Proto-Albic

Proto-Albic
Spoken in:	British Isles
Timeline/Universe:	League of Lost Languages; The Elvenpath
Total speakers:	extinct (evolved into various daughter languages)
Genealogical classification:	Hesperic Albic Proto-Albic
Basic word order:	VSO
Morphological type:	agglutinating
Morphosyntactic alignment:	active-stative
Created by:
Jörg Rhiemeier	2001-

Proto-Albic is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Albic languages; it is assumed to have been spoken in southern Britain between 2000 and 1500 BC.

The language can be reconstructed very well from the attested dialects of Old Albic and their descendants.

Phonology

Consonants

Proto-Albic is reconstructed with 19 consonant phonemes.

	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal	Laryngeal
Nasals	*m	*n	*ng
Voiced stops	*b	*d	*g
Neutral stops	*p	*t	*k
Aspirated stops	*p'	*t'	*k'
Fricatives		*s		*h
Liquids and semivowels	*w	*l *r	*j	*3

As usual with protolanguages, the exact phonetic values of these sounds are uncertain. Especially the sound *3 is somewhat mysterious, but the best guess is that it was a voiced glottal or pharyngeal fricative or approximant. The phonotactic behaviour at any rate shows that it had a high degree of sonority, in a class with the liquids and semivowels.

Vowels

The vowel inventory of Proto-Albic consists of only three vowels.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	*i		*u
Open		*a