Kuma-Koban

Old Verat Verát
Spoken in:	Terek Highlands (Teregvérga)
Conworld:	Khelivega Continuity
Total speakers:	Roughly 300 Thousand
Genealogical classification:	Indo-European Indo-Caucasian Vertaic Old Verat
Basic word order:	SOV
Morphological type:	Inflecting
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Split-S
Writing system:
Created by:
S. G. McCabe	c2002 CE

History

Commonly known as Verat, this was the language spoken by the southern Khelivega tribes, those who's clans entered union at Terek, in particular. Old Verat is the langauge spoken by Undun and his compatriots, as opposed to the slightly younger and only slightly changed Terek Verat. These can be considered dialects of the same language, only differing slightly. Genetically, Verat is an old Indo-European language, an early branching-off, indicated by some archaic and otherwise unusual features. It shares many traits with the Indo-Iranian languages in particular, but is very clearly not a member of that family.

Old Verat was spoken in the south and east, especially at Terek, presumably as far north as Kuban. So-called Terek Verat, on the other hand, became the lingua-franca of most of the cis-Caucasian territory, incorporating a large number of loans from its North-Caucasian counterparts.

Orthography and Phonology

The Phonology of Verat is somewhat simpler than that of Proto-Indo-European. It shows 15 phonemic consonants and 5 vowels with phonemic length contrasts. Traditionally, the consonants are divided into three main series.

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Voiceless Aspirate	p [pʰ]	t [tʰ]		k [kʰ]
Voiced Plosive	b [b]	d [d]		g [g]
Nasal	m [m]	n [n]
Voiceless Fricative		s [s]	ş [ɕ]
Voiced Fricative	v [v]	ð [ð]		kh [ɣ]
Sonorants		r [r,ɾ] l [l]	j

Vowels

For vowels, we have a rather typical five-vowel system. The short vowels are somewhat more lax than the long vowels, and the language shows a distinctively lowered /uː/. Long vowels are denoted in the standard orthography by a macron; accented short vowels have a high or rising tone, denoted by the acute accent á, while accented long vowels have a rising-falling tone, denoted by the circumflex â. Some orthographies use the an acute-with-macron ā́, as is done in Sanskrit; this is avoided due to the lack of standard Unicode support for these characters, and poor integration of Opentype into most software.

Short Vowels

i [ɪ̝]			u [ʊ]
	e [ɛ̝]		o [ɔ]
		a [ɐ]

Long Vowels

ī [iː]			ū [u̞ː]
	ē [eː]		ō [oː]
	ā [aː]

Noun

There are eight noun cases: Nominative, Absolutive, Genetive, Dative, Instrumental, Ablative, Locative, and Vocative. This is alongside two noun classes: Animate and Neuter, and three numbers: Singular, Dual, Plural. There are sixteen declensions, in total, split among three inflectional patters.

Class

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Number

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Case

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Verb

As an Indo-European language, Verat has a fairly complicated verb system with an ablaut. Conjugational and inflectional patterns of the so-called tenses are grouped into three systems by aspect: Imperfective in the Present, Perfective in the Aorist, and Perfect in the Perfect.

Ergativity

Split-S

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Active vs. Middle

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Morphology

Augment

The augment, very simply, is the prefix jé- on a verb stem, indicating that the verb has the Past-time. Historically, the augment is derived from PIE *h₁é-.

Reduplication

This phenomenon repeats the first consonant or consonants of a root: C(é)RC- > Cé-C(e)RC. Were the accent to shift away from the reduplicated vowel, it would become -i-: Cé-CoRC- > jé-Ci-CoRC, as we might see in the Perfect and Pluperfect tenses.

Because of Grassmann's Law, reduplication occurs as *Cʰé(R)Cʰ > Cé(R)Cʰ, which has the consequence of the reflex of *gʰóur-o > *gé-gʰour-o becoming kōr-o- > ɣé-kōr-o «to fear». Therefore, we see, in reduplicant morphemes the following occur: k > ɣ, t > ð, p > v, and in some cases ɕ > j. This final change occurs only 'in some cases' becuse ɕ is the reflex of both *ḱ and *ǵʰ, of which only the latter will change because of Grassmann's Law.

Preverb

Verbs can take a directional preverb, which is prefixed onto the stem, such that it will lie between any augment and any full stem. These preverbs are the identical with many adverbs, such as ɕō ‹towards›, en ‹in›, bel ‹beyond›, and ubo ‹from under›.

Present System

Verbs in the Present System are characterized by the Imperfective aspect, representing actions which are ongoing. There are five possible non-productive stem formations:

Stem Formation

Root Stems

These are, of course, bare roots with no suffix, and make up the vast majority of verbs. These can either be Thematic, such as veme- ‹to vomit›, or Athematic, like jes- ‹to be›.

Reduplicated Stems

These stems utilize the reduplication of the first consonant(s) of a root. These are rare and athematic, as only the front of the stem is altered; no suffix is present to thematize the stem. For examples of this we have si-se- < se ‹to sow›, and jé-ɕev- < ɕev ‹to pour›. The latter of these is one of the so-called irregular ɕ-reduplications.

Suffix -(e)i-

These stems are generally athematic, and exist as both primary and secondary derivations. Among the primary verbs, we see mun-ei‹to think› and speɕ-je ‹to see›, the latter of which is actually thematic.

Suffix -(e)s-

This is an athematic suffix found in a number of stems, such as: ɕlōs- ‹be obedient›, ajes- ‹to carry›, and aveks- ‹to grow›.

Nasal Stems

There are a number of present stems which actually have an infixed -n- before the final consonant. In ablaut, the full-grade vowel is actually shifted from the center of the root to after the infix. For example, we see: lineb- < lēb- ‹to let, allow›, gunes- < gus- ‹to kiss›, ðunā < ðuma ‹to subdue› (ðuma is clearly irregular, due to assimilation: *dṃh₂- > *dṃ-n-eh₂ > *dum-nā > ðunā).

Present Tense

The Verat Present Tense is roughly equivalent to the English Present Progressive, which is to say, it tells of something which is in progress at the time of the utterance.

Imperfect Tense

The Imperfect Tense is roughly equivalent to the Imperfect of Spanish, describing an event which was ongoing at some time in the past.

Aorist System

This system is characterized by the Perfective aspect, referring to a single, complete event.

Stem Formation

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Aorist Tense

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Perfect System

This system is characterized by the Perfect aspect, referring to an event which is complete and relevant.

Stem Formation

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Perfect Tense

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Pluperfect Tense

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