Archaic Imperial (Empire-in-the-West)

Archaic Imperial (AI) is the name given to the earliest attested ancestor of Modern Standard Imperial. The corpus of AI texts is fairly small: some runic carvings, and the Imperial Law Code of the Temple; the language has been reconstructed based on its daughter and sister languages with a fair degree of confidence.

Phonology

Consonants

POA	Labials	Dentals	Emphatics	Velars	Uvulars	Glottals
Voiceless stops	p /p/	t /t/	ṭ /tˤ/	k /k/	q /q/	? /ʔ/
Voiced stops	b /b/	d /d/	ḍ /dˤ/	g /g/	ḡ /ɢ/
Fricatives	f /f/	s /s/	ş /sˤ/	x /x/	ẋ /χ/	h /h/
Nasals	m /m/	n /n/
Liquids		l /l/, r /r/
Glides	w /w/			y /j/

Vowels

• Short: /i a u/ i a u
• Long: /iː aː uː/ ī ā ū
• Diphthong: /ai au/ ai au

Allophony

There is strong vowel allophony in AI, with backed or lowered allophones of most vowels occurring near the emphatic consonants (ṭ /tˤ/ q /q/ ḍ /dˤ/ ḡ /ɢ/ ş /sˤ/ ẋ /χ/). /i/ > [e] /u/ > [o] /a/ > [A] /i:/ > [i@] or [@i] (The former if the emphatic consonants follows the vowel, the latter if it precedes it.) /u:/ > [u@] or [@u] (As with /i:/) /a:/ > [A:]

The diphthongs show allophony based on the following consonant, with raised allophones before voiceless ones. /aj/ > [Ei] /aw/ > [Ou]

The short vowel also have tense/lax allophony, with lax allophones occurring in closed syllables. This applies after the emphatic allophony, so /i/ has the realizations [i], [I], [e], [E]. The vowel /a/ has no tense/lax allophony.

Morphosyntax

Archaic Imperial was a VSO language, though it already showed signs of the shift to SOV that occurred in its descendants. Word order is consistently head-modifier, and therefore noun-adjective, noun-genitive, preposition-noun, noun-relative clause, etc. are all neutral word-orders.

Clauses

AI clauses come in many different forms. The smallest is a single inflected verb, eg. Xiritān. "He/she argued". Verbal clauses can also have various stated arguments, eg. Liqitān uxucālik ummigāmirax "The traveller took off the cloak." There are clauses that lack verbs and have nominal predicates: Uxucālik aqsumik "The traveller is strong." There are also a variety of dependent clauses: relative, complement, and adjectival.

Verbal Morphosyntax

The AI verb was fairly simple. There are only two aspects: Perfective and Imperfective, as well as a Subjunctive and two Participles (Active and Passive). These are all created from the same triconsonantal root, the base form of which was the Imperfective (CiC(i)C). All but the participles take the same agreement endings (participles taking the endings of nouns) which are given below:

Person	Singular	Dual	Plural
1st	-ul	-utul	-rul
2nd	-uk	-utuk	-ruk
3rd an.	-ān	-utān	-rān
3rd in.	-aw	-utaw	-raw

With the verb xirit "to argue":

Xirit	Singular	Dual	Plural
1st	xirtul	xiruttul	xiritrul
2nd	xirtuk	xiruttuk	xiritruk
3rd an.	xirtān	xirtutān	xiritrān
3rd in.	xirtaw	xirtutaw	xiritraw

Note: The bolded forms are irregular. The regular forms would be *xirtutul and *xirtutuk, which seem to have undergone metathesis to avoid successive identical syllables.

The alternation between CiCC and CiCiC is used to avoid three-consonant clusters, which did not occur in AI.

The same endings are used in the perfective (CiCaaCi) and subjunctive (iCCiC:usi).

Nominal Morphosyntax

AI's morphosyntactic alignment combines elements of the tripartite and fluid-S systems. Pronouns have separate forms for A, P, and S; while nouns have only A and P forms (Nominative and Absolutive), either of which can be used for S. There is also a Genitive case (also used for Recipient and Benefactor roles) and an Oblique case that serves a variety of other functions.

The Definite Article

The definite article is inflected for the gender of the noun it modifies. For animate nouns the form is u-, while for inanimate nouns, it is u~-, where ~ represents a "chroneme": the gemination of the following consonant.

=Case

An. Nom. Sing. -ik In. Abs. Sing. -ax

See Also

• Modern Standard Imperial
• Sound Changes in Imperial Languages