The Ultimate Proto-Language

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

As you probably haven't noticed, I've been away for quite a while, but now I'm back. In the meantime, I've come up with a new conlang, which is supposed to be the very first one on a new conworld. Its lexicon is mostly based on onomatopoeias, sound symbolism and combinations thereof.

Phonology
/m n/
/p t k/
/f s x/
/l r/
/a i u/

This language features an extreme kind of vowel harmony, namely that all vowels within a single word have to be the same.

Airstream direction is phonemic: egressive í means "small", whereas ingressive ì means "to die". Egressive words are marked with an acute accent on the first vowel, ingressive ones with a grave accent. The airstream direction remains the same throughout a word, so therefore it's only marked once.

/r/ is realised as /ɬ/ in ingressive words.

Syllable structure is (C)V(R), in which R is any on /l r m n s/. Consonant clusters are not permitted.

Grammar
The basic word order is SOV:

Ká fála nàm.
Man apple eat.
The man eats an apple.

SVOV sentences are also common. They mean something like "S does something to O, and as a result, O does something else":

Xár á ká ì.
Bear hurt man die.
The bear hurts a man, and as a result, the man dies.
Or just, The bear kills a man.

Reduplication is productive as an intensifier for verbs and as a pluraliser for nouns. Sometimes reduplicated words violate phonotactics; in those cases an epenthetic -k- is inserted to break up vowel hiatus, and consonant clusters are broken up with a vowel.

Xáraxar áka káka ìki.
Bear~PL hurt~INT man~PL die~INT.
The bears really kill the men.

There is no tense marking, so the previous sentence might as well mean "The bears really killed the men".

There is only a small number of true adjectives. However, a noun can be placed behind another noun to describe it much like a true adjective would. The second noun changes its vowels so as to conform to the vowels of the first noun.

lúsu-ruku
house-grass
a green house

True adjectives do not change their vowels.


For Janko:
1. sí "finger"
2. àpa "other"
3. àpana sí "two and one" or súnu à àpa "hand and not two" (i.e. "hand without two")
4. àpana àpa "two and two" or súnu à sí "hand and not one"
5. sú "hand"
Higher numbers do not exist, although you can use rú "many".

For others: feel free to comment or to complain.

EDIT: stupid mistake regarding adjectives

[sucaeyl]

I think this is really cool! It would be awesome to see you evolve this over time, and derive every single word for abstract concepts and grammatical forms through metaphor and grammaticalization (and a ton of work!) Now I can't comment on the accuracy of this of course, and perhaps someone else would be more able to discuss what is likely in a language of this stage, but I think you're off to a great start!

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Well, thanks!

As for what's likely, I’ll admit that this would be quite unlikely as a first language. In reality it’d take quite a few centuries for something like this to develop out completely nothing, and in the meantime the existing bits would also change so there would be multiple “first” languages by the time they’re as developed by this one. Nevertheless I decided to do it like this, simply because it’s a lot easier to work with something that’s already a language than something that isn't.

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

I like the idea of phonemic airflow, makes me want to create a conlang with that.

[roninbodhisattva]

I have never heard of a vowel system that contrasts ingressive vs. egressive vowels. Does it exist?

[Haplogy]

I once had a similar idea, with, say, grammatical particles being ingressive and lexical words being egressive, completely with separate phonologies for the two (fewer phonemes, simpler structure, no constrastive stress etc. for ingressive). I don't know of any natlang precedents, though.

[CatDoom]

Ingressive speech is apparently quite common cross-linguistically in interjections or short phrases, usually affirmations. It might be plausible for a paralinguistic feature like that to become phonemic through some kind of analogy or derivation or something. Changes of airflow direction partway through an utterance are apparently attested, though extremely rare. Everybody's favorite crazy ritual language Damin apparently had a phonemic ingressive lateral fricative, while the incredibly phonetically complex ǃXóõ or Taa language has a series of clicks that are described as being "ingressive voiceless nasal with delayed aspiration."

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

clicks that are described as being "ingressive voiceless nasal with delayed aspiration."

Aren't all clicks ingressive?

[احمکي ارش-ھجن]

clicks that are described as being "ingressive voiceless nasal with delayed aspiration."

Aren't all clicks ingressive?

Yes, but these are nasal with delayed aspiration.

[CatDoom]

clicks that are described as being "ingressive voiceless nasal with delayed aspiration."

Aren't all clicks ingressive?

All clicks are *lingual* (or "velaric") ingressive sounds; the clicks I'm talking about have an ingressive pulmonic airstream through the nose, apparently. The speaker is actually breathing in when they make the sound.

[Janko Gorenc]

Hi Dē Graut Bʉr,

Thank you for publish numbers from your new conlang.

>For Janko:
1. sí "finger"
2. àpa "other"
3. àpana sí "two and one" or súnu à àpa "hand and not two" (i.e. "hand without two")
4. àpana àpa "two and two" or súnu à sí "hand and not one"
5. sú "hand"
Higher numbers do not exist, although you can use rú "many".

For others: feel free to comment or to complain.

EDIT: stupid mistake regarding adjectives<


Could you please tell me what is name for your new conlang?
The Ultimate Proto-Language?

So numbers 6 is rú, 7 is rú, … etc.
This is very interesting, because all the numbers 6 and higher mean much to them.
I would say it is similar also in some natural languages do not know all the numerals from 1 to 10, but use numerals for the missing word "many"), spoken in Papua New Guinea, Irian Jaya, and some other Indonesian islands (Papua origin ), South American languages, and partly extinct.languages spoken in the Andaman islands.

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Could you please tell me what is name for your new conlang?
The Ultimate Proto-Language?

You may call it The Ultimate Proto-Language.



Right now I’m working on descendants, of which there will be three. Firstly, there is the northern descendant, which is spoken by those who migrate to the north and across a narrow sea strait and end up on the other continent. Secondly, there is the western descendant, which is spoken by those who migrate across the mountains and end up in the desert. Lastly there is the central descendant, which is spoken by those who stay in the Urheimat. This post will concentrate on the northern descendant.

Map.png (43.89 KiB) Viewed 7628 times

Sound changes

• In ingressive words, the first consonant becomes glottalised, after which all vowels become egressive. The three words consisting of a single ingressive vowel acquire a glottal stop /ʔ/ which hardens to /q/.
• Glottalised obstruents become ejectives, glottalised nasals become implosives, glottalised /lˀ/ merges with plain /l/.
• Vowels are rounded when next to labials, lowered when next to dorsals and fronted next to /s/.
• Final vowels are dropped with compensatory lengthening on the first vowel.
• Words ending in ejectives get an unstressed /ə/ at the end, written –e.

This leaves the following phonology:

/m n/
/p t k q/
/pʽ tʽ kʽ/
/ɓ ɗ ɠ/ <b d g>
/f s x/
/fʽ sʽ xʽ/
/r/
/ɬʽ ~ ɬ/ <ł> (ejective when it's the first consonant)
/l/
/i y u/
/e (ə) o/
/a/

Grammar
Pronouns, articles and genders
This descendant has acquired a set of pronouns: ka “he” (from ká “man”), mo “she” (from má “woman”), se “it” (from sá “thing, tool”), la “I” (a worn-down form of lála “to speak”) and xa “you” (from xá “to hear, noise”). The third-person pronouns are also used as articles. Pronouns and articles are always placed after the word they modify. Note that only the subject gets an article.

Grammatical gender is not only determined by biological gender, but also by ancient sound symbolisms: words with stops therefore tend to be masculine, words with nasals or implosives are usually feminine, and words which have neither are neuter.

Nouns
Apart from articles, the nominal system has also acquired the suffix –a, which marks the causer in case that’s not the subject. It is derived from á “pain, to hurt” in the SVOV constructions of the protolanguage.

Adjectives
Adjectives are placed directly after nouns. They come before articles but after the causative –a.
They still try to match their vowels, but this has become something of a mess: they nowadays take the vowel of the article or the –a suffix, and only take the vowels of the noun itself when neither an article nor an –a suffix is present. Note that adjectives don’t necessarily match the vowel length of other words.

Verbs
Verbs have lost the intensive/non-intensive distinction, but have acquired a distinction between past and non-past tense. The non-past is derived from the intensive. The past is derived from the non-intensive plus –qu, which is the reflex of ù “old”. Thus “eat” in the non-past is dōnom (from nàmanàm), whereas it in the past is donqu (from nàm ù).

Samples
To illustrate the grammar changes I’ll use some sample sentences from the description of the protolanguage.

Ka-ka fōl dōnom-ka.
Man-MASC.SUBJ apple eat-NPST-3.MASC
The man eats an apple.

Xārxara kāk-ka qequ-ka.
Bear-PL-CAUS man-PL-MASC.SUBJ die-PST-3.MASC
The bears killed the men.

Lȳs-rēk-se.
House-green-NEUT.SUBJ
The house is green.

Numbers
1. si
2. ōp’e
3. sȳnqōp
4. sȳnqasi
5. sy
6. sȳnsi
7. sȳnāp’e
8. sȳsnaqōp
9. sȳsnaqasi
10. sȳs

Janko: Call this language Proto-North.


Comments are welcome!

[Clearsand]

Languages like this, if drawn far enough out, could be very useful in studying potentials for our own proto-world. Though irregular sound changes, new onomatapia (I dont think thats spelled right), and possible multiple origins of language wouldn't be reflected in such a protolanguage, it could stll be useful in studying the overall patterns between language families. Besides, this is a cool language in its own right. Keep up the good work.

[KathTheDragon]

onomatapia (I dont think thats spelled right)

Onomatopoea

[sangi39]

onomatapia (I dont think thats spelled right)

Onomatopoea

Onomatopoeia

[KathTheDragon]

onomatapia (I dont think thats spelled right)

Onomatopoea

Onomatopoeia

Yeah, that.

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

After quite some delay I’ve now finally got Proto-West ready.

Sound changes

• /r/ merges with /ɬ/.
• Ingressive vowels turn adjacent consonants into clicks. The words consisting of a single ingressive vowel get an implosive /ɓ/.
• Haplology and syncope of medial vowels, both with compensatory lengthening. Note that this may lead to overlong vowels.
• The consonant clusters which were created by the previous sound change simplify.
• Non-initial nasal consonants disappear while nasalising the preceding vowel.
• Overlong vowels become diphthongs: /aːː iːː uːː/ /əi ai au/.
• An unstressed /ə/ is added after word-final consonants.

This leaves the following phonology:

/m n/
/p t k/
/ɓ/ <b>
/f s x/
/ɬ/ <ł>
/l/
/ʘ ǀ ! ǁ/
/ᵑʘ ᵑǀ (ᵑ!) (ᵑǁ)/ <nʘ nǀ n! nǁ>
/ʘʰ ǀʰ !ʰ ǁʰ/ <ʘh ǀh !h ǁh>

/i a u/
/(ə)/ <e>
/ai əi ɒu/ <ai ei au>

/a aː ã ãː/ <a ā ą ą̄>

/ᵑ!/ and /ᵑǁ/ are only marginally phonemic.

Grammar
Lengthening
Due to sound changes, the reduplication in TUPL (=The Ultimate Proto Language, in case that wasn’t obvious) has largely been turned into vowel lengthening, something which has been generalized to pretty much all words. Long vowels become diphthongs when “lengthened”.

Verbs
Verbs can be divided into two classes: simple and compound verbs. The former derive from single TUPL roots, whereas the latter are derived from multiple roots. There are some minor differences in their conjugations.

Verbs inflect for tense and aspect and have two stems: a normal and a lengthened one. The lengthened stem marks the habitual/gnomic.

In total there are 5 tense-aspects: present, gnomic, past simple, past habitual, and distant past.

The present and gnomic tenses are only ones which are formed differently in simple and compound verbs. In these tenses, simple verbs have a t– prefix which is absent in compound verbs. The past simple and past habitual both use the prefix s–, which becomes se– if the verb begins with a vowel. The distant past is formed by prefixing ses(e)– to the short stem. This is the only tense which has no habitual/gnomic counterpart.

The t– prefix derives from TUPL tá “stand”, whose meaning has shifted to “be”, and then has been used as a part of pseudo-compound verbs somewhat like in English “I am eating”. The s– prefix is related to “one”, it probably became a past tense prefix by a metaphor like one firstly previously. The distant past is simply a doubled past, i.e. the past of the past.

Here are the full conjugations of the simple verb nǀą “to eat” and the compound verb ūłe “to see”.

Code: Select all

tenǀą     tenǀą̄          ūłe     aułe
senǀą     senǀą̄          sūłe    saułe
sesenǀą                  sesūłe

Nouns
Nouns form plurals by vowel lengthening.

Adjectives
Adjectives always bear the suffix –te. They form intensives by vowel lengthening. Note that only the root and not the suffix lengthens.

Samples
Xare beite kā sābe.
Lion young\INT man\PL PST-kill\HAB
The lion used to kill very young men.

Lusu łīte teta.
House green PRES-be
The house is green.

Sesełā ba, ǁhaǁa seta a!e.
DIST.PST-rain NEG, water PST-be NEG.EMPH.
It hadn’t rained, so there was no water at all.

Numbers
1. si
2. aʘa
3. ą̄ʘhi
4. ą̄ʘha
5. su
6. susi
7. sūʘa
8. sąuʘhi
9. sąuʘha
10. āʘhu

Comments and questions are still very welcome

[Janko Gorenc]

I interst that letters (sound)
/ʘ ǀ ! ǁ/
/ᵑʘ ᵑǀ (ᵑ!) (ᵑǁ)/ <nʘ nǀ n! nǁ>
/ʘʰ ǀʰ !ʰ ǁʰ/ <ʘh ǀh !h ǁh>
similar as Khoisan languages of the South African republics?

[CaesarVincens]

I interst that letters (sound)
/ʘ ǀ ! ǁ/
/ᵑʘ ᵑǀ (ᵑ!) (ᵑǁ)/ <nʘ nǀ n! nǁ>
/ʘʰ ǀʰ !ʰ ǁʰ/ <ʘh ǀh !h ǁh>
similar as Khoisan languages of the South African republics?

Yes, those represent various types of clicks. The first row is plain, the second nasal(ized), the third aspirated.
They are in order: bilabial, dental, alveolar, and lateral clicks.

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Now, at last, I've managed to get Proto-Central into a presentable shape. It's quite different from the other two descendants, but nevertheless it shares a few developments with both.

Sound changes

• /i u/ become /je we/ in the first syllable of a word and /e/ otherwise.
• /j w/ contract with preceding consonants:
  • /tj sj rj nj lj/ become /tɕ ɕ ʑ ɲ ʎ/.
  • /kj xj/ become /ʈʂ ʂ/.
  • /tw pj/ become /ts ps/.
  • /pw fw mw/ become /kw xw ŋw/.
  • /sw/ becomes /ʍ/ which merges with /xw/.
  • /mj nw/ become /bz dz/.
  • /lw rw/ become /w/.
  • [ɬw ɬj] become [ɸ ɕ].
• A /h/ is inserted before word initial vowels.
• Plain velars turn adjacent /e/’s into /a/’s, labialised velars turn them into /o/’s and lose their labialisation. /x xw/ disappear. [ɸ] also turns /e/’s into /o/’s.
• Haplology.

So now we have this phoneme inventory:
/m n ɲ ŋ/ <m n ń ŋ>
/p t k/ <p t k>
/ps ts tɕ tʂ/ <ps c ć ç>
/bz~ɓ dz~ɗ/ <bz z>
/f s ɕ ʂ h/ <f s ś ş h>
/ʑ/ <ź>
/r~ɬ~ɸ l ʎ j w/ <r l ĺ j w>

/e a o/ <e a o>

Ingressive vowels are still phonemic and indicated orthographically the same way as in TUPL.

[ɓ ɗ ɬ] are ingressive allophones of /bz dz r/. [ɸ] is another allophone of /r/ which appears in front of ingressive /o/.

Grammar
Nouns
Nouns form plurals by some kind of reduplication of the final CV or VC. Note however that due to sound changes the reduplicated consonant is often not the same as the root consonant, but rather that of the TUPL etymon. To make matters worse, an /o/ is never reduplicated as such, but rather as an /e/.

In addition to this, nouns also have innovated a gender system in pretty much the same way as Proto-North did, i.e. by innovating pronouns and using worn-down forms of those as Swedish-style suffixed definite articles. However, Proto-Central has animate-inanimate gender rather than masculine-feminine-neuter as in Proto-North.

The animate suffix is –(V)m, derived from má “woman”. The inanimate suffix is –(V)s, derived from sá “thing”. Indefinite nouns don’t have a suffix.

Verbs
The verbal system has become quite a bit more sophisticated, now marking tense, aspect, mood, person and in the third person also gender.

Just like in Proto-West, verbs have two stems: an imperfective and a perfective one. Neither is predictable from the other. As a general rule it can be said that the imperfective is reduplicated-ish whereas the perfective has a suffix –(w)e (derived from ù “old”; note the similarity to the development of the Proto-North verbs), but exceptions are numerous and a few verbs even have suppletive stems.

From these two stems the various TAMs are formed by adding TAM suffixes, of which three exist. Firstly, there is the null suffix –Ø indicating the indicative. Secondly, there is the imperfect suffix –se, which is related to the numeral “one”, which just like in Proto-West has undergone a semantic shift from “one” to “firstly” to “previously”. The imperfect suffix can only be added to the imperfective stem. Lastly there is the suffix –ha, related to hàka “not”, indicating irrealis moods. When added to a stem ending in a consonant, the imperfect and irrealis suffixes delete the final consonant of the stem.

Person marking quite straightforwardly derives from the development of pronouns. These pronouns then became the suffixes –(a)l, –(a)k, –(a)m, –(a)s for the first, second, third animate and inanimate persons respectively.

As an example, here’s the full conjugation of nàmam, nàŋo “to eat”:

Verb.png (8.1 KiB) Viewed 7134 times

Adjectives
Adjectives in Proto-Central are about as boring as in Proto-West. That is, they don’t inflect and can be derived from nouns using the suffix –ta, derived from the copula which in its turn comes from TUPL tá “stand”.

Adjectives can be intensified with the particle wé, which is placed after the adjective.

Word order
In Proto-Central, the word order has shifted from SOV to SVO.

Çém nàmamam fála.
Boy-AN.DEF eat.IPFV-3.AN apple.INDEF
The boy eats an apple.

Wésese tás źákata.
House-INAN.DEF be.IPFV-3.INAN grass-ADJ
The house is green.


Numbers
1. śé
2. hàpa
3. hàse
4. hàpapa
5. ó
6. ó ná śé
7. ó ná hàpa
8. ó ná hàse
9. ó ná hàpapa
10. hàpa óse


Please do comment on this!

[Skelly Jelly]

Hmm... interesting...
wait a minute
is that what i think it is
did you just create a language in which the words for "speak" and "eat" are identical
GENIUS

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Next time I will, but I'm afraid this one's a mistake.

[Skelly Jelly]

Next time I will, but I'm afraid this one's a mistake.

I AM SO SAD NOW.
Oh and, I like how, going down the list of numbers for proto-central leaves me with about the same amount of air in my lungs as when I started, maybe a bit more.

[Dē Graut Bʉr]

Don't worry, I'm already working on a descendant of Proto-North which merges them.

[Pole, the]

Well done! Looking forward to see how it will unfold.