Khad languages

The Khad or Western languages, are a proposed subdivision of the Lámeyi languages which comprises several branches traditionally grouped into Central and Peripheral subgroups, the latter being entirely paraphyletic. The Khad languages constitute the largest and westernmost extant branch of the Lámeyi language family.

The common ancestor of all of the languages in this family is called Common Khad, which was spoken in approximately the late 6th century AC. A languages, called Las, used to be included into this group, but is nowadays considered to comprise its own branch.

The subclassification of the Khad languages varies among scholars. The generally accepted classification treat the four subbranches of Khad as follows:

• Central (Kyem-Khad)
  • Lowland (Gdangs)
  • Hill (Bsas)
  • High (Ím)
• Mountain (Tsed)
  • (Kryalpomg)
  • (Khulong)
• River (Tsampa)
• Nuli-Salbal
  • Salbal
  • Nuli

The more divergent languages are spoken in the north and east, likely due to language contact with the Thad languages. The divergence exhibited in the Khulong branch may also be due to a gradual language shift from an extinct Eastern language.

Features

Innovations specific to the Khad languages include:

• Loss of Proto-Lámeyi original pitch accent.
• Fronting and assibilation of the Proto-Lámeyi velars: *kʲ, *ḳʲ, *gʲ, *ŋʲ, *xʲ > *t͡ʃʰ, *t͡ʃ, *d͡ʒ, *n, *ʃ.
• Spirantization *p, *t, *k > *f, *tʰ, *kʰ, while *ṗ, *ṭ, *ḳ > *p, *t, *k. The opposite is true for the Thad branch. Uvular plosives remained unaffected.
• Fortition of the "strong" nasal series to voiced plosives: *mb, *nd, *ŋg *ɴɢ > *b, *d, *g *ɢ.
• Reduction of unstressed pretonic vowels to *ə.
• Collapse of Proto-Lámeyi "secondary" vowels to *ə.
• Monophthongisation of original Proto-Lámeyi diphthongs.
• Turning of the final sibilant fricative *s into non-sibilant fricative glottal *h (this may be a later change that spread among already distinct Khad branches).

From that point, the Common Khad phonology is rather accurately rendered by its native script. Some prefix letters became assimilated to the root sounds. The pretonic vowels had already collapsed to a single sound by that time, even though they were still represented with different symbols. Because of this fact, texts from that period show frequent confusion and hypercorrection. For instance, the word for “road” is written as lados and lodos in the same text. Later texts show ledoh and ldoh, also indicating the lenition of the final /s/ sound.

In Central Khad, new consonant clusters, that had appeared after vowel reduction and elision, were usually simplified. For instance, the name of the Suropong Valley would be pronounced [sʷə.ɺə.ˈpoŋ] in Early Central Khad, but it became srpong [ʂɔ́ŋ] in Shanyi. The process of cluster simplification, devoicing and tonogenesis had begun in the central dialects with some later peripheral branches preserving most words intact, while other languages not allowing any clusters at all. In the Gyu language (spelt Dguts), all consonant clusters disappeared completely, turning into such features as vowel mutation and tone (the name of the language itself is [gʲý]).

Later development

Central Khad

Classical Central Khad refers to the language of text written in the Milpram (“one, that is written”) script. The classical written Kyem-Khad language had several noun cases.

• absolutive – either marked with -s or unmarked.
• genitive or possessive – -n/-yin/-nyen
• ergative/instrumental – -(g)i
• ablative/dative – -a
• locative –-la
• terminative – -og/-ug
• comitative -tang

Case markers were affixed to entire noun phrases, not to individual words. Later many Kyem-Khad languages lost the case system entirely, becoming analytic. Two examples of noun declension in the Shanyi language, which preserved almost all cases of Classical Khad intact, are in the table below:

“person”	singular	plural	“river”	singular	plural
Absolutive	dnags [nɑ˥]	dnagtye [nɑ˥.t͡ɕe꜋]		mkra [t͡ʂa˨ː]	kraye [t͡ʂa˨ː.ji꜌]
Genitive	dnagn [nɑŋ˥]	dnagtyen [nɑ˥.t͡ɕeŋ꜋]		mkrayin [t͡ʂaː˧˨.jiŋ꜌]	kranyen [t͡ʂaː˨.jiŋ꜌]
Ergative	dnagyi [nɑ˥.d͡ʑi꜊]	dnagtyi [nɑ˥.t͡ɕi꜊]		mkrakyi [t͡ʂaː˧˨.t͡ʂi꜌]	kranyi [t͡ʂaː˨.ɲi꜌]
Dative	dnagsa [nɑ˥.gæ˥]	dnagtya [nɑ˥.t͡ɕæ꜋]		—	—
Locative	dnagla [nɑː˥.la˥]	dnagtyala [nɑː˥.t͡ɕa꜋.la˥]		mkrala [t͡ʂaː˧˨.la˥]	krala [t͡ʂaː˨.la˥]
Terminative	dnagsog [nɑ˥.t͡ʂɔ˥]	dnagtyug [nɑ˥.t͡ɕø˥]		mkraug [t͡ʂoː˧˨]	kraug [t͡ʂoː˨]
Comitative	dnagstang [nɑ˥.taŋ˧]	dnagtyang [nɑ˥.t͡ɕaŋ˧]		—	—

Verbs did not inflect for person or number. Morphologically, most verbs had several stem forms for different tenses, distinguishing the “present”, “progressive”, “aorist”, “perfect”, “future” and “imperative”. These so-called tenses typically had a broader use, conveying the sense of necessity, probability, completeness etc. Not every verb could inflect for all six tenses.

The majority of verbs fell into one of two categories, traditionally called "voluntary" and "involuntary", expressing whether the agent was involved directly or indirectly. Most involuntary verbs lacked an imperative stem. Later languages developed this feature into separate volition or telicity verb categories. Kyem-Khad verbs exhibit a conjugation system more similar to the Thad languages, than to both Proto-Lámeyi and other Khad verb conjugation, indicating a possible close contact with the Eastern languages. Different verb forms often showed ablaut of the root vowel – a trend that expanded further among the later Kyem languages. The stems of verbs were also distinguished by the addition of various affixes that share their origin with the same affixes in the Thad languages. Since the descendants of Classical Khad underwent consonant cluster reduction and simplification, this similarity remained only in the written form. The table below shows four verbs being conjugated in the Shanyi language:

Meaning	infinitive	present	progressive	aorist	perfect	future	imperative
do	kduln [tʰuːŋ˧˥]	bkdulni [duː˥.ni꜊]	kdulnud [tʰyː˧˥.ny꜊]	kdusg [tʰyː˧˥]	kdulyod [tʰyː˧˥.jø꜊]	gkdul [duː˧˥]	kdulbs [tyː˥]
take	len [leŋ˧]	blei [liː˥]	lebni [lʌ˧.ni꜊]	laisg [leː˧˥]	leyod [le˧.jø꜊]	gla [laː˥]	labs [lɑː˥]
finish	'srubn [ʂuŋ˥]	bsrubi [d͡ʐu˥.wi꜊]	—	srubsg [ʂyː˧˥]	srubyod [ʂyː˥.jø꜊]	gsrub [d͡ʐu˧˥]	srubs [d͡ʐu˥]
make	zin [d͡ziŋ˧]	bzini [d͡zi˧.ni꜊]	zibna [d͡zʌ˧.na꜊]	—	ziyod [d͡ziː˧.jø꜊]	gzi [d͡zi˧˥]	zibs [d͡zʌ˥]

Shanyi reintroduced pronominal clitics with a similar function to the auxilary verb in Proto-Lámeyi:

[t͡ʂi˨ qɑŋ˨ qʌ˧˩.de˨.pʰa꜋ fø˧]

kyis qan qek=g-depa fod

(2sg.Obj 1sgSbj 1sgSbj.2sgObj=FUT-see soon)

“I will see you soon”

All Kyem-Khad languages are written with the Milpram script, with a historically conservative orthography that reflects Classical Khad phonology, which helps unify the Central Khad language area, but also makes learning the orthography very difficult. For this reason, a different script, called Milngum (“one, that is spoken”) is used among speakers of more northern languages, such as Shanyi. The script was based on the Eastern writing with additional diacritics for tone. Milngum is not a common script and is mostly used by foreigners and merchants. Unlike Milpram it is not standardised, for example certain names may also retain irregular transcriptions, such as “Síkpons” for the Shipon valley (Msigpoms in the Milpram spelling).

Khulong

The Khulong languages are a branch of the Mountain Khad language group, being distantly related to the Kryalpomg branch. They are spoken in the easternmost regions of the Blue Mountains, not far from where the Las language is spoken. The total number of speakers is around 30,000. The Khulong languages are primarily agglutinative and have a rich system of grammatical cases. Unlike their closest neighbours, they do not exhibit vowel harmony. The earliest Khulong language to be preserved in writing was Old Khulong (or Old Kalung depending on the dialect), in the 11th century AC. Both Old Khulong and its descendants use a modified Milngum script. Traditionally the Khulong dialects are grouped into three languages: Hučang, Źilyan and Polom, the latter two being more closely related to each other than to the former.