User:Soap/MRCA

This is a scratchpad for the MRCA. The orthography is different here for ease of searching. Most notably, tone markers are dropped because there are no monosyllabic low tones at this stage and the tone of longer words can be predicted from its consonant layout.

PRONUNCIATION NOTES

Most coda consonants are silent:

1. All non-nasals are silent except before a vowel (liaison);
2. All nasals are silent before non-voiceless stops except in the DRM dialect;
3. All consonants are silent in the Tapilula branch except /mb nd mf/ etc which always load onto the trailing syllable.

Grammatical morphemes

09:20, 29 September 2023 (PDT)

Undifferentiated core

• pum "if ....."

• man not; negative (used as suffix in Lava Bed, but have been prefixed earlier)

• The final /n/ suggests a suffix position by MRCA times, but a cognat epreifx could have existed

• pal XOR; exclusive OR

• nə ".... then ....." (never occurs by itself)

• From ther verb for walk. Can be seen as "therefore"
• nə gal [a derived copula appearing in DRM]

• -n oblique suffix (genitive)

• It is possible this was originally syllabic, even though another syllabic /-n/ suffix existed marking the imperative mood. It could be that these were one morpheme far back in the past, and the imperative developed from a phrase in which the verb was placed in the genitive (or perhaps subjunctive, assuming they were united), and then a helper word was used that was later dropped.
• The alternative view is that the oblique was originally /-ni/, still distinct from the locative /-ni/ up above because the /i/ pronunciation was from two different time periods.

• -i accusative marker

• Exists in proto-Dreamlandic. Possibly not a distinct suffix in MRCA, since final /-i/ could come from so many origins. This was almost certainly earlier /ɨ/.
• Possibly for patients only (secundative alignment), as in Lava Bed languages. This would have consequences for word order.
• This is used even after vowels, and probably does not require an epenthetic /g/. If it did, it was analyzed away in DRM.

• -ni locative suffix

• This can also be analyzed as oblique -n followed by a standalone verb /i/, assuming other inherited traits hold. Despite ending in /i/ it is not cognate with accusative /i/, and was a true [i] even thousands of years back, unlike the more common /ɨ/.

• -i₂ a hypothetical second suffix set up to divide the locative /-ni/ into genitive /-n/ and a suffix that was separate from the /-i/ accusative but ultimately merged with it. If -i₂ exists, there could be some syntactically unexpected functions folded into the accusative. For this to work, there would need to be a sound change like /ɨɨj/ > /īj/ > /i/ without insertion of /g/.

• ta genitive standalone word (appears before noun)

• yom hand. Evolves to an instrumental in DRM and to a noun classifier in Gold, but probably had no special grammatical function in MRCA

• ŋa verb of preparation (know ---> ask; eat ---> cook)
  • ŋa lo "if ....."

• -i- past tense infix
• nda past tense marker (coexisted with /i/)

• gu plural (goes before noun)

• possibly originally /gup/

• hṅ during; while; when

• mfup reflexive verb marker (behaves as if the accusative of "self")

Bound verbs

• pə fail to
  • possibly earlier /pən/; if so, this consonant would remain in DRM
  • pə pal try to; attempt (/pal/ = OR)
• gəpa inchoative (never contained /l/)
• hu should, must (expanded to /mbihu/ with /mbi/ as a carrier verb); evolves as a suffix
• mu ~ mbu capable of; able to; habilitative; prone to [used for the AGENT]; evolves as a suffix
• twomo in the state resulting from; [used for the PATIENT; pairs with /ŋa/-type verbs]
• pa valency raising operator
• no desiderative (possibly a vowel-harmony variant of /nə/ "(and) then; to walk". Always goes before verb. This verb never had a trailing consonant

Occasionally bound nouns

• ən a child. Repurposed as a suffix in Andanese to form diminutives, but in MRCA it would have been required to place the child word in front because of animacy issues. Perhaps it was used suffixally even in MRCA as though it were the genitive of a word that was just a bare /ə/.

Other verbal suffixes

• -tə irrealis (forms most moods in Play)
• -ŋa involuntary action
• -gə generic verb suffix (possibly constructed from nulls)

• -gəniŋ (used to construct passives)

Topic markers

These were likely prefixes, but are written as separate words for simplicity. All descendant languages used them as fully bound forms except for those that detached into pronouns.

SAPs

Note that verbs using these still require distinct person markers.

• nam 1st person agent
• ŋam 1st person patient

• gət 2nd person topic (either agent or patient)

• the /hə/ for the 2nd person patient form may therefore be an analogy confined to just Lava Beds.

• nambə 1st person agent, 2nd person patient [NOT LISTED AS CONTAINING /t/]
• ŋambə 1st person patient, 2nd person agent [NOT LISTED AS CONTAINING /t/]

Third persons

• ka epicene human agent

Possession markers

These may appear only before the oblique suffix, since it would not be possible to put the accusative suffix in (unless it was once syllabic). Likewise, because the deletion of final consonants came early, they would make little sense as standalone forms.

• -m- 1st person
• -t- 2nd person