Proto-Ketan: Difference between revisions

===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".

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 [[w:Part of speech#Open and closed classes|closed class]]). There is no concensus on whether adjectives were [[w:Comparison (grammar)|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.