Measceineafh Sprachbund

This sprachbund stretches from Tnusjakt in the southeast to Abudam Faraneit in the northwest. It is often categorized as consisting of one major group (the northern and central branches of the Rajo-Faraneit Family as well as Lotá and to a lesser extent Tnusjakt and the non-Bokeih branches of Pre-Tir'jauta like Héhà) and a secondary group (the eastern Rajo-Faraneih Languages, the various descendents of the Bokeih branches Pre-Tir'jauta).

Nonetheless, these two subgroups are quite frequently treated as parts of the larger sprachbund despite their differences. In a few instances, based almost exclusively on noun class and morphological evidence, Etimri is included as well.

Phonological Evidence

There is a variety of phonological evidence to support the idea surrounding this sprachbund, but this section of the link has frequently taken a back seat to syntax.

Broken Voicing Systems

The Broken Voicing Theory

Perhaps the most common piece of phonetic evidence is the prevalence of broken voicing systems variously applied to fricatives and plosives (most famously plosives however). This situation is best exemplified by Faraneit which has the pairings /p b/, /f v/, /t d/, and /s z/ (and in some dialects /ʃ ʒ/ or /ç ʝ/) but staunchly lacks even [g ɢ] alongside its /k q/ and without [ð] but with /θ/. It's contrast of voiced/voiceless is broken - present for some but lacking for a number of others.

Usually, labials and alveolar/dental stops and fricatives contrast voiced and voiceless pairs, but the contrast weakens or degrades to nonexistent further back in the mouth, often for palatals, almost always for velars and uvulars.

In the few examples of /g/ or similar phonemes, they are typically slant phonemes or highly restricted in environment (for example, Kelsiut).

Controversy Against Broken Voicing Theory

Broken Voicing Theory, while popular, is not universally accepted as truth, particularly given evidence within the subgroup mentioned in the earlier introduction of this article. Those languages lack a true voicing distinction for their entire plosive and fricative series - therefore rendering the entire discussion meaningless.

Relative Tonality

Virtually every language has some level of of tonality, from the most simple pitch-stress systems like Faraneit and Kelsiut, to lexical tone as in the many Eastern Rajo-Faraneit languages and Héhà.

Morphological Evidence

Morphology is the backbone of this sprachbund - providing the vast majority of the evidence of influence among all of the languages.

Optional or Weakened Number Marking

For the vast majority of this languages, again, marking a given noun as plural is not required in most or all circumstances.

This situation is most obvious in Rajo-Faraneih Languages where verbs mark for their subjects person (and in rare cases their gender too) but not plurality.

For Faraneit, grammatical number is not inflected at all within the verbal system - where karotej (to give) yields karotejeih (I/We give), karotejih (Thou/You give), and karotejoah (He/She/It/They give(s)).

Similarly, Héhà's extensive clitic system has highly entrenched formality, animacy, and human/non-human distinctions in addition to even various inanimate subclasses but only distinguishes number optionally in the third person of one clitic which is the most devoid of meaning (being the equative). The only other even remotely related plurality-marking in the language is highly confused with the inclusive/exclusive distinction (where to express singular only the exclusive is used, obviously) and is traditionally seen as non-numeric.

Inclusive/Exclusive, Obviative/Proximate, and Third/Fourth Distinction

The vast majority of the languages in this region have some level of inclusive/exclusive marking for first person and where this is not the case, often the inclusive has shaded into the obviative/proximate or third/fourth person distinctions also found through out the region.

Fluid or Weakened Gender Marking

Unlike most concepts of grammatical gender, noun classes for this sprachbund can be viewed as purely descriptive. A given noun can be treated as animate to stress its changeability, its motility, its edibility, its size, its intelligence, its complexity, its worth, and a number of other qualities. The noun class is open, however, and virtually all nouns can be used as any of the genders.

Fluid or Broad Lexical Categories

All languages have methods of changing one function of a word, say as a noun (laughter), into an action associated with the noun, a verb (to laugh) or vice versa, but this sprachbund surpasses most with the fluidity and broadness of its lexical categories.

Verb-Noun

Virtually all of these languages have verb-nouns: words that can act as a noun or a verb, with various conjugative or case endings attached to the same base.

It has often been proposed that there is a uniquely Measceineafh form of verb-noun - which inherently acts as a sort of noun describing the action of a verb (eating, sleeping, thinking, screaming) and can be shaded as either more of an action or a thing through context and derivative morphology.

For example, within Lotá, this basic verb-noun is fundamental to most of the language's functioning:

Base Verb-Noun: lá (lagg-) = bleeding, blood, wound
Verbal forms: 
Imperfect: laggi = continue to bleed
Perfect: laggsi = have bled, finished bleeding
Negatives: laggiatna, laggsiatna = not bleeding, not having bled
Optatives: laggindi, laggsindi = should be bleeding, should have bled
Negative Optatives: laggindiatna, laggsindiatna = should not be bleeding, should not have bled
etc...
Nominal forms:
Nominative: lá
Accusative: laggyn
Oblique: laggty

Please note that the change in ending from verb-noun to other forms (the sudden appearance of -gg-) is a regular mutational affect due to the extensive simplification of word terminal endings - not a derivational morpheme of any kind.

Modifiers

Throughout all of these languages, there is either a limited or nonexistent distinction between a modifier of nouns (what many languages term an adjective) and a modifier of other lexical categories (an adverb). The same words are usually used in both situations. An example from Hana:

The fast man is leaving.
yxi xo vezo
yxi xo v-e-z-o
man fast go-PRES-REAL-3

But also

The man is leaving quickly.
yxi vezo xo
man going fast

Small Case Systems

Syntactic case marking plays a large role in virtually all of the languages in this sprachbund, but morphologically marked cases are also present in nearly the total sum of the languages.

Nonetheless, an actually gripping similarity is the frequent range of case numbers. In most dialects of Faraneit is approaches six and Fraze and Rajat have five cases. This is typically the upper limit, while languages like Lotá, Tnusjakt and others fall towards the sharply close minimum of three.

Highly Interpolated Case Systems

Both as a cause and a byproduct of the smaller case systems, the typical case in a typical language within this Sprachbund generally is very similar (function as a derivative case or a derived case) to the various other cases.

For instance, within Faraneit, there is no proper distinction between nominative and accusative outside of a hazy series of syntactic rules. Furthermore, the other cases (the oblique cases) are blatantly derived from this word form - not that both are derived from another form (ie: competitive cases, such as in many other languages like Latin, where there is a nominative ending and a dative ending that are mutually exclusive). Compare these two paradigms (with the various words for servant or slave):

     Kupmec    Latin
Nom   Kot       Servos             
Acc   Kot       Servom        
Dat   Nykot     Servō         
Abl   Vykot     Servō
Gen   Syskot    Servī           

For Latin, the nominative is inherently differentiated from the "root" (servos and serv- respectively), whereas in Faraneit the nominative-accusative is the root.

Dative/Lative and Ablative/Delative

A common symptom of the collapsed case systems are cases that have been applied to a variety of situations - the most widespread forms of this being association of the Dative with Lative meanings and the Ablative with more general Delative meanings.

This situation will strike speakers of German or many other case-bearing Indo-European languages, as within that family Dative is widely preferred for states, the accusative for motion towards (Lative), and various ad hoc forms for motion away (Delative).

Again, for comparison's sake:

I was at school because he was going to come to school. He had come from his house.

is translated to

Ich war in der Schule (dative) weil er in die Schule (accustive) gegangen hat. Er war von dein Haus (accusative) gekommen.

and

Kojeih fheis feascoj (genitive) teih lhefh, pafheujoah neih feascoj (dative). Pafheujoah veit tis (ablative).

Syntactic Evidence

The relative divergence of even related languages within this area on some issues of syntax (default principle word order for instance - with Faraneit as VSO, Fórong as SOV, Kelsiut as SVO, and Hana with both SVO and VSO) hides a large number of similarities on smaller issues that unite them across genetic lineage.

Quality Against Quantity

Virtually all of the languages mentioned in this article make a distinction syntactically between quantifying and qualifying modifiers. Typically, quantifiers proceed their head, while qualifiers follow.

An example from Héhà explains very easily:

Mákó     gapákó             kxùdó    báratá.
fall.IMP three-INANI-STICKY fruit(s) ugly
Three ugly fruits fell.

The quantifier (gapákó) proceeds the noun, but the qualifier (báratá) follows. The same situation can be found in Faraneit:

Boaneicejeih    heav telheic lepeir.
eat-PRES-1-SING one  telheic sweet
I'm eating one sweet telheic-fruit.

Again, the quantifier proceeds but the qualifier follows.