, to a lesser extent, Šlokhowdeš, all highly divergent, it is difficult to point out features common to all Lahob languages. Some notable ones are:
- Proto-Lahob had a complex morphosyntactic alignment based on triggers, and this situation is exactly as in classical Chlouvānem and - with a few less voices - in its daughter languages, as well as in the Pwaɬasd-Ngos branch. Other Lahob languages have evolved this system into a typical ergative/absolutive alignment, though many languages maintain various "locative verbs" derived from the old locative-trigger voice.
- Unmarked SOV word order (with S meaning what concords with the verb, at least where verbs conjugate for person) is common to all Lahob languages except Šlokhowdeš and the Woŋom-Baan branch (all predominantly SVO).
- Location is expressed in all Lahob languages by means of numerous verbs with prefixes changing to convey the sense of different English prepositions.
- All Lahob languages except the Chlouvānem branch treat verbs as a mostly closed verb class, with only a few basic verbs (usually from 10 to 30) used as compounds with other verbs or nominal roots; in languages where derivation is possible, verbs can usually only be derived from other verbs.
- Except for the Chlouvānem branch, Lahob languages all have very small case systems (absolutive and ergative, rarely dative) if they exist at all; they rely on a large number of adpositions instead. This is a major contrast to Proto-Lahob, which is reconstructed with eleven cases (just like classical Chlouvānem).