Hantic

Author's Note:

The Hantic language I've been working on for the last ten years has been shelved in favor of its redevelopment through a series of progenitor languages thanks to the diachronitis I contracted by hanging out on the ZBB. This Hantic site will for the time being focus on the earliest version of the language: Proto-Hantic.

Proto-Hantic Background

Hantic, even in the context of the conworld, is not a natural language. It was specifically and intentionally created by a mythical denizen of the conworld. In other words, it is a con-conlang. For a brief description of the longitudinal history of Hantic, see below.

Proto-Hantic is a quasi-philosophical constructed language based on a system of 400 consonantal pairs, each of which, when realized through the six vowels, yields a collection of roots that are related by morphology and by the attributes the pair supposedly encodes. The system was never intended to be taxonomic or derivationally productive. The ascription of meaning to the 2400 roots was both arbitrary and pragmatic: it yielded the necessary terms for using the language as a system of magical incantation, but it did not necessarily provide a complete lexicon for use in everyday life. Generally speaking, among the six roots from each consonant pair there was at least one verbal root, an adjectival or adverbial root, and a number of nominal roots, though the specific realization depended on the idiosyncrasies of the language creator (mythically reputed to be the Hant).

Proto-Hantic Phonology

Phonological Inventory: NB: No orthography is necessary since there are no conworld texts in the protolanguage. Phonological transcription is in X-SAMPA.

• Plosives: /p b t_d d_d t d k g/
• Fricatives: /f v T D s z x G/
• Nasals: /m n/
• Liquids: /l r/
• Vowels: /a e i o u y/

Vowel Harmony: Vowel harmony is both progressive and regressive. Based upon the vowel of the root, the vowels of prefixes and affixes will align along a front/back axis. Vowel harmony is broken in compounded roots -- prefixes will align with the first root and suffixes will align with the second.

• Front vowels: [i] and [y]

• Back vowels: [o] and [u]
• Neutral vowels: [e] and [a]

Where an affix does not have a prescribed neutral vowel, the vowel of the affix is [o] for back-vowel roots, [i] for front-vowel roots, [e] for [e]-roots, and [a] for [a]-roots.

Syllable Structure: strictly (C)V(C)

In principle, any consonant may articulate against any other consonant within compounds or across word boundaries. Allophony is not being considered for the protolanguage because it is assumed that the first stimuli for sound-change into the daughter dialects will be allophonic compensations for natural difficulties with consonant clusters.

Prosody: The language is pragmatically stress-timed with regular stress placed on the root, or in the case of compounds, on the second root.

Morphosyntactic Alignment

Strict ergative morphological and syntactic alignment.

Core Cases:

• Absolutive:

sole argument of intransitives, object of transitives, theme of ditransitives

• Ergative: subject of transitives and ditransitives
• Dative: recipient of ditransitives

Oblique Cases:

• Locative
• Genitive
• Ablative
• Instrumental
• Vocative

Word order is generally VSO, but due to the case system, it is relatively free. Adverbial phrase order is Time-Manner-Place, and these phrases are generally sentence final, though time adverbials will often precede the verb.

Nominal Morphology

Noun Classes:

• Animate: (intelligent, supernatural, animal, natural forces)
• Insensate: (vegetable and inanimate material)

NB: Only the animate class may take the ergative case.

Number/Definiteness Inflections:

• Singular/Indef: -s
• Singular/Def: -l
• Plural/Indef: -n
• Plural/Def: -k

NB: Nominal roots are inflected first for number and definiteness. Case inflections are then added to the resulting stem.

Case Inflections:

• Absolutive: 0
• Ergative: de-
• Dative: -em
• Genitive: -en
• Locative: -t
• Ablative: -r
• Instrumental: -p
• Vocative: v-

Verbal Morphology

Verbs conjugate for person, number, and aspect. Verbal agreement is with the absolutive argument.

The persons are the standard 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. It is always understood, however, that the invoker is the 1st person, the invoked is the 2nd, and the 3rd is anything peripheral to the relationship between the invoker and invoked. There is no method for indirect discourse.

The numbers are simply singular and plural.

The aspects are punctuative and iterative. [insert explanation here]

There is no morphological tense. Indeed, as a language for magical incantation, the speech act is mostly concerned with the present in the forms of invocation and command. The punctuative aspect can take the meaning of a narrative past in a litany of past acts or accomplished invocations or bindings.

[insert inflections here]

Moods are indicative, imperative, and conditional. There is no irrealis whatsoever.

[insert mood inflections here]

The language admits no voice-changing operations.

Historical Sketch of the Hantic Languages

The original a priori language (Proto-Hantic) is invented (legendarily by the Hant) as a pseudo-philosophical language for use in magical incantation. NB: In its long history, Hantic will never be spoken as a primary language except for a period of about 90 years by the small sect of Akuroshetic Zealots.

Proto-Hantic splits into at least three distinct ritual branches: 1) Proto-Arcanatic (with dialects), in and around Akuroshas in the western south, 2) Cryptic, in the canthic enclaves along the eastern rim of the northern ocean, and 3) Lost, in old communities of the western north that eventually abandoned the Hantic for magical ritual in favor of natural languages.

The Proto-Arcanatic dialects are regularized and formalized into the Arcanatic language as described in the Arcanat by the Akuroshetic Zealots around the time of the founding of Zaraziin. This, in slightly variant form, becomes the Hantic of the Ajan, Zaraziin's founder.

The Cryptic branch develops into the Canthic ritual language in the region of Tallis (the principal canthic enclave.) NB: It is sometimes asserted that Old Canthic may have been spoken as a primary language by those of the canthic who eschewed human shape.

The Arcantic speakers are dispersed or killed during the destruction of Zaraziin by Akuroshas and the subsequent conquest of Akuroshas by the Aisxros.

The Ajan and the Remnant of Zaraziin flee to the Court of the Duke upon the Heights in Tallis. The Ajanic variant of Arcanatic eventually merges with the Canthic into Ancient Ajanic. At this point the language is spoken only in Tallis, and even there only as a learned second language -- elsewhere it has been abandoned for natural languages, some of which have now developed their own dead ritual forms.

The Skandrian Wars eradicate all but a few of the canthic enclaves and the remnants of the Canthic forms die out. The wars, though, disperse documents in Ancient Ajanic throughout the East, but the only incipient civilization to take the language into daily use is Coreolas, where it exists alongside a ritual form of the Corelanian natural language. Peripheral to the Talliscine center of the language, this dialect remains somewhat more conservative.

Early in the reign of the second Amun king, a near complete text of the Arcanat is rediscovered by Talliscine scholars near the ruins of ancient Akuroshas. In Tallis this results in the re-uptake of many archaic forms into what is now called Old Hantic. From this time Hantic begins to be used as a poetic and literary language in Tallis, alongside its use in magical incantation.

Among the crypto-canthic sects (remnant partisans of the canthic in the Skandrian Wars), however, the discovery leads to the reactionary expunging of Arcanatic forms from the Ancient Ajanic in an attempt to reconstruct a pure "Old Canthic". This attempted reconstruction is now known to scholars as the Crypto-Canthic. The only textual evidence of presumed "Old Canthic" forms dates from this attempted reconstruction.

In the reign of the first Varro king, scholars rediscover fragments of the Lost Hantic and authenticate them as older than the Arcanat. The substantial differences between the two ancient forms lead to a reconsideration of the antiquity of the language (it is much older than thought) and shatters the widespread popular belief in Tallis that the Ajan was the Hant. The Lost Fragments precipitate a renaissance in Hantic scholarship and attempts are even made to reconstruct the Cryptic and Proto forms. The explosion of scholarship leads to prescriptive reforms that sediment and codify the language into what is now known as the High Classical Hantic.

Though there is little grammatical change from the High Clissical language up to the present day, there are many identifiable neologisms and new idioms, due to its use as a high-status literary language and to continued, but slow, magical innovation in at least three centers of use: Tallis, The Court of the Coreolanian Hierophant, and the Convocation of Masters in the northern west. Each of these schools has a particular dialect that varies somewhat in pronunciation, stress, and idiom.

Up to the beginning of the Great Interregnum, a Hantic Court convenes every ten years in Tallis with representatives of the three schools as judges. It is the commission of this court to publish a grammar and lexicon authorized by the Talliscine king for each of the three recognized schools. In the 160 years of the Interregnum, however, only one new grammar is published, under the auspices of the Talliscine Archmagister, and it only codifies the language for use in the Talliscine Magisterium. Otherwise the pace of divergence among the three schools is accelerating.

The Identifiable Hantic Forms

1. Proto-Hantic
   1. Proto-Arcanatic 1
   2. Proto-Arcanatic 2
   3. Proto-Arcanatic 3
   4. Cryptic
   5. Lost
2. Arcanatic
   1. Ajanic variant
3. Canthic
4. Old Ajanic
5. Old Hantic
   1. Coreolanic variant
6. High Classical Hantic
   1. Talliscine school
   2. Coreolanian school
   3. Horic school