Proto-Phwaim

Proto-Phwaim is a fictional language by Polka Dot. Proto-Phwaim is the reconstructed ancestor of the Phim-Hwan languages, a family spoken for the most part in the central region of Phwaim. It is estimated to have been spoken around 10.000 HW.

Phonology

Consonants

The reconstructed consonant phoneme inventory of Proto-Phwaim, with 37 consonants, is shown in the table below:

Proto-Phwaim Consonantal Phonemes

		Bilabial	Dental, Alveolar		Postalveolar	Palatal(ized)	Velar	Uvular
			Central	Lateral
Nasals		*m [m]	*n [n]			*ń [nʲ ~ ɲ]	*ŋ [ŋ]
Stops	Aspirated	*ph [pʰ]	*th [tʰ]				*kh [kʰ]
	Voiceless	*p [p]	*t [t]				*k [k]
	Voiced	*b [b]	*d [d]				*g [g]
Affricates	Aspirated				*čh [t͡ʃʰ]	*ćh [t͡sʲʰ ~ t͡ɕʰ]
	Voiceless				*č [t͡ʃ]	*ć [t͡sʲ ~ t͡ɕ]
	Voiced				*ǧ [d͡ʒ]	*ǵ [d͡zʲ ~ d͡ʑ]
Fricatives	Voiceless		*s [s]	*ṣ [ɬ]	*š [ʃ]			*x[χ]
	Palatalized		*s' [sʲ]	*ṣ' [ɬʲ]	*š' [ʃʲ]			*x'[χʲ]
	Voiced		*z [z]	*ẓ [ɮ]	*ž [ʒ]			*ḥ[ʁ]
Semivowels		*v [w]				*y [j]
Trill			*r [r]			*r' [rʲ]
Lateral				*l [l]		*l' [lʲ ~ ʎ]

In the consonant system, palatalization, or palatal-laminal instead of apical articulation, was a phonemic feature, as it is in many modern Phim-Hwan languages.

Vowels

The Proto-Phwaim vowel system is traditionally reconstructed to have the following 10 vowel phonemes, contrasting two degrees of length, as shown in the table below:

		Front		Back
		unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	Short	i [i]	ü [y]	ï [ɯ]	u [u]
	Long	ii [iː]	üü [yː]	ïï [ɯː]	uu [uː]
Close-mid	Short	e [e]	ö [ø]	ë [ɤ]	o [o]
	Long	ee [eː]	öö [øː]	ëë [ɤː]	oo [oː]
Open	Short	ä [æ]		a [ɑ]
	Long	ää [æː]		aa [ɑː]

Syllable and root structure

A notable distributional feature was that *ŋ, *x, *x', *ḥ, *ṣ, *ṣ', *ẓ, *r and *r' could not occur word-initially, while *z could only occur word-initially. The nucleus is the only obligatory segment of the Proto-Phwaim syllable. The maximum syllable structure can be summarized as (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C).

The onset can be any single consonant (except for *ŋ, *x, *x', *ḥ, *ṣ, *ṣ', *ẓ, *r and *r') or a cluster consisting of sibilant followed by an obstruent or a nasal (SO or SN), a sibilant followed by a plosive and an approximant (SPA), or a obstruent or nasal followed by an approximant (OA or NA).

The coda can be any single consonant (except for *z) or a cluster consisting of an approximant followed by any consonant (AC), an approximant followed by a sibilant and a plosive (ASP), a fricative followed by a plosive or a sibilant (FP or FS), a nasal followed by a plosive or sibilant (NP or NS), or a plosive followed by an obstruent (PO).

Morphology

Nouns

Proto-Phwaim had 13 cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, ablative, instrumental, comitative, terminative, Illative, allative, equative, partitive), two systems of number (singular-dual–plural and collective–singulative) and two genders (human vs nonhuman). A noun stem can take up to 2 types of suffixes:

stem + (number) + (case)