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Khad languages: Difference between revisions
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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. | 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]. | 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 [[w:Grammatical case|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 [[w:Analytic language|analytic]]. Two examples of noun declension in the Shanyi language, which preserved almost all cases of Classical Khad intact, are in the table below: | |||
{| class="wikitable" | |||
|- | |||
! “person” !! singular !! plural !! “river” !! singular !! plural | |||
|- | |||
! Absolutive | |||
| ''dnags'' [nɑ˥] || ''dnagtye'' [nɑ˥.t͡ɕe꜋] || rowspan=7| || ''mkra'' [t͡ʂa˨ː] || ''kraye'' [t͡ʂa˨ː.i꜌] | |||
|- | |||
! Genitive | |||
| ''dnagn'' [nɑŋ˥] || ''dnagtyen'' [nɑ˥.t͡ɕeŋ꜋] || ''mkrayin'' [t͡ʂa˨ː.jiŋ꜌] || ''kranyen'' [t͡ʂa˨ː.jiŋ꜌] | |||
|- | |||
! Ergative | |||
| ''dnagyi'' [nɑ˥.d͡ʑi꜊] || ''dnagtyi'' [nɑ˥.t͡ɕi꜊] || ''mkrakyi'' [t͡ʂa˨ː.t͡ʂɪ꜌] || ''kranyi'' [t͡ʂa˨ː.ɲi꜌] | |||
|- | |||
! Dative | |||
| ''dnagsa'' [nɑ˥.gæ˥] || ''dnagtya'' [nɑ˥.t͡ɕæ꜋] || — || — | |||
|- | |||
! Locative | |||
| ''dnagla'' [nɑŋ˥] || ''dnagtyala'' [nɑ˥.t͡ɕeŋ꜋] || ''mkrala'' [t͡ʂa˨ː.jiŋ꜌] || ''krala'' [t͡ʂa˨ː.jiŋ꜌] | |||
|- | |||
! Terminative | |||
| ''dnagsog'' [nɑŋ˥] || ''dnagtyug'' [nɑ˥.t͡ɕeŋ꜋] || ''mkraug'' [t͡ʂa˨ː.jiŋ꜌] || ''kraug'' [t͡ʂa˨ː.jiŋ꜌] | |||
|- | |||
! Comitative | |||
| ''dnagstang'' [nɑŋ˥] || ''dnagtyang'' [nɑ˥.t͡ɕeŋ꜋] || — || — | |||
|} | |||
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 [[w:Volition (linguistics)|volition]] or [[w:Telicity|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. 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). | |||
[[Category:Aiwanic languages]] | [[Category:Aiwanic languages]] | ||