Literature talk:Schleicher's fable

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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

  1. īr
  2. gai
  3. mīn
  4. dān
  5. mār

The word for seven in Verapamil, atu comes from the verb *ad 'to continue'.

Higher numbers have not been reconstructed.