Ibero-Hesperic Brainstorming

This is a place to brainstorm about the Ibero-Hesperic branch of the Hesperic family.

First of all, "Ibero-Hesperic" is a provisional designation.

Now to the two languages (there may be more in the future but currently I have only plans for two), what little I already "know".

Corunese is an extinct ancient language known from an inscription found at A Coruña, Spain. This is a bilingual: the same text is found in Corunese on one side of a bronze plaque and in Old Albic on the other. Both languages are written in Old Albic letters. (The text has not been composed yet.) There may be more inscriptions. Balla is a living language, spoken in a few households, somewhere in Cantabria.

In both Ibero-Hesperic and Italo-Hesperic, the genitive *-s has become a topic marker. This may have become an ergative suffix in Balla. Balla may have converged phonologically towards Basque, with fortis/lenis pairs such as p/b, t/d, k/g, tz/z, ts/s, tx/x. Perhaps the beginnings of this trend are already visible in Corunese.

Suffix -ja as feminine marker and the suffix -wa as masculine marker. The ending genitive marked in Proto-Hesperic "-s" , but in the Mediterranean branch of the family, it acquired the meaning of a topic marker and vocative case.

The Proto-Hesperic word for 'me' (objective case) is *mam; in Continental West Hesperic, final */m/ gave /n/, so we get exactly the form man found in the inscription.

The dative of the second-person singular pronoun is *t‘an in Proto-Hesperic, but in Continental West Hesperic, the originally partitive ending *-l acquired the meaning of a dative ending after the original dative had fallen together with the accusative by the aforementioned sound change.

A dative *t‘al for the Mediterranean Hesperic.

Rübenkönig (1989) assumes it to be in origin a past participle in *-at‘, as it is found in other Mediterranean Hesperic languages.

Loss of aspiration (only partially in Albic) Drummond's Law Senantho's Law Vowel umlauts Initial accent (lost in parts of Albic) Small consonant inventories No long vowels Stress accent Topic-prominent noun declension, topic marker from genitive Simple verb morphology