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Proto-Oronaic: Difference between revisions
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===Prosody=== | ===Prosody=== | ||
==Grammar== | ==Grammar== | ||
Morphologically Proto-Oronaic was a [[w:Polysynthetism|polysynthetic language]]. Despite most of its descendants having nominative-accusative alignment, Proto-Oronaic belonged to an [[w:Active–stative language|active-stative]] type of languages, since like modern Hirtya it sometimes marked a subject of an intransitive clause the same way as a subject of a transitive clause, and other time - as a direct object of it. The marking was probably based on a different degree of volition (as in Hirtya). Alpian languages had preserved some traces of it, but nowadays it is obsolete. | |||
Unlike modern Alpatho-Hirtic languages, only four noun cases are reconstructed for Proto-Oronaic. The cases were: nominative/absolutive, ergative, genitive (also called possessive) and oblique. There were three numbers: singular, dual and plural. The singular number was unmarked, while dual and plural had at least four different suffixes each. Grammatical gender is not reconstructable and no Oronaic language does have it even today. Noun articles were unknown. The nouns also had possessive suffixes, one for every number and person. Possessive pronouns did not exist. | |||
Verbs were conjugated at least according to number, person, tense (present and past) and aspect(perfective and imperfective, which can be found in all the modern descendants). Mood markers could possibly exist, but they are not reconsructable. There were separate subjective and objective conjugations, but reflexes of the objective conjugation are found only in the Hirtya language, though there are traces in other languages as well. There was a three-way polarity: positive, negative and uncertain, which fully preserved in Hirtya and to a lesser extend in Carpathian. All three were expressed using different verb roots for some verbs while other more complex verbs showed negation and probability periphrastically, using auxillary verbs, which later developed into suffixes. For example, in East Carpathian the word for "to cook" is ''poajet'', while "not to cook" is expressed with a phrase "not to make food" - ''šeuhēt'' and "probably to cook" - ''šeuhestet''. Saying ''poajēhet'' instead of ''šeuhēt'' is correct, but it would mean "not to know how to cook". It is a very unusual feature among both European and Asian languages and can be found only in some Siberian languages near Hirtya, like Nganasan, which have some negative verb roots, but it doesn't show a periphrastic way of negation. | |||
==Vocabulary== | ==Vocabulary== | ||
[[Category:Alpatho-Hirtic]] | [[Category:Alpatho-Hirtic]] | ||
[[Category:Proto-languages]] | [[Category:Proto-languages]] | ||