Old Kasshian
Old Kasshian is the ancestor of the Kasshian branch of the Taremba language family. It was descended from Proto-Taremba, to which it remained quite similar. This page will focus on Late Old Kasshian, at the stage where it began to break up into the Kasshian languages.
Phonology
Consonants | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bilabial | Labiodental | Dental | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
Stop | Voiced | b | d | g | ||||
Voiceless | p | t | k | q | ||||
Nasal | m | n | ||||||
Fricative | Voiced | v | z | |||||
Voiceless | f | s | ||||||
Aproximates | w | r | y | |||||
Laterals | l |
The phoneme /h/ had been lost entirely by Old Kasshian. /r/ was lost word-finally and /l/ was lost intervocalically and the prenasalized stops had become voiced stops. Otherwise, the consonant inventory was the same as in Proto-Tareba, though northern dialects had introduced a nasal allophone of /g/
Vowels | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Front | Central | Back | ||||||||
High | i | u | ||||||||
Mid | e | ə | o | |||||||
Low | a |
Vowels could be long or short. Long vowels were less common than in Classical Kasshian, the only long vowels existing being descended from sequences of like vowels.
Syllables
Permitted syllables were broader than in either Proto-Tareba or Classical Kasshian. Syllables could begin with
- Any consonant
- Any vowel
- Any consonant followed by an l, r, w, or y
Syllables could end with any consonant
Stress
Stressed remained variable in Old Kasshian.
Nouns
Gender
The classifiers of Proto-Tareba were in the process of developing into a true gender system in Old Kasshian. In the earliest stages, agreement was only in predicates, and not obligatory even there. By Late Old Kasshian, agreement was obligatory in predicates and optional in attributive adjectives, obligatory when the adjective preceded the noun, as still sometimes happened in Old Kasshian.
In the earliest recorded form of Old Kasshian, there were 11 genders, genders I, II, and IV-XII, which subsequently increased to 12 with the acquisition of gender III. The genders were similar to those of Classical Kasshian, except for XI and XII
- Gender I was for female humans
- Gender II was for male humans
- Gender III was for epicene and androgynes. This was a development of Late Old Kasshian, and had different forms in northern and southern dialects
- Gender IV was for domestic animals and culturally-significant animals, as well as infants
- Gender V was for other animals
- Gender VI was for liquids, fire, wind, and other moving inanimates, as well as plants
- Gender VII was for most inanimates
- Gender VIII was for instruments, tools, language, beliefs, and other cultural abstractions
- Gender IX was for gods, weather phenomena, stars, etc.
- Gender X was for sacred items
- Gender XI was for groups of humans, towns, cities, political units, etc.
- Gender XII was for birds
Genders IX and X were already beginning to be confused by the Late Old Kasshian stage, with nouns moving back and forth between them. Gender XII was vestigial in all dialects, while gender XI was beginning to disappear as well.
Body parts were mixed in their assignment. Some were placed into specific genders, genders VIII and VI being common, while others were assigned according to their owner. The earliest stages of Old Kasshian show the most variability in assignment. By Late Old Kasshian, there was more stability in their assignment, though differing between dialects.
Prefixes
Gender-prefixes had slight variations in form according to the noun or adjective they were attached to. There were three sets of prefixes, one for "hard" consonants (consonants other than l, r, w, or y), one for "soft" consonants (l, r, w, y), and one for vowels. Genders III, V, VI, and IX had dialectal variants. In the case of gender III, the variants derive from different sources, while genders V, VI and IX had the same Proto-Taremba origin.
Gender | Hard consonants | Soft consonants | Vowels | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Singular | Dual | Plural | Singular | Dual | Plural | Singular | Dual | Plural | ||||
I | te | tel | tef | t | tel | tef | t(y) | tl | tef | |||
II | na | nal | naf | n | nal | naf | n | nl | naf | |||
III | Northern | do | dol | dof | d | dol | dof | d(w) | dl | dof | ||
Southern | so | sol | sof | s | sol | sof | s(w) | sl | sof | |||
IV | ki | kil | kif | k | kil | kif | k(y) | kl | kif | |||
V | Variant I | rə | rəl | rəf | r[1] | rəl | rəf | r | rəf | |||
Variant II | pa | pal | paf | p | pal | paf | p | pl | paf | |||
VI | Variant I | wa | wal | waf | wa | wal | waf | w | waf | |||
Variant II | kwa | kwal | kwaf | kwa | kwal | kwaf | kw | kwaf | ||||
VII | pi | pil | pif | p | pil | pif | p(y) | pl | pif | |||
VIII | on | ol | of | n | l[2] | f | n | l | f | |||
IX | Variant I | ton | tonli | tonna | ton | tonli | tonna | tonk | tonny | tonn | ||
Variant II | tok | tonkli | tonka | tonk | tonkli | tonk | tonkl | tonk | ||||
Variant III | tokəl | tokən | tok | tokl[3] | tok | tokl | ||||||
X | la | lal | laf | l[4] | lal | laf | l | laf | ||||
XI | kla | klal | klaf | kla | klal | klaf | kl | klaf | ||||
XII | ka | kal | kaf | k | kal | kaf | k | kl | kaf |
Number
Number was marked for dual and plural
- Dual: After vowels, -i was used; with consonant-final nouns, some nouns used -li, other nouns added -l- before the final consonant and -i after it[5]
- Plural: -f after vowels, -əf after consonants
In Late Old Kassan, the distinction between the dual and plural suffixes had weakened, and some dialects tended to use one or the other for both dual and plural.
Case
There were just four cases in Old Kasshian
- Absolutive: None
- Ergative: -(a)r
- Genitive: -(a)f
- Dative: -(a)z
Case-like postpositions
There were several enclitic postpositions with case-like function, added to noun phrases placed in various cases. In the earliest stages of Old Kassan, they were placed at the end of the entire noun phrase, but by Late Old Kasshian, they'd migrated to the head noun.
- Absolutive
- Instrumental: li
- Benefactive: na
- Commitative: ran
- Locative: qav
- Inessive: ka
- Circumlocative: de
- Perlative: ne
- Genitive
- Ablative: ta
- Ellative: tu
- Circumablative: kos
- Dative
- Allative: zə
- Illative: ba
- Perillative: baba
- Circumallative: ma
- Circumperlative: mama
Verbs
Person and aspect
Person and aspect were indicated by an inflected auxiliary. Typically, the verb itself, with optional prefixes, occurred at the beginning of the sentence while the auxiliary was at the end. By the Late Old Kasshian period, however, a tendency had developed to attach the auxiliary as a clitic to the end of the verb. Person was marked by a prefix on the auxiliary
Singular | Dual | Paucal | Plural | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1st | qo- | lof- | taqe- | ne- |
2nd | fen- | feni- | fen(ə)f- | fana- |
3rd sapient | tas- | te- | tan- | |
3rd non-sapient | lə- | li- | ləna- |
Aspects in Late Old Kasshian were
- Inceptive: tu(n)
- Progressive: qe
- Habitual: va(n) (sometimes -v after vowels)
- Cessative: ra (sometimes -r after vowels)
- Retrospective: nok
- Perfective: ∅
Verbal prefixes
Voice
- Reflexive: ko-/kw-
- Dative: pə-/p-
- Antipassive: so-
Tense
- Past: fa-
- Future: naqe-
Conditional
- If: ve-
- Contrafactual: kwa-
- Then: os-
Verbal suffixes
Mood was marked by a suffix
- Indicative: -Ø
- Irrealis: -ko
- Imperative/hortative: -kə
- Prohibitive: -ral
Pronouns
Simple
The simple pronouns were used primarily for clarity, and were typically unstressed
1st person | 2nd person | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Singular | Dual | Paucal | Plural | Singular | Dual | Paucal | Plural | |
qo | sa | na | ti | gil | dre | gif | gilna |
The gender prefixes (of the set used before consonants) were also used as 3rd person pronouns.
Case was marked with the suffixes:
- Nominative: Ø or -ka
- Accusative: -e
- Genitive: -wa
- Dative: -tu
Emphatic
There were two sets of emphatic pronouns, the "ordinary" set, used with standard case-suffixes, and the postpositional set, used with case-like postpositions.
Singular | Dual | Paucal | Plural | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1st person | Ordinary | Qódeg | Sádeg | Nádeg | Tídeg |
Postpositional | Sándeg | Nándeg | Tíndeg | ||
2nd person | Ordinary | Gíldeg | Drédeg | Gífdeg | Gílnadeg |
Postpositional | Gíndeg | Dréndeg | Gífindeg | Gílnandeg |
Case was marked by the same cases as simple pronouns.
Syntax
Word order was flexible in Old Kasshian. In the earliest stages, the verb was usually at the end of the sentence. In later stages, the verb's position became more variable, with a tendency towards the beginning of the sentence. Over the Old Kasshian period, adjective placement gradually became more consistently post-nominal.