Proto-Bezgonic language

HereProto-Bezgonic (PBez) is the reconstructed hypothetical ancestor of the Bezgonic languages, a likely phylogenetic branch of the Koyanic language family.

The Bezgonic languages are closely related to the Namb languages of Krobu and Qnōp', together forming a primary branch of Koyanic languages known as "Gäj" after their reflexes of the Proto-Koyanic numeral *qx₂ə́c "one": Proto-Bezgonic *gez, Proto-Namb *gaj-/*gäc-. The Bezgonic languages may not be a well-defined genetic clade, but rather a stem group consisting of all non-Namb languages in the Gäj branch, meaning Proto-Bezgonic may not have been a historical language stage distinct from Proto-Gäj.

Stem mutation
A key characteristic of the morphology of both Bezgonic and Namb languages is stem mutation, where the underlying form of a noun or verb stem is mutated to a slightly different form in certain inflections. The two forms of the stem are known as basic and mutated.

Basic stem
The basic stem is used in the perfective and irrealis verb conjugations and the absolutive and dative-accusative 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 vowel-final basic stems, *-h- is commonly inserted between the stem and the suffix.

Mutated stem
The mutated stem is used in the imperfective verb conjugation and the genitive, ablative-ergative nominal cases.

In the mutated stem, any stem-final voiced obstruent is regularly mutated according to the following rule: Additionally, *-r is deleted in the mutated stem, because the vast majority of stem-final *-r originated from *-z which then rhotacised to *-r after *-z > *-s devoicing and subsequent loss of *-s occurred. This regular alternation was so common that it was analogically applied to forms which originally had no sibilant, such as PKn *pʰə̄́x₃r "voice" reflected by the PBez stems *pōr-/*pō-.
 * -b *-d *-dz *-z *-g/ɣ > *-p *-t *-ts *-s *-k

The Namb languages further morphologically separated the two stem forms via ablaut in the mutated stem. For more information, see here.

The semantic association between the cases was strengthened in many daughter languages, in which the two stem forms of many words became separated not only grammatically, but lexically, undergoing different semantic shifts and resulting in separate words.

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

Nouns
Proto-Bezgonic nouns generally distinguish four cases, though many are merged depending on the inflectional paradigm or particular noun. Four inflection patterns developed from the Proto-Koyanic animacy system: The countable noun class generally contains all objects with a discrete, countable form.
 * Countable singular
 * Countable plural
 * Uncountable
 * Locative

Uncountable nouns had no grammatical number, typically representing things with no discrete form, such as substances, colours, sensations, and weather events, but also group entities such as peoples. Countable and uncountable nouns use slightly different alignment patterns. The nominative/accusative cases are merged into an absolutive *-r, which is used for the sole argument of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive with an animate agent. If the transitive agent is also inanimate, the object always takes the dative *-ax. Note that many transitive verbs take a default object in the dative case regardless of the animacy of the agent, thus an uncountable object would still take the suffix *-ax. The three mutated-stem cases, the ablative, genitive and possessive, are merged into a single relative case with the same form as the genitive plural *-(r).

The category of locatives includes proper nouns, which in Koyanic languages are generally not personal names, but rather names of places, celestial objects, months, time periods etc. Locatives have only two cases, *-x/ɣ representing a lative case (motion towards) and *-ɬ/ɮ representing an ablative case (located at, motion away from). The lative suffix *-x/ɣ derives from Proto-Koyanic *-ukʰū which allowed voicing of a preceding plain obstruent, thus attaches to the basic stem.

Verbs
Verbs had three conjugation paradigms: perfective and irrealis, which used the basic stem, and the imperfective with the mutated stem. Each conjugation has a set of suffixes which mark the person of the subject and a set of prefixes which mark tense, aspect and mood information.

Perfective conjugation
The perfective indicative suffixes are simply a continuation of the Proto-Koyanic perfectives {*-x₁əʡ/*-x₁əʡx₃, (*-x₃əkʰu)/*-ūpʰ, (*-x₃əkʰi)/*-ūkʰ}, which after a series of phonological reductions and mergers are reduced to just two suffixes: first person *-a and second/third person *-ux.

The subjunctive suffixes are similarly the reflexes of the Proto-Koyanic conditional series, reflecting only the singular person forms {*-(ə)ncʰūʡ, *-(ə)ntx₂əyu, *-(ə)nqtx₂əʡ} and dropping the plurals.