Koyanic languages

The Koyanic languages are a language family found throughout the Koyan region of western Fountainhead.

Internal classification
The Koyanic language family is typically considered in seven main groups, each representing of a relatively well-defined branch of related languages:


 * Agacam, a group of tonal languages spoken in the Riverline plains.
 * Hma'ma, a smaller group of related tonal languages spoken along the Laede river and throughout the Khey desert.
 * Namb, the largest group by number of speakers, spoken by various peoples of Krobu and Qnōp'.
 * Bezgonic, minority languages spoken in northern Kóty and Krobu. May be a stem group rather than an actual genetic clade.
 * Duodoseic, a dialect cluster spoken on the Irekindipakka islands.
 * Hnäzb, spoken by various nomadic tribes on the Red Steppe.
 * Tsittar, spoken in the mountains of western Kóty, close to the assumed urheimat of the Koyanic language family.

By comparison of broad phonological shifts in each of the seven groups, the Proto-Koyanic language has been reconstructed to have split into four primary branches around 2000-3000 BGS. These branches are named after their reflex of the Proto-Koyanic numeral *qx₂ə́c "one", which demonstrates some characteristic sound changes of each major branch of the language family and appears in the formation *qx₂əc-kʰə́mə "one-people" which is used as an endonym in several daughter languages.

The four major Koyanic branches are:

There are several sound changes shared between the Gäj, Kát and Hak groups, but it is not clear whether this represents genetic relation since the relative order and particular details of the changes are slightly different in each group. For example, the debuccalisation of *s to *h did not effect coda *s in Duodoseic, and the loss of uvulars was achieved differently in all three:
 * Kát, consisting of Hma'ma (Western Kát) and Agacam (Eastern Kát) — Develops Proto-Koyanic laryngeal vowels into a system of tone and shifts the dorsal stops forwards *c *cʰ *k *kʰ *q *qʰ > *t *tʰ *c *cʰ *k *kʰ.
 * Gäj, consisting of Namb (Northern Gäj) and Bezgonic — Merges the uvulars into the velars and voices the plain plosives *p *t *c *k → *b *d *ɟ *g in certain environments.
 * Hak, aka Duodoseic — Merges the palatals into the velars, shifts the uvulars to *h and merges aspirated and plain plosives.
 * Qʼač, consisting of Hnäzb and Tsittar — Innovates ejectives from the glottalisation of obstruents by laryngeals and retains voiceless sonorants.


 * q qʰ > k kʰ > c cʰ > t tʰ chain shift in Kát.
 * q qʰ > k kʰ merger in Gäj.
 * q qʰ > h in Duodoseic.

These shared changes are generally interpreted as areal changes affecting the three groups after they were already separated. Current theory suggests that after Proto-Koyanic split into its four major dialects, Qʼač migrated into the mountains leaving the other three branches in contact in the Kóty heartlands for around another millennia, in which time these shared changes spread. The Qʼač and Gäj were traditionally thought to be slightly more closely related than the other branches, with Duodoseic being the earliest diverging. The first proposed phylogenetic tree of the Koyanic family is shown below:


 * Koyanic
 * Duodoseic
 * Nuclear Koyanic
 * Kát
 * Hma'ma
 * Agacam
 * Arklobu-Qachkav
 * Gäj
 * Namb
 * Bezgonic
 * Qʼač
 * Qʼachkav
 * Hnäzb

Obstruents
The table below shows the reflexes of Proto-Koyanic's obstruents in single-consonant onsets in each of the four major proto-languages. The voiceless continuant onset clusters *hr̥-, *hl̥-, *hẙ- and *hw̥- are also shown, since these evolved into single obstruents in some branches.

Syllable nuclei
The table below shows the reflexes of Proto-Koyanic's syllable nuclei in the major branches of the language family. Vowel length is not considered here, since it did not affect vowel quality in these early Koyanic branches.

Vocabulary comparison
The "Koyanic 100" is a list of one hundred concepts based on the Swadesh 100, with various modifications made to represent the words which appear the most stable in the Koyanic languages in particular.

An additional constraint is that each concept is believed to have been (not necessarily uniquely) represented by a monomorphemic lexical stem in Proto-Koyanic which is reflected in some form or another in each of the four major Koyanic branches. There are many other polymorphemic words which are similarly reflected in each branch, but these appear quite prone to remodelling and analogical changes, thus were deliberately excluded from the list.

The table below lists the Koyanic 100 as they appear in Proto-Koyanic, along with the reflexes in each major proto-language. Note that many of these terms may have diverged in meaning significantly, and an actual compilation of the Koyanic 100 list in each proto-language may look different. This table is meant only to compare cognate sets between the branches.