Proto-Ketan

Proto-Ketan
PK
Created by	–
Setting	planet Keta
Era	~3000 years ago
Language family	Aiwanic languages Ketan languages Proto-Ketan
Early forms	Proto-Aiwanic Proto-Klesuic
Language codes
ISO 639-3	none

Proto-Ketan is the comparatively reconstructed ancestor of all Ketan languages. It reflects a late variety of Meinqələr Kvetain, one of the Klesuic languages, part of the broader Aiwanic family.

An eqivalent to Proto-Ketan had a small corpus of written texts. This has however had the drawback of leading many scholars to rely excessively on these written records instead of reconstructing the actual proto-language primarily based on evidence from the Ketan languages.

Proto-Ketan was not actually spoken in any particular time or place, containing different features from different dialects and even time periods, as it was likely not a uniform language, but a group of mutually intelligible dialects, spoken across the continent. Meinqələr Kvetain, on the other hand, was the primary liturgical language of Qēnaktes ("made by the praised") - the old religion of the Ketan people, even though most of texts witten in this language did not survive up to the present day.

History

The Kvetain language, in its variants, was the lingua franca of old Keta. In the early 1st millennium after the founding of the first Ketan settlements, Meinqələr Kvetain migrated to the South and Southeast, emerging as a language of high culture and of local ruling elites in these regions. Soon distinct dialects began developing in those regions. Kvetain is traceable all the way to the founding of the second Ketan colony almost three thousand years ago in a form of a collection of texts known as Qēnəttais ("words of the praised"). It's difficult to tell for how long Kvetain remained the spoken language, but it's quite likely Proto-Ketan began splitting already during that early period. Approximately 1500 years later Kvetain had stopped being used altogether and almost no written records from that period can be found, indicating a gradual decline of the written language all over the continent. In the Virja and Eana regions a cetrain form of Kvetain had still likely been used occasionally, though it no longer was the language of the elite, being replaced by the standard Virjan and Old Ejalan respectively. In the East, however, most people were illiterate and usually only knew their native language.

With the creation of the Oares Empire, the Ejalan language became the new lingua franca in the East, while the Virjan language had (and still has) a strong position in the West. In the far east the language called Phomˀald became the standard of the Makai Union, but it was only spoken by noble families who had much more access to the rest of the continent. There is an extensive overlap in the vocabulary, phonetics and other aspects of these languages with Proto-Ketan, but it is neither universal nor identical across the languages. They likely emerged from a synthesis of the ancient Kvetain language with various regional dialects. The grammatical structure of these languages does not preserve the original Kvetain state with Phomˀald probably being the most divergent.

Phonology

Proto-Ketan shares many phonological features with Meinqələr Kvetain, although it possesses a smaller inventory of distinct phonemes. From example, two series of plosives can be reconstructed for Proto-Ketan (likely voiced and voiceless), while it is know that Kvetain had three series of those consonants. Another distinctive development of Proto-Ketan is vowel merger: *ə, *ei and *e were no longer distinct, as well as *ai and *a. The precise quality of those phonemes is unknown (*ei and *ai could have already been monophthongs in Kvetain). It also developed a new phoneme *ǫ of an unknown quality, which did not survive in any modern languages.

Vowels

	Front		Central		Back
	short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	i	iː			u	uː
Mid	e	eː	ǫ		o	oː
Open			a	aː	ɒ	ɒː

• Long vowels are marked by a macron above a vowel. The vowel [ɒ] is written as "å" and [ɒː] is written as "ḁ̄" with a ring below to avoid overlaying. The quality of "ǫ" is unknown, but it was likely a mid vowel. Originally it could only be long, but later the short counterpart was innovated and used in a few analogically generated morphological categories. for that reason "ǭ" is often used too distinguish these sounds.

Proto-Ketan vowels could be either long or short. Unlike in many modern languages, a sequence of two vowels was not permitted in Proto-Ketan. There were no diphthongs either.

Consonants

		Labial	Denti-Alveolar	Palatal*	Velar		Uvular
					plain	labial
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	c [t͡ʃ~c]	k	kʷ	q
	voiced	b [b~β]	d [d~ð]		g [g~ɣ]
Fricative		ɸ	θ, s, ł [ɬ]	š [ʃ]
Approximant		w	ɾ	j
Lateral Approximant			l		ʟ

The western, and the eastern dialects had a historic confusion between "r" and "l". The written systems that followed central and southern dialects preserved the distinction, . However, the northwestern dialect only had "l", while the eastern dialect probably only had "r". Because of these inconsistencies, often words with both variants were adopted, resulting in doublets that are occasionally semantically differentiated, for example, in Ejale there are two words: eone ("place", from the original *baranis) and alane ("city", from *baranis, but with the *r>*l change). Regarding the existence of palatal plosives and approximants, the pronunciation is a matter of debate. Only *j can be reconstructed precisely, while *c could have been a postalveolar affricate instead. Occasionally reconstructed phonemes *lj and *nj weren't likely a distinct palatal consonants, but sequences of two consonants. The voiced plosives likely had fricative allophones between vowels already in Proto-Ketan. Word-initially all voiced consonants were pronounced with more air friction than medially or finally, though in some dialects this have been reversed for some consonants, all modern languages show at least some traces of the initial strengthening (for example, Phomˀald shows the change of [j] to [t͡ɕʰ] word-initially - chepòm "leather", but lost this distinction for all other consonants). The phoneme, written as "f" probably was bilabial [ɸ] rather than [f] and in Eastern dialects it was already [h], with occasional words, like fias in Kianne (from *fǭsan "knowledge") been borrowed directly from Kvetain.

Stress

It is not known precisely about the quality of stress in Proto-Ketan. It is generally believed that it possessed a simple initial stress that falled on the word stem with additional prefixes being unstressed. Meinqələr Kvetain had likely had a more complex pitch-accent system, but the data is not sufficient enough. In western dialects of Proto-Ketan stress was not fixed and certain suffixes could shift its position in the word, which affected the later vowel syncope in those languages: (from Tar Ejale) kenna "material", kittena "structure" both come from *keten "thing".

Morphology

The morphology of Proto-Ketan was much simpler than of Meinqələr Kvetain. The old noun case system disappeared almost completely, leaving only traces in modern languages. Various noun classes merged, as their declension patterns coincided, though most descendants later formed new noun cases. Three numbers (singular, dual and plural) were still distinct, although a new collective plural -tē was slowly replacing the original plural marker in many dialects. New adjectives could be formed from nouns and other adjectives, which was not allowed in Kvetain, and these adjectives could also be nominalized, a process still productive in most descendants (although in Phomˀald adjectives became a closed class). There is no concensus on whether adjectives were comparable, but in various dialects of Proto-Ketan different particles were used to form comparatives and superlatives for both adjectives and verbs, for example (from Tar Ejalan): xȯi "big", a'vȯi "bigger" and na' vȯi "the biggest"; the last two must be followed by a word ha "than". Possessives were marked with prefixes, like in most descendants.

Verbs generally simplified in their morphology. Most irregularities were analogically levelled, as all verbs conjugated similarly. Most verbs no more had a full set of forms and certain verbs became replaced with corresponding verbal nouns and auxillaries. This contrasted greatly with a very complex and irregular conjugation system of Meinqələr Kvetain, for example: jǫnami "we eat" - bejǫnaim "we are eating" - mijǫnu "we have eaten" was simplified to jǫnmi - ''jǫnemi - jǫnarmi already in Proto-Ketan and the latter three forms were attested in written texts from two thousand years ago. This indicates that Kvetain was already only a written language and wasn't commonly spoken. Certain commonly used verbs had still preserved remnants of the original ablaut though those remnants were levelled in later descendants too. Analytic construction became more common: Ejale on fearin "I feel" (lit. "on me is feeling", from fa edini "to feel" which itself comes from *edines "he/she perceives"). Participles also became more common and were often used in converb constructions instead of compound sentences, for example (from Virjales): Lāve, ixen terneda, zaxone ir tevāpa alnar "Lāve likes going for a walk and he will go to the forest later", the word terneda is a participle and can be directly translated as "with liking".

Later development

As mentioned before, proto-Ketan was not a unified language and in many centuries different dialects became more and more distinct. The ancestor of Phomˀald separated first (it is the only branch that preserves the initial /m/ and it's also the most divergent of all languages). For example below there are reflexes of words *īg "one" and *mece "two":

Proto-Ketan		Phomˀald	Virjale	Tar Ejale	Kianne
*īg	→	[iəˀ]	[siːx]	[hie]	[ʃiː]
*mece	→	[mɐ̀s]	[ˈʋe.te]	[ˈe.ti]	[jɛːʃ]

Then there was a western-eastern split: western dialects kept *q and *k separate, strengthen *j to *ś (probably a voiced [ʝ] at first, that later devoiced), while the eastern ones merged both as *k, elide *j word-medially and keep *b as /f/. Then some languages from both groups (most dialects of Old Virjales and Western Kventanes) had independently changed *kʷ to *p in all positions, while other dialects merged it with *k. Here are some reflexes of the word "neck" as an example (in Old Kventanes the stress shifted to the prefix, thus preserving the original vowel, in Phomˀald unstressed initial vowels are always preserved as [ə]):

Proto-Ketan		Virjales	Tar Ejale	Pietane	Kalene	Kianne	Phomˀald
*si-kʷǫnes	→	[ˈspu.na]	[ˈsko.na]	[ˈɕe.pon]	[ˈsʲi.kan]	[ʃcæn]	[sə.píŋ]

Here is a sentence in which all words are cognates in all languages. English translation is listed below:

• Proto-Ketan *megoram *målun *fes *kwepeses.
• Virjales: Mexō ålu fe pofes.
• Tar Ejale: Mejuo ȯlo fo-kofe.
• Kei Ejale: Mioja ōlo fo-hovah.
• Kianne: Aoram ual he kuaibe.
• Phomˀald: Guó me mold-pǒˀs.
• I drank water from a stream.