Proto-Koyanic language

Proto-Koyanic (PKn), also known as Proto-Arklobu-Qachkav (PAQ), is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Koyanic languages, a language family found throughout the Koyan region of western Fountainhead. Proto-Koyanic was likely spoken as a singular language in Kóty c. 4,000 - 3,000 BGS before breaking up into its major branches via major migrations through the third and second millennia BGS.

Consonants
The reconstructed consonant inventory of Proto-Koyanic is presented below.

Sibilants
The sibilants *z *s pattern very similarly to the plain-aspirated plosive pairs, leading to some suggesting affricate qualities [ts tsʰ] or even palatalised plosives [tʲ tʲʰ]. Nonetheless, the reflexes of these consonants in descendent languages strongly support their reconstruction as a voiced-voiceless pair of fricatives [z s], in particular the frequent rhotacisation of *z to [r] and debuccalisation of *s to [h].

It is quite possible that these consonants developed from older plosives which shifted to fricative qualities, a change which notably occurred again in Proto-Gäj which lost original PKn *z *s, then shifted *c *cʰ to *z *s which continue to pattern like plosives.

Palatals
The palatal plosives *c and *cʰ are reflected by Proto-Duodoseic *k, indicating that Duodoseic may have branched at an early stage of the language which instead had palatalised velar stops *kʲ *kʲʰ, while the rest of the language family strongly supports the reconstruction of true palatals. By convention, these consonants are transcribed *c *cʰ even in considering Proto-Koyanic as the common ancestor of the entire family including Duodoseic.

Laryngeals
* ʡ and *h likely had the same place of articulation and formed a plain-aspirated pair like the plosives. Whether these were pharyngeal [ʡ ħ] or glottal [ʔ h] is not known, but the Duodoseic reflection of *ʡ as a uvular *q could indicate it was pharyngeal, since ʔ > q might be an impossible sound change.

In addition to the inventory above, Proto-Koyanic is reconstructed with a set of three laryngeal consonant-like sounds, *x₁ *x₂ *x₃, which almost always occur next to a schwa *ə *ə̄ as part of a syllable nucleus. These laryngeals colour the adjacent schwa in characteristic ways, though the exact resulting vowel quality varies by daughter language. *x₁ gives a close front colouring [ɨ~i~e], *x₂ an open front colouring [ə~e~æ~a~a], and *x₃ a back rounded colouring [ɑ~ɔ~o~u]. The laryngeals are retained in certain phonological environments in some daughter languages with the following reflexes: *x₁ by [x~ɣ~h~ʔ], *x₂ by [χ~ʁ~h~ʔ] and *x₃ by [x~ɣ~ʁ~h~ɦ]. Since there is such a large overlap in their qualities, not much can be said about the original qualities of each laryngeal, only that they were likely fricatives articulated further back than the velum and *x₃ probably had some labialisation.

Voiceless sonorants
The voiceless sonorants are allophones of their voiced counterparts when in a consonant cluster containing *h or following an aspirated plosive or *s. They are not thought to have been phonemic in Proto-Koyanic, but became consonants in their own right in the Qʼachkav and Hnäzb language groups. The distinctive qualities of the voiceless sonorants are nonetheless reconstructible, and are commonly transcribed ⟨m̥ n̥ ɲ̊ ŋ̊ r̥ l̥ ẙ w̥⟩ to make this clear. When clustering with *h, they are often transcribed as single consonants, e.g *hm̥ə́x₃l̥h "blood" may be written *m̥ə́x₃l̥.

Vowels
It has been suggested that the vowels *u *ū and *a *ā had qualities [ʊ ʊː] and [ɑ ɑː] respectively, though this is difficult to reconstruct with such certainty.

Phonotactics
The primary constraint on PKn syllables is dictated by a sonority hierarchy, consonant clusters may never decrease in sonority towards the syllable nucleus. The hierarchy is as follows: Certain other natural groups are also useful to consider:
 * 1) Laryngeal X = {*x₁ *x₂ *x₃}
 * 2) Glide G = {*y *w}
 * 3) Liquid L = {*r *l}
 * 4) Nasal N = {*m *n *ɲ *ŋ}
 * 5) Obstruent O = {*p *t *z *c *k *q *ʡ *pʰ *tʰ *s *cʰ *kʰ *qʰ *h}

Using these groups, the maximal syllable structure can be simply described as symmetrical *BNLZVZLNB, but is more usefully understood both synchronically and diachronically as three segments:
 * Boundary consonant B = {*m *n *ɲ *ŋ *p *t *z *c *k *q *ʡ *pʰ *tʰ *s *cʰ *kʰ *qʰ *h}
 * Nuclear consonant Z = {*x₁ *x₂ *x₃ *y *w}
 * Non-nasal sonorant R = {*y *w *r *l}


 * Onset — *(B)(N)(R)-
 * Nucleus — *-(X)V(Z)-
 * Coda — *-(L)(N)(O)

Onset
Three optional parts composed the syllable onset, with their order constrained by the sonority hierarchy: an initial "boundary" consonant B, a nasal N and a non-nasal sonorant R. Further constraints on the onset applied to pairs of consonants, that is to say that if *B₁N₁- and *N₁R₁- were allowed onsets, then so was *B₁N₁R₁-. There were four laws restricting which biconsonantal clusters were possible in the syllable onset:


 * 1) Medial *-r- and *-y- may only appear following labial, uvular and laryngeal consonants
 * 2) Plosive-nasal onset clusters were allowed only when heterorganic, that is the two consonants have different places of articulation. Thus, clusters like **kŋ- and **tʰn- were forbidden while *cm- and *ʡɲ- are allowed. This rule also prohibited such clusters with "similar" places of articulation, thus **k(ʰ)ɲ-, **t(ʰ)ɲ-, **sɲ-, **zɲ- **c(ʰ)n-, **c(ʰ)ŋ- and **q(ʰ)ŋ- were also forbidden.
 * 3) Nasal-nasal clusters were even more restricted, being allowed only when exactly one of the two nasals is *m, e.g. *mn-, *ɲm- and *ŋm- are all attested. There is no known law preventing *nm-, *mɲ- and *mŋ-, but no such examples are attested. One theory suggests that nasals follow their own sonority hierarchy *n > *m > *ɲ, *ŋ, which would enforce the order of nasals allowed in the onset, but no phonetic justification for this is known. The novel reconstruction of Proto-Koyanic notably rejects even the clusters *mn-, *ɲm- and *ŋm-, replacing them with *nw-, *nʲw-/*ŋʲw- and *ŋw-.
 * 4) Clusters of initial nasals and medial *-w- are forbidden, except *mw-. Examples of *N-w- arising morphologically appear to have neutralised into *mw-. Novel Proto-Koyanic rejects this law, since *Nw- clusters are allowed as per the previous law.

The forbidden clusters were established not just through lack of attestation, but also analysis of certain morphological processes which would avoid their

The table below shows an example for each attested biconsonantal cluster within the onset of a single morpheme in Proto-Koyanic. Greyed out cells indicate clusters forbidden by one of the four laws. Fortition was a property applied to the entire onset cluster and is not phonotactically relevant, so the fortis-lenis obstruent pairs are considered together.

Nucleus
The syllable nucleus had several possible forms: V, X, əX, ə(G), Xə(G). Offglides could only follow a schwa *ə or *ə̄ and were fundamentally vowel-like, unlike onglides which were consonant-like. They are considered part of the nucleus rather than the coda cluster because they participate in various phenomena relating to the vowel, while not interacting with coda consonants:


 * Offglides are frequently involved in monophthongisation and colouring of the nuclear vowel, much like the laryngeals *x₁ *x₂ *x₃
 * Offglides are not constrained by adjacent consonants like the onglides are, any consonant (except another glide or laryngeal) may follow an offglide.
 * Onglides are prone to altering and merging with preceding consonants in daughter languages, whereas offglides have no affect on following consonants
 * It is believed that onglides had voiceless allophones *ẙ *w̥ in fortis onset clusters, whereas offglides were not affected by following fortis consonants and had no such allophones

There was also thought to be a type of minor syllable which has no vowel and only a single laryngeal *X as its nucleus. These appear mostly in roots and suffixes and are known as light nuclei, in contrast with heavy nuclei described above, in reference to their differing prosodic weights. A light syllable can only occur following a heavy syllable, and can never carry stress. If a light syllable ends up with no preceding heavy syllable, it is promoted to a heavy syllable by insertion of *⟨ə⟩ after its nuclear X. e.g. *√x₁t “the wind, life” surfaces as *x₁ət- in *x₁ə́t.cəm (H́.H) “the wind god” and *x₁ə́t.mnx₃ə (H́.H) “to blow”, but remains *-x₁t in *x₂əm̥.px₃ə̄́.kəx₃.sx₁t (H.H́.H.L) “to kill”. Note that this process is not related to stress whatsoever, but it does allow an underlying light syllable to take the stress if it surfaces as a heavy syllable. The existence of light syllables is still somewhat disputed, with some claiming that the reduced nuclei were not present in PKn, developing later from certain unstressed instances of *Xə.

Taking all of this into account, there are 27 possible syllable nuclei, shown in the tables below: Note that laryngeals in diphthong nuclei do not distinguish between *x₁, *x₂ and *x₃, but are generally transcribed as *x₂ by convention.

There exists a single irregular nucleus, present only in *√x₁us "bird", a common root which appears in multiple stems and of which evidence abounds that this is the most appropriate reconstruction.

Stress
Stress usually falls on the penultimate heavy syllable, but it’s possible to fall on other heavy syllables which have specific morphologically marked stress, e.g. in certain suffixes.

Roots
Roots are a particular morphological unit which can act as a word stem with a class just like any other stem, but are most typically used to derive new stems. The canonical Koyanic root is a single syllable, either heavy or light, but with a strictly laryngeal nucleus, i.e. the allowed nuclei are {*Xə *Xə̄ *ə *ə̄ *əX *ə̄X *X}. Roots are notated with √, e.g. *√mx₃n "to grow, increase".

{*əx₁ *ə̄x₁ *əx₂ *ə̄x₂ *əx₃ *ə̄x₃} regularly alternate with {*i *ī *a *ā *u *ū} when unstressed. This alternation can clearly be seen in compounds using the root *√cʰəx₂r̥h "to think, feel": Note that this applies only to root nuclei, /əX/ and /ə̄X/ can occur unstressed elsewhere. For example, the stem *zə́x₁ɲ̥cʰəx₂ "berry" exhibits unstressed *əx₂.

Derivation
Word stems are typically formed by attaching an affix to a root or compounding roots. Not all words are formed from roots, some words are polysyllabic and contain other vowels but cannot be morphologically broken down, e.g. *tʰuyə̄ “house” and *ir̥luy “ball”. Compounds of two stems are common, with the typical patterns shown below.
 * Noun-verb: A verb with noun as object
 * Verb-noun: A noun which performs a verb
 * Verb-stative: A verb characterised by an adverbial stative
 * Noun-stative: A noun characterised by a stative

Root-based affixes
There are some derivational affixes used exclusively to derive stems from roots. These are generally prefixes and infixes.
 * *⟨qx₂əq⟩ derives transitive verbs from typically stative roots, e.g. *tə⟨qx₂ə́q⟩x₂əw "to speak with, tell" from *√tx₂w "to speak".
 * *ə̄- derives statives from roots with typically transitive meaning, often with an involuntary or passive meaning, e.g. *ə̄́-tʰə̄m "to sink, drown" from *√tʰə̄m "to submerge".

Derivational suffixes
There is also a separate category of derivational suffixes which can be applied to stems or roots to derive new stems, usually involving a change of word class. A selection of reconstructed suffixes are shown below.

Nouns
Proto-Koyanic had several cases depending on the animacy of the noun. The animate series of cases also marks plurality in the accusative, ergative, oblique and genitive cases.

Absolutive
The absolutive was the least marked case, used for the subject of intransitive verbs. Inanimate nouns additionally used the absolutive to mark the object or patient of a transitive verb.

Accusative
The accusative case on animate nouns marked the object or patient of a transitive verb. On inanimate nouns, which used the absolutive to mark objects, the accusative had an oblique meaning of indirect participation in an action, in a similar position to the object or patient.

Instrumental
The instrumental case was used to indicate the indirect participation of a noun in an action, in a similar position to the subject or agent. An inanimate oblique noun with an animate subject likely had an actual instrumental meaning, the use of the noun by the agent, while animate instruments were simply extra participants.

Genitive
The genitive case marked generic relationship, usually bidirectional, between two nouns. Most Koyanic languages reflect the genitive suffixes with an initial *m, i.e. *-mx₂ər̥, *-mi, *-mīŋ̊, but Proto-Gäj and some other fringe Koyanic languages appear to reflect an initial *z which regularly devoiced to *s when attached to stems ending in a voiceless consonant, i.e *-(z/s)x₂ər̥, *-(z/s)i, *-(z/s)īŋ̊

Possessive
The possessive case was a special subset of the genitive used for animate referents. In Gäj languages, this case is generally reflected by a possessive case indicating ownership of one noun by another, but whether or not it had this role in Proto-Koyanic is debated. In some Koyanic languages, it ended up with a more generic meaning, sometimes replacing the genitive entirely.

Adessive
The adessive case was likely used to indicate position near or motion up to something, similar to an allative. The function of the adessive may have overlapped with the genitive for animate referents, while the inanimate *-ukʰū was more explicitly locative in nature.

Ergative
The ergative case marked the agent of a transitive verb, and may have functioned more like a clitic than a bound suffix.

Locative
The locative case had a generic positional meaning, distinct from the adessive which describes proximity or motion up to a location.

Ablative
The ablative case marked motion away from, motion around, or some source or cause of an action, as well as perhaps other indirect roles. Like the adessive, the ablative on inanimate nouns primarily described motion.

Dative
The dative case was a catch-all indirect case. Unlike the adessive case, which could be used to indicate motion up to a location, the dative case had more of an illative function, i.e. motion onto or into something.

Verbs
Verbs are reconstructed to have been optionally transitive, that is they had a single core argument in the absolutive case, with optional additional arguments marked for other roles.

Verb stems were regularly inflected with a large set of prefixes, infixes and suffixes, marking different grammatical categories. Each major AQ language uses these affixes in slightly different constructions and patterns, meaning the overall system of conjugation at the time of Proto-Koyanic is not known. The three categories of reconstructed verb affixes are presented below, though exactly how they interacted is not clear.

The second and third person are often conflated in verb morphology, a common feature of Koyanic languages which generally became more pronounced with time. Nambāno, for example, makes no distinction between second and third person marking on verbs.

Verb prefixes
The prefixes on the verb primarily distinguish three tenses, past, present and future, and agree with the person and number of the subject. The past and present tenses additionally have negative and affirmative forms, perhaps used to emphasis the truthfulness of a statement as opposed to the simple forms which express generic truths and can be negated in other ways.

Verb infixes
The role of infixation in verb conjugation is difficult to reconstruct due to the broad variation in the way they are reflected in descendant languages. A set of infixes marking imperfective aspects can tentatively be reconstructed, but appear to have become lexicalised as part of some verb stems in most languages, and may not have existed in Proto-Koyanic at all.

Verb suffixes
There are three sets of reconstructed verb suffixes, representing a mixed category of aspect, mood and finiteness. Their precise meanings and usage is not clear, but a few properties are assumed based on their reflexes in better reconstructed descendent languages:


 * 1) The basic indicative verb form. These suffixes have sometimes been described as having a perfective aspect by default, with imperfective aspects marked by the infixes described above. More recent interpretations of Proto-Koyanic suggest that verbs carried lexical aspect, with these suffixes representing the unmarked default aspect, which depends on the particular verb.
 * 2) Almost certainly used in the main clause of conditional constructions, and may have had other irrealis functions when used in a stand-alone verb phrase, such as an optative, jussive or permissive mood.
 * 3) Often called an infinitive, but agrees with the person of the subject. It was more likely a general-purpose form of a verb used in subordinate clauses, and may be better described as a subjunctive mood. These suffixes, with some modification, were the source of the imperfective conjugation of verbs in the Gäj languages. This does not necessarily imply anything about their aspect in Proto-Koyanic, since Proto-Gäj is reconstructed to have originally formed the imperfective periphrastically with a subordinated lexically perfective verb, a strategy which may have already been in use in Proto-Koyanic.

Statives
Statives, like verbs, could be the predicate of a clause, but took only a single argument. Stative stems have a similarly reconstructed set of inflectional affixes, shown below.

Word order
Notable features of Proto-Koyanic are the rich morphological system in form of affixes in both verbs and noun, featuring two genders, inanimate and animate nouns are labelled with asymmetric morphology, inanimate nouns are the least marked ones they do not feature plural numbers. As opposed, animate nouns are the most marked ones with three kind of genitives working together, and marking the singular absolutive. Proto-Koyanic word was flexible, but basic declarative sentences typically had the structure SVO.

Relative clauses
Relative clauses in Proto-Koyanic carries either zero morphology or it is used the particle *məx₂ŋ to express relative clauses. There's also a three way relative clauses take in later Koyanic languages, using conditional conjugation in the transitive verb we can obtain something quite related to a relative clause. In Gäj the irrealis becomes the basis of the three main verb conjugations, the "irrealis" which features a subjunctive form and marked future tense form.

Pronouns
First and second person pronouns in Proto-Koyanic distinguished three cases, absolutive, genitive and instrumental; while the third person pronouns have additional ergative and dative marking.

Numerals
Proto-Koyanic, like all its descendants, used a base-10 system of numerals. The ten basic numerals are shown below:

Relation to Upic
The numerals 1-5 are thought to be related to those forms reconstructed for Proto-Upic, the common ancestor of the Upic languages. This relationship has proven useful in dating Proto-Upic and placing bounds on the time period of early Upic splits.

Alternative reconstructions
The form of Proto-Koyanic presented in this article is the most well established and commonly used, but not the only possible reconstruction. Various other reconstructions of the language may sometimes appear on other pages of the wiki or elsewhere, a few of which are briefly discussed below.

Original reconstruction
The first full reconstruction of Proto-Koyanic was largely the same as the one currently used, establishing most of the core features. At this time, the language was known as Proto-Arklobu-Qachkav, as a lack of data made understanding the phylogeny of the family difficult and it was an attempt to reconstruct the most recent common ancestor of Arklobu and Qʼachkav.

A few key differences between the original and current reconstructions are shown below:


 * The vowel qualities were slightly more speculative, suggesting *ɑ *ɑː *ʊ *ʊː for what are now usually given the less phonetically precise labels *a *ā *u *ū.
 * Less emphasis was put on the importance and role of stress in the formation of vowel qualities, now generally thought to be an integral part of Proto-Koyanic's phonology.
 * The nature of the alternation between the cardinal vowels and laryngeal nuclei was not as well understood.
 * Voiceless sonorants were considered completely phonemic and in slightly different distributions, leading to various more complex reconstructed forms which have been proven unnecessary by newer analysis. Despite this, the voiceless glides *ẙ *w̥ were initially not considered at all, and later appeared only rarely.

Late Proto-Koyanic
Late Proto-Koyanic (LPKn) was an attempt to reconstruct the ancestor to all Koyanic languages except the Duodoseic branch, a group sometimes called the Nuclear Koyanic languages. The motivation for this exercise was the undoubted fact that the vast majority of Koyanic languages reflect a common set of sound changes which remodelled Proto-Koyanic's laryngeal system into a large inventory of contrastive vowels. The approach taken was essentially an extension and reinterpretation of more traditional reconstructions of PKn, positing a few sound changes which brought it closer in line with some later Proto-languages. Late Proto-Koyanic ultimately proved an unnecessary complication in understanding Koyanic development and is generally no longer used, but was incidentally of great benefit to an entirely novel reconstruction of true Proto-Koyanic, detailed further below.

Three characteristic changes involving the laryngeals *x₁ *x₂ *x₃ were assumed to have occurred concurrently, forming the basis of Nuclear Koyanic:
 * 1) Laryngeal colouring of schwas, generating pre-glottalised and post-glottalised vowels *ˀi *ˀī *ˀa *ˀā *ˀu *ˀū *iˀ *īˀ *aˀ *āˀ *uˀ *ūˀ
 * 2) Vocalisation of laryngeals into fully glottalised vowels *ĩ *ã *ũ
 * 3) Merger of laryngeals into a single consonant *x

These changes represent an example of transphonologization, where the contrastive feature which was carried by the laryngeal consonant in Proto-Koyanic is shifted to the coloured vowels, but no overall change in phonemic contrast has occurred. In contrast, PAQ is thought to have undergone structural changes to the phonology, developing glottalised obstruents and new vowel qualities, while lacking vowel phonation. The proposed LPKn changes might not actually represent any innovation or meaningful alteration to the phonemic contrasts present in the supposedly earlier Proto-Koyanic, and so they are perhaps more sensibly understood as a reanalysis of Proto-Koyanic more than an actual historical development. For this reason, Late Proto-Koyanic is no longer considered a canonical historical language stage, but went on to form the basis of a completely new reconstruction of Proto-Koyanic, detailed below.

The resulting remodelled phonology retains many features of Proto-Koyanic, but is structurally distinct. It was also suggested that LPKn may have featured the development of true palatals *c *cʰ from older palatalised velar consonants *kʲ *kʲʰ, an idea which eventually led to the novel reconstruction.

Novel Proto-Koyanic
The novel reconstruction, often called Novel Proto-Koyanic (NPKn) is intended to comprehensively explain as many irregularities and inconsistencies with previous reconstructions as possible, while remaining a naturalistic description of a language. This reconstruction is based on the work done on Late Proto-Koyanic, and focuses more on features absent from Qʼač and Gäj languages which are unique to earlier diverging groups like Duodoseic and Kát.

Despite aiming to be as evidence-based as possible, the reconstructed phonology is much more speculative than traditional reconstructions, featuring several controversial changes yet to be widely accepted:
 * Consonants are considered in two articulatory groups, central and peripheral, with each group having unique properties distinguishing it from the other group.
 * Plosives are reconstructed with an unspecified fortis-lenis distinction, usually assumed to be contrastive voice in most circumstances, with aspiration considered a later development of the voiceless plosives.
 * Palatals and sibilants are reinterpreted as palatalised plosives to explain a few odd reflexes and patterns observed in early Koyanic languages.
 * The laryngeal consonants *x₁ *x₂ *x₃ are rejected completely, with a system of vowel quality and a single laryngeal *x reconstructed in their place.