Proto-Rttirrian
Proto-Rttirrian is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Rttirrian family of languages spoken primarily across the nation of Rttirria, as well as other nearby nations in Southeast Asia. It was probably spoken around 1500–1000 BCE, but there are no written records of its existence. Based on the distribution and diversity of its daughter languages, Proto-Rttirrian's urheimat was probably somewhere in present-day northeastern Rttirria or southwestern Myanmar. Its two main branches are South Rttirrian, spoken in Rttirria, and North Rttirrian, spoken elsewhere in Southeast Asia and notable for its Semitic-like word root system.
Proto-Rttirrian was a moderately fusional language somewhat like many Indo-European languages, which inflected verbs for person, number, animacy, tense, and the subjunctive mood. It had two consonants, transcribed *l1 and *l2, whose pronunciations are disputed; disputes also exist over the function of its "fourth tense" (after past, present, and future) and its word order.
Rttirrian is not known to be related to any other language family, but various proposals have been made, especially relations to the Dravidian languages and various families in New Guinea and Australia; however, none of these proposals has much academic support. By far, the Rttirrian language with the most speakers is Rttirri, which is spoken by over 46 million people and is the official language of Rttirria. Most of its other daughter languages have only a few thousand or hundred remaining speakers, except for Gaju, with almost a million.
Phonology
Consonants
Proto-Rttirrian had a moderate-sized consonant inventory; however, it was much more flexible than its daughter languages with regards to clusters. The following consonants are reconstructed:
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Retroflex | Pharyngeal? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | *m /m/ | *n /n/ | *rn /ɳ/ | |||
| Plosive | *p /p/ *b /b/ |
*t /t/ *d /d/ |
*k /k/ *g /g/ |
*rt /ʈ/ *rd /ɖ/ |
||
| Fricative | *f /ɸ/ *v /β/ |
*s /s/ *z /z/ |
||||
| Affricate | *ch /t͡ʃ/ | |||||
| Approximant | *w /w/ | *y /j/ | *rl /ɭ/ *rr /ɻ/ |
*l1 *l2 |
- The exact pronunciation of the consonants transcribed as l1 and l2 is unknown.
- Among the descendants of Proto-Rttirrian, these two sounds survived only in Proto-South-Rttirrian, where they merged into a single phoneme, */ʟ/. That phoneme corresponds to /l/ and many instances of the low tone in Gaju, and corresponds to /w/ and diphthongal /u/ in Rttirri. In all other descendants of Proto-Rttirrian, l1 and l2 disappeared as consonants and survive only in their effects on surrounding vowels.
- Some linguists posit that they were pharyngeal approximants [ħ] and [ʕ], pointing to the fact that they generally had a backing effect on surrounding vowels in branches other than South Rttirrian. Others note that these backing effects were not uniform, and suggest that only l2 was pharyngeal while l1 was something like the velarized lateral [ɫ], or a lateral fricative [ɬ~ɮ].
- Evidence that l1 was some type of fricative comes from the fact that the vowel a was allophonically raised when adjacent to f, v, s, and z, as well as l1, but the relevance of this observation is disputed. The realization of the vowel u was not affected by either consonant, suggesting that they were probably not velar.
Vowels
Proto-Rttirrian had a simple three-vowel system:
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | *i /i/ | *u /u/ | |
| Low | *a /ä/ |
- The low vowel a was probably fronted and raised allophonically to something like [æ~e] adjacent to fricatives and l1.
- The high back vowel u was probably lowered allophonically to something like [ʊ~ɔ] adjacent to velar consonants.
Grammar
Proto-Rttirrian had a moderate degree of fusional inflection.
Proto-Rttirrian had an animacy system, which was lost in all descendants, although some scholars consider Gaju to have (re)gained a rudimentary grammatical gender system. In Proto-South-Rttirrian, the animate gender became dominant in the singular number, i.e. the surviving third-person singular inflectional affixes and pronouns are those that descend from the Proto-Rttirrian animate gender. However, in the plural number, the inanimate gender won out. For example, the Rttirri third-person singular ergative/possessive prefix is wa, derived from the Proto-Rttirrian *l1a- (animate), but the third-person plural prefix is rta, from the Proto-Rttirrian *rdam (inanimate).
Verbs
Verbs inflected for the person, number, and animacy of the subject and for tense.
| Person | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | ||||||
| Sing. | Pl. | Sing. | Pl. | Sing. | Pl. | |||
| Anim. | Inan. | Anim. | Inan. | |||||
| Past | *mu- | *mum- | *apaf- | *am- | *bu- | *pa- | *bum- | *bam- |
| Present | *na- | *nam- | *akf- | *sam- | *l1a- | *rda- | *l1im- | *rdam- |
| Future | *nay- | *mi- | *akay- | *mi- | *l1i- | *rdi- | *mi- | |
| Tense #4 | *l2an- | *l2am- | *l2ak- | *l2am- | *l2i- | *l2ard- | *l2am- | |
- The exact function of the fourth tense is unknown; it may have been a perfect aspect, an aorist, or something else entirely. It evolved into two verbal moods in Proto-South-Rttirrian and took on various tense and aspect functions in other descendants.
- An *i- was used to begin the stems of transitive verbs. By analogy, this would cause object pronouns to be affixed to the verb in Proto-South-Rttirrian.
Auxiliary verbs
Ample auxiliary verbs were used. Some of these would later fuse to the verb to become inflectional moods. Similarly, certain past-tense and future-tense verb prefixes would become auxiliary verbs.
Some of the most common auxiliary verbs are as follows:
| Rttirri | English |
|---|---|
| *tya | to hope |
| *apta | to plead |
| *ikrta | to have to |
| *gamu | to do something habitually or generally |
Auxiliary verbs, grammatically, were simple particles that did not inflect.
- *Apaf-bva ikrta.
- 2SG.NOM.PST-leave have_to
- You had to leave.
Subjunctive
Only one inflectional mood was used: the subjunctive. It agreed with the tense of the verb:
| Past | *-mugi |
|---|---|
| Present | *-nagi |
| Future | *-nagyi |
| Tense #4 | *-l2agyi |
- *L1a-i-chi-nagi day
- 2SG.PRES-TRANS-eat-SUBJ.PRES 3PL.INAN.ACC
- If you were to eat them
Nouns
There was an accusative case used, but it was probably vestigial by the time that Proto-Rttirrian's dialects that would become its daughter languages split off: reflexes of the accusative are found only in a small number of nouns, plus all of the pronouns.
The following noun suffixes were used:
| Singular | Plural | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Animate | Inanimate | Animate | Inanimate | |
| Nominative | *-a | — | *-maz | *-ma |
| Accusative | *-ay/*-y | *-i/*-y | *-miz | *-mi |
The following pronouns are reconstructed. Note that many of the nominative pronouns end with *-tku—in Proto-South-Rttirrian, this would be reanalyzed as an affix meaning "self" with a possessive prefix, cf. Rttirri nattu ("I", lit. "my self"). This affix is present both as an independent word for "self, identity" and as a general emphatic pronoun suffix in Rttirri and, to a lesser extent, Gaju.
| Person | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | ||||||
| Sing. | Pl. | Sing. | Pl. | Sing. | Pl. | |||
| Anim. | Inan. | Anim. | Inan. | |||||
| Nominative (emphatic) |
*natku | *napku | *atku | *satku | *l1atku | *rdartku | *l1apku | *rtapku |
| Accusative | *ni | *may | *ki | *ksay | *gyu | *di | *guy | *day |
| Possessive noun prefix |
*na- | *mi- | *akf- | *sa- | *l1a- | *rdi- | *il1- | *rda- |
Syntax
The word order of Proto-Rttirrian is unknown. Because its case system was highly atrophied and it possessed only a nominative and an accusative, it is thought likely that a subject-verb-object (SVO) or object-verb-subject (OVS) word order was used.
Sound reflexes in selected daughter languages
| South Rttirrian | North Rttirrian | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Proto- Rttirrian |
Rttirri | Gaju | Zoki |
| *m | m | ||
| *n | n | ɲ | |
| *ɳ | ɳ | n | |
| *p | h | pʰ | p, pʰ |
| *b | p | b, p | |
| *t | f | tʰ | tɕ |
| *d | ʔ | t | dʑ |
| *k | k | kʰ | k, kʰ, g |
| *g | k | k, ŋ | g, k, ŋ |
| *ʈ | ʂ | tʰ | t, tʰ |
| *ɖ | ʈ | t | d, t |
| *ɸ | ø | f, m | f |
| *β | ø | f, m | v, w |
| *s | t | t͡s | s |
| *z | ç, ʃ | s | z, ʒ |
| *t͡ʃ | t͡ʃ | ʃ | |
| *w | u | v | |
| *j | i | j, dʑ | |
| *ɭ | ɽ | l | |
| *ɻ | ɻ | w | ɹ |
| *l1 | w, u | l, V˩ | x, k |
| *l2 | w, u | l, V˩ | ∅ |
| *ä | ɑ | ä, ɔ, ɛ, e | ə, a, ɑ, ɛ, eə |
| *i | i | i, ɪ, e | i, iə, e, ɛ, eə |
| *u | u | u, o | u, uə, o, oə, ɔ, ɑ |