Proto-Gäj language

Proto-Gäj (abbreviated PGäj; also called Proto-Gajic or Proto-Arklobu) is the reconstructed ancestor of the Nambāno and Arklobu languages, which together form the "Gäj" branch of the Arklobu-Qachkav languages.

*ɸ and *θ
The fricatives *ɸ and *θ were present only in Proto-Northern Gäj, arising from Proto-Gäj *pʰ and *tʰ before stops (nasals and plosives). Although these consonants are reconstructible in PNGäj, their phonemic status is not clear, as the vast majority of them are present only in inflectional forms where a consonant-initial suffix was attached to a stem-final *pʰ or *tʰ. For example, Proto-Gäj *pʰǽpʰ-mi, *ǽːtʰ-mi "leaf-ɢᴇɴ, snake-ɢᴇɴ" become Proto-Northern Gäj *pʰǽɸ-mi, *éθ-mi. The difficulty in understanding whether these consonants are phonemic comes in certain inflectional suffixes which triggered fronting of the stem vowel but did not have an initial consonant, for example the PNGäj reflex of Proto-Gäj *pʰǽpʰ-iːru "leaf-ᴇʀɢ" may have been either *pʰǽpʰ-yeru or *pʰǽɸ-yeru, with phonemic /ɸ/. A more detailed examination is presented in the section on stem mutation below.

Semivowels
The semivowels *y and *w occurred only as medial consonants in onset clusters, having historically been fortified to *ɟ and *gʷ respectively in onset position and lost in medial and coda position, affecting the quality of the preceding vowel in the latter case. Semivowels were rare in Proto-Gäj but became more frequent in Proto-Northern Gäj due the vowel shift {*ɛː, *eː} *iː *uː > iː ɨː uː > *ye *yə *wo.

Vowels
The vowel length contrast was present in the oldest form of Proto-Gäj, the ancestor of all Gäj languages, but was lost in the Northern Gäj languages which comprise the majority of the Gäj family.

Phonological stages from Proto-Arklobu-Qachkav to Late Proto-Northern Gäj
The following sound changes are reconstructed to have occurred, roughly in the order presented, in the development of Proto-Gäj from its ancestor Proto-Arklobu-Qachkav.

Proto-Gäj (PGäj)
The earliest reconstructible stage of the Gäj branch of the Arklobu-Qachkav languages is Proto-Gäj. This stage of the language had already made several significant changes to the consonant inventory, including a voiced/unvoiced contrast in the plosives rather than the plain/aspirated/glottalised, a lack of voicedness contrast in the sonorants, and a new set of fricatives. Proto-Gäj reflects Proto-Arklobu-Qachkav *x by a voiceless velar or palatal fricative, though it is thought the consonant was not velar and was likely voiced at the time of PAQ despite the symbol *x. Proto-Gäj had also shifted some vowel qualities, resulting in the vowel inventory presented above. In each example given, the start (PAQ) and end point (Pre-PGäj) for each word is shown, with relevant intermediate steps underlined.

Proto-Northern-Gäj (PNGäj)
Proto-Gäj then further developed into the later dialect Proto-Northern Gäj, the common ancestor of the core Gäj group consisting of Arklobu and Nambāno. The characteristic phonological change of Proto-Northern-Gäj is a shift in the qualities of the long vowels resulting in a loss of contrastive vowel length, while retaining the same inventory of vowel qualities. The sound changes from Proto-Gäj (PGäj) to Proto-Northern-Gäj (PNGäj) are shown below.

Morphology
Proto-Northern Gäj is much more readily reconstructible than Proto-Gäj, owing to the better attestation and conservatism of the Northern-Gäj languages. The morphology presented here focuses on Proto-Northern Gäj in order to better elucidate the precise structure of the inflectional paradigms, with the earlier Proto-Gäj forms sometimes shown for comparison.

Stem mutation
Both nouns and verbs exhibit mutation of the final vowel and consonant in the stem in certain inflectional forms, with every stem generally having two forms: basic and mutated.

Basic stem
The basic stem is used in the perfective conjugation and the absolutive, lative and oblique nominal cases. This is the unmarked form of the stem which may take any vowel and any final consonant. When vowel-initial suffixes are attached to the basic stem, *-x- is inserted between the stem and the suffix which may be realised as *-xʷ, for example on the second and third person perfective suffixes *-ɒkʷʰu, *-ækʰi (< *-ɒkʰi), *-wopʰ (< *-uːpʰ), and *-wokʰ (< *-uːkʰ).

Mutated stem
The mutated stem is used in the imperfective verb conjugation and the ergative, genitive and ablative nominal cases. The final vowel of the stem undergoes ablaut, in which it is shifted to the corresponding front vowel of the same height:

A stem-final obstruent is mutated generally according to the following rule:
 * {*-i-, *-ɨ-, *-u-} > *-i-
 * {*-e-, *-ə-, *-o-} > *-e-
 * {*-æ-, *-ɒ-} > *-æ-

Stem-final plain plosives on verbs and nouns are rare, deriving exclusively from coda clusters of unvoiced sonorants and plain plosives, e.g. PAQ *sə́ːr̥p > PNGäj *syə́xp- "slave". These forms generally show no mutation of the final plosive in the mutated stem, though they are prone to irregularity and change by analogy in daughter languages, so their nature in Proto-Gäj is difficult to reconstruct.
 * *b *d *ɟ *g *gʷ *z > *p *t *c *k *kʷ *s
 * pʰ *tʰ *cʰ *kʰ *kʷʰ > *ɸ *θ *ç *x *xʷ

The two alternating stem forms developed through coincidences in inflectional morphology which caused multiple independent sound changes to frequently occur together, and the compound phonological variation which arose becoming recognised as a common pattern. For example, the first and second person imperfective suffixes *-cʰer (< *kʰiːkʰ) and *-cʰerkʰ (< *kʰiː⟨r⟩kʰ) blocked the voicing of a stem-final plain plosive which had become voiced in the perfective and irrealis conjugations, or triggered spirantisation of an aspirated plosive, and triggered ablaut of the previous vowel in the stem. In nominal inflection, the genitive suffixes *-mi (< *-m̥i) and *-miːŋ (< *-m̥iːŋ̊) also triggered consonant mutation and ablaut, as did the ablative suffixes.

This pattern was then extended to forms which were affected by some sound changes but not others which had been associated with them. For example, the animative ergative suffix *-nus had a voiceless initial consonant in PAQ -n̥us which blocked voicing and allowed spirantisation, but did not trigger fronting of the stem vowel. By analogy with other mutated forms, the stem vowel is fronted in Proto-Gäj, for example PAQ *ɒ́ːq-n̥us > PGäj *ǽːk-nus "hill-ᴇʀɢ" rather than the expected **ɒ́ːk-nus.

There are two inflectional forms which triggered the fronting of the stem vowel but not mutation of a stem-final consonant, resulting in a mixed form between the basic and mutated stems: the inanimate ergative noun suffix *-iːru, which became *-(y)eru in Proto-Northern Gäj; and the third person imperfective verb suffix PGäj *-iːr > PNGäj *-y(e)ru. For example PGäj *ɒ́ːg-/*ǽːk- "hill" would be expected to have the form *ǽːg-iːru "hill-ᴇʀɢ" according to regular sound changes from PAQ *ɑ́ːq-iːru. In fact, it appears that a similar analogical pattern was applied to always mutate the consonant of the mutated stem, even in an environment which would have voiced it, thus *ǽːk-iːru is reconstructed in Proto-Gäj.

A problem arises in the reconstruction of stems with final *pʰ and *tʰ in Proto-Northern Gäj, which according to the aspirated plosive mutation rule would yield *ɸ and *θ respectively in the mutated stem. Unlike the dorsal fricatives *ç *x *xʷ which pose no issue, the fricatives *ɸ and *θ were not otherwise phonemic and would have been made phonemic by applying the mutation with originally non-mutating suffixes. For example, PGäj *ǽtʰ-iːr "plead-3.ɪᴍᴘꜰᴠ" would be expected to result in PNGäj *ǽtʰ-yer according to regular sound changes, but mutation by analogy with the first and second person imperfectives *ǽθ-cʰer and *ǽθ-cʰerkʰ may have produced *ǽθ-yer. This would yield *θ in a phonological environment where it would contrast with *tʰ, compare *tʰyəm- "to submerge". Nambāno is known to represent the result of such analogy, for example PGäj *ǽtʰ-cʰiːr, *ǽtʰ-cʰiːrkʰ, *ǽtʰ-iːr are reflected by Pre-Nambāno *áh-cʰer, *áh-cʰerkʰ, *áh-er. The only other daughter branch of Proto-Northern Gäj, Arklobu, simply merges the aspirated plosives into fricatives in all positions, yielding a fricative from an ancestral aspirated plosive in both stem forms regardless of mutation, for example Pre-Arklobu *éθ-yer, *éθ-çerx, *éθ-er. Despite both branches reflecting fricatives in the 3.ɪᴍᴘꜰᴠ (*áh-er vs. *éθ-er), PNGäj may still have reflected *tʰ, since the analogical step may have taken place only in Pre-Nambāno later on, changing *átʰ-yer to *áh-yer by analogy with *áh-cʰer and *áh-cʰerkʰ. The phonemic status of *ɸ and *θ is therefore technically not reconstructible, though it may be reasonable to assume all these analogical processes took place around the same time, which would have yielded phonemic *ɸ and *θ in PNGäj. By convention and for simplicity, *ɸ and *θ are usually transcribed as separate consonants in Proto-Northern Gäj, including as mutated forms of *pʰ and *tʰ.

Some examples of mutated stems which have been analogically levelled are shown in the table below.

N-stem
The N-stem is a special modification of the basic stem found only in the irrealis verb conjugation. It is identical in form to the basic stem with the addition of a suffix which manifests as *-ɨn on consonant-final stems and *-n on vowel-final stems, lacking the *-x- that would normally be inserted on the basic stem.

Some examples of consonant-final and vowel-final verb stems are shown below.

Transitive Verbs
Transitive verbs had three conjugation paradigms: perfective, imperfective and irrealis; which use the basic, mutated and N-stem forms respectively.

Each conjugation has a set of suffixes which mark the person of the subject and a set of prefixes and infixes which mark TAM information and show agreement with the subject. Both sets of affixes distinguish first person singular and plural in all conjugations, while in the case of imperfective and irrealis conjugations with second or third person subjects, the person is marked by the suffix and the plurality is marked by the prefix/infix.

The imperfective suffixes appear to be descended from PAQ infinitive series {*-kʰi, *-kiː, *-kʰiːkʰ, *ʡiː} with slight differences, an unknown suffix *-r and irregular infixing on the second person suffix *-cʰe⟨r⟩kʰ. This unusual development represents the only finite verb forms developed from the PAQ infinitives present in the Koyanic language family.

The irrealis suffixes are the reflexes of the reconstructed suffixes of the PAQ conditional series, reflecting only the singular person forms and dropping the plurals. { *-(ə)ntʰaʡ, *-(ə)ncʰuːʡ, *-(ə)ntʼaʡu , *-(ə)ntʼayu, *-(ə)nqtʼa , *-(ə)nqtʼɔʡ}.