Proto-Antarctican: Difference between revisions

Proto-Antarctican (view source)

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 ===Taiwanese===
 Most of the refugees who came to Antarctica were from Taiwan rather than the mainland. Therefore, Taiwanese has influenced Proto-Antarctican far more than Mandarin. Aspirated consonants generally behaved like those from Burmese. Syllable final stops were pronounced voiced in words with tone 4, and voiceless in words with tone 8. Vowels in words with tones 1, 2, 5 and 6 were pronounced long, otherwise they were short. Taiwanese unaspirated /t/ and voiced /d/ became /ts/ and /z/ before /u/.
+==Grammar==
+===Nouns===
+Proto-Antarctican originally borrowed its noun morphology open slather from Japanese. It used postpositions to mark nominative case /ga/, accusative case /wo/ (a spelling pronunciation), topicalisation /wa/, comitative case /mo/, genitive case /no/, and dative case /n&#690;i/ etc. It did have one extra case, an alienable possessive case marked with the postposition /wei/ (/no/ was used exclusively for inalienable possession).
+The language also had pronominal possessive particles, borrowed from English and Spanish, though these were marked for clusivity due to influence from Austronesian languages:
+* /mi/ 1st person exclusive
+* /jau/ 1st person inclusive
+* /te/ 2nd person
+* /su/ 3rd person
+However, major changes occurred to the case system. Firstly, /no/ and /wei/ stopped being interpreted as postpositions attaching to the possessor noun, and instead became prepositions attaching to the possessed noun, occupying the same syntactic "slot" as pronominal possessive prefixes.
+In addition, the topic particle /wa/ was lost everywhere. Henceforth, topicalisation was indicated solely by word order. The only exception was where it was reinterpreted as a possessive particle indicating that the noun was possessed by the topic. The particle /su/ was interpreted as indicating the noun was possessed by something other than the topic.
+The accusative particle /wo/ was also lost, except when it was needed to distinguish direct from indirect objects.
+Now, Proto-Antarctican was still a nominative-accusative language, but one that only marked the nominative. In intransitive sentences, this was redundant, and the postposition /ga/ was dropped. Now it only marked the subject of an intransitive sentence, and was hence an ergative case marker.
+At this point, the language now used prepositions more than postpositions, which triggered a massive change in the syntax to become head-initial.
+Eventually, the prepositions fused to the noun as prefixes. The ergative postposition /ga/ fused to the noun as a suffix. If the noun ended in a vowel, an epenthetic /u/ was inserted e.g. /buk&#720;/ - book, absolutive -> /bukkuga/ - book, ergative. If the noun ended in a palatalised consonant, an epenthetic /i/ was inserted instead e.g. /te~k&#690;/ - weather, absolutive -> /te~k&#690;iga/. And if the noun ended in /t/ or /d/, /o/ was inserted instead e.g. /&#660;oi&#654;ãd/ - island, absolutive -> /&#660;oi&#654;ãdoga/ - island, ergative.
+===Verbs===
+====Pronominal Objects====
+These were originally marked by prefixes (a feature borrowed from Spanish). However, early in the development of Proto-Antarctican, they underwent metathesis to become infixes (which came immediately before the first vowel). There were two separate forms of the infix, one for words beginning with a palatalised consonant, and another for words beginning with a non-palatalised consonant. The consonants inside the infix must agree with the initial consonant in palatalisation:
+*1st Person Exclusive: /im&#690;/ ~ /em/ (from Spanish "mi")
+*1st Person Inclusive: /as&#690;/ ~ /as/ (from English "as")
+*2nd Person: /&#601;&#720;s&#690;/ ~ /&#601;&#720;s/ (from Spanish "vos")
+*Reflexive: /i&#654;/ ~ /e&#619;/ (from Spanish "él" which underwent semantic shift)
+*3rd Person Singular: /ut&#690;/ ~ /ut/ (from English "it", extended to cover both animate and inanimate objects).
+*3rd Person Plural: /am&#690;/ ~ /am/ (from English "them").
+However, with the development of ergativity, the 3rd person pronominal infixes shifted in meaning to mark antipassive voice. The plural pronoun came to mean that the action happened multiple times, eventually turning into a portmanteau morpheme marking both antipassive voice and imperfective aspect. Similarly, the singular pronoun came to mark both antipassive voice and perfective aspect.
+====Pronominal Subjects====
+Subject pronouns also fused as affixes on the verb. However, since most of them were borrowed from English, which fused tense marking onto pronouns via contractions with an auxiliary verb (e.g. marking both 1st person singular subject and future tense by "I'll"), they also marked tense.
+{| class="wikitable"
+|-
+! !! Past !! Present !! Future
+|-
+| 1PS Exclusive || &#660;oi || &#660;om&#690;i || &#660;ou
+|-
+| 1PS Inclusive || ci || we || wu
+|-
+| 2PS || n&#690;i~ || jo || ju
+|-
+| 3PS || dai || de || dau
+|-
+| Who / What || wo || heu || &#619;u
+|}
+Apart from this, tense and aspect were not marked on Proto-Antarctican verbs.
+====Focus====
+Verbs were initially put into focus by suffixing them with /i/ (from Japanese emphatic particle /yo/). However this underwent metathesis with the final vowel, and ended up as simple palatalisation of the final consonant if it was non-palatalised, and as an infix /i&#660;/ if the last consonant of the word was already palatalised e.g.
+/ji~to&#619;&#601;&#720;/ - to introduce oneself, verb root (from English "intro")
+/ji~to&#654;&#601;&#720;/ - to introduce oneself, verb focus
+/&#660;umupo/ - to sit, verb root
+/&#660;umup&#690;o/ - to sit, verb focus
+/s&#690;&#601;&#720;/ - to perform, verb root (from English "show")
+/s&#690;i&#660;&#601;&#720;/ - to perform, verb focus
+To put the nouns in sentence into focus, the typical suffix was /z/ e.g.
+/s&#690;&#601;&#720;/ - to perform, verb root
+/s&#690;&#601;&#720;z/ - to perform, verb root
+If the verb root already ended in a consonant, one of two things happened:
+*If the consonant was a non-geminated voiced obstruent, the suffix was changed to /zu/ e.g. /do&#654;a&#720;g/ - to drag, verb root -> /do&#654;a&#720;gzu/ - to drag, noun focus
+*Otherwise, the suffix was changed to /iz/ after a palatalised consonant, and /uz/ otherwise e.g. /damas/ - to swindle, verb root -> /damasuz/ - to swindle, noun focus, or /sak&#720;&#690;/ - to have already occurred some time ago, verb root -> /sak&#720;&#690;iz/ - to have already occurred some time ago, noun-focus.
+Any noun could be verbalised to a verb meaning "to be ..." or "to become ..." by simply applying either the verb-focus or the noun-focus transformations e.g.
+/zu&#613;a/ - boat
+/zu&#613;i&#660;a/ - to be a boat, verb focus
+/zu&#613;az/ - to be a boat, noun focus
@@ Line 533: / Line 634: @@
 Finally, /&#614;/ was lost everywhere, and /&#660;/ was lost everywhere before a vowel.
+===Case Marking===
+====Ergative Case====
+The ergative case suffix /ga/ underwent some developments. After a modally voiced back vowel, it lowered the vowel (all voiced consonants did this to a preceding back vowel as long as they were followed by a modally voiced vowel) and then disappeared. If this sound change could not apply, but the preceding vowel was oral, then it became nasal. This was done via the suffix changing to /&#331;a/ as an intermediary.
+====Comitative Case====
+As similar development happened to the comitative case marker /mo/ -> /pmu/. After a modally voiced non-back vowel, it shifted the vowel and then vanished. Otherwise it remained as /pmu/ or /&#660;u/
 [[Category:Languages]][[Category:Conlangs]][[Category:Proto-languages]][[Category:Antarctican]]