Kijeb (Sohlob)
| Kijeb | |
| Spoken in: | Dlofiçtir Mountains |
| Timeline/Universe: | Sohlodar |
| Total speakers: | Unknown |
| Genealogical classification: | Sohlob languages Kijeb |
| Basic word order: | SOV |
| Morphological type: | Agglutinating, with mild fusion due to sandhi |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | Nominative-accusative |
| Created by: | |
| Benct Philip Jonsson | 2001—2006 |
Introduction
Kijeb [cidʑɨb̥] 'the ancient language' is the oldest attested Sohlob language, and regarded by the native grammatical tradition as the mother language of the later languages or dialects Classical Sohlob, Heleb, Kidilib and Linjeb. In fact Kijeb may be the direct ancestor only of Kidilib, while Classical Sohlob, Heleb and Linjeb may be descended from other closely related dialects — dialects which in any case cannot have been very much different, given the great similarity between Classical Sohlob, Heleb and Kidilib, and the relatively long time (above a thousand years) which is estimated to separate Kijeb from the beginning of the Sohloçan grammatical tradition.
It is not known what the speakers of Kijeb called themselves or their language. The name Kijeb is a Classical Sohlob term, although its phonetic form has evidently been influenced by its unrecorded Kidilib cognate. It is in any case not likely that the speakers of Kijeb called their own contemporary language *kidipa 'ancient language'.
Kijeb is attested in the form of mostly short formal religious, commemorative, dedicative and funerary inscriptions on stone and metal written in a syllabic script. There is evidence that there existed other writings in Kijeb language and script, since Sohloçan grammarians mention finds of pottery with Kijeb inscriptions in ancient graves. It seems clear however that with few exceptions the preserved Kijeb texts derive from the area where Kidilib was spoken in classical times.
Despite the written attestation Kijeb is largely a reconstructed language, since the Kijeb syllabary is partly defective, ignoring the distinction between voiced and voiceless stops, partly between stops and fricatives, and in the oldest inscriptions also between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants, and between velar and labiovelar consonants, and since the vocabulary of the inscriptions is limited. The reconstruction of Kijeb was made by Sohloçan priest grammarians striving to understand ancient religious inscriptions in the hope of improving their theology and the wording of their liturgical texts. Fortunately some of them got hooked on the study of language and language history in its own right and delved deeper in the history of their languages than those who were merely motivated by religious conservatism and purism.
Kijeb (Proto-Sohlob) grammar
Sound system
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| Low | a |
Consonants
| Labial | Dental or Alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Labiovelar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless stops | p py | t ty | ky | k | kw |
| Voiced stops | b by | d dy | gy | g | gw |
| Voiceless fricatives | f fy | s sy | xy | x | |
| Nasals | m my | n ny [nʲ] | (ŋy [ɲ]) | ŋ | ŋw |
| Liquids | r ry | ||||
| Semivowels | y [j] | w wy |
The absence of **xw is somewhat remarkable. Some Sohloçan grammarians note that Heleb and Kidilib x was in fact redundantly labialized, and suppose that this was the case also in Kijeb. Others propose a Pre-Kijeb merger with f; there are however no homonyms with f to support this theory.
The cardinal palatal nasal ŋy [ɲ] does not contrast with the dental/alveolar ny [nʲ] in roots, but appears in inflexion and derivation. This is shown by the fact that its reflex in the daughter languages is [j], e.g. tataŋya > CS: taday 'my own', while the reflex of ny is [ɲ], brunya > CS: brony [brɒɲ] 'hatchet'.
Palatalization
An y after a consonant or cluster is realized as palatalization of the consonant, or all consonants throughout the cluster.
Sandhi
There were some assimilatory and dissimilatory changes that probably applied synchronically in Kijeb:
| Underlying | Condition | Result | Example(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| t | before voiced stops and nasals | d |
kitbyu > *xidbyu > CS: xefd, K: sijd, L: xirz; |
| y | between a vowel and an i | g | |
| y | between an i and an a or u | gy | |
| w | between a vowel and an u | b | |
| w | between an u and an a or i | gw | |
| n | before p, b, f, m | m | |
| n | before k, g, x, ŋ | ŋ | |
| mm | in inflection | mb | |
| nn | in inflection | nd | |
| ŋŋ | in inflection | ŋg | |
| rr | in inflection | dr | |
| m, n, ŋ | between a t, d or s and a consonant other than r, w, y | deletes | |
| tt, dd | in inflection | st, [z]d | |
| r | between an s and a consonant other than r, w, y | ir | |
| s | before voiced stops | [z] | sasbinta > *sazbinta > CS: hæzbænd, K: hejdehn, L: hezbent. |
The *rr > dr and *dd > zd rules conspire to produce *drr > zdr.
Root structure
A Kijeb nominal or verbal root has the following structure:
- (s) (C) (r) (y) V (D) C (r) (y)
where
- slots in parentheses are optional
- V is any vowel (a, i, u)
- C is any consonant
- D is any dental (t/d, n, s, r)
There are some restrictions on possible phoneme sequences, including:
- Geminates do not occur. Thus e.g. if there is an s in a C slot there can be no s in the preceding s or D slot, resulting in an *ss, and similarly no *rr, *ww, *yy, *tt. *dd, *nn.
- n a nasal does not occur (no *nn, *nm, *nŋ).
- Labial w does not occur.
- None of *yi, *iy, *wu, *uw can occur.
- Palatalization or y may occur either in the consonant(s) before the V or in the consonant(s) after the V or not at all, but not both before and after the V. A cluster is either palatalized throughout or not at all.
- In nominal and verbal roots
- the same consonant may not occur twice,
- no two stops or fricatives (other than s) at the same point of articulation may occur within a single root,
- no two nasals may occur within a single root.
- The nominal stems mama 'mother' and papa 'father' are the only known exceptions to these restrictions among nominal and verbal roots. In pronoun and determiner stems, on the other hand, shapes like tat, kak, nan, sas are allowed and even favored. (There is also the numeral stem sas 'one', but this may be a determiner in origin.) It may be that these stems were originally CV stems that became reduplicated.
- Roots consisting only of VC are extremely rare.
- Roots with a heavy cluster both before and after the V are rare.
In order to function as a stem such a root must be followed by a vowel. In nouns (including adjectives) this second vowel is a random extension, while in verbs it is an inflectional morpheme.
Morphology
Unlike the daughter languages, which are split-ergative, Kijeb is entirely nominative-accusative.
Nominal morphology
Grammatical cases
| Singular | Animate plural | Inanimate plural | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -Ø (unmarked) | -n | -r |
| Accusative | -s | -ns | -rs |
| Dative | -t | -nt | -rt |
(In the daughter languages the accusative is derived from *-si and the dative from *-tu.)
It is not certain that the inanimate plural accusative and dative were distinguished from the singular. In any case the Kijeb syllabary could not distinguish word-final -rs, -rt from word-final -s, -t, while in the animate plural the diacritic for syllable-final -n could be added to CVs and CVt characters to indicate word-final -ns, -nt.
Semantic cases
| Singular | Animate plural | Inanimate plural | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Locative | -tyu | -ntyu | -rtyu |
| Allative | -sya | -nsya | -rsya |
| Ablative | -yu | -nyu | -ryu |
| Instrumental | -ri | -nri | -dri |
The ergative of the daughter languages derives from *-rya and is certainly derived from the instrumental.
Adverbs
Local adverbs
Local adverbs are formed by adding local case endings to the three deictic roots proximal *i 'this', medial *a 'that' and distal *u 'yon'.
| ityu | 'here' | atyu | 'there' | utyu | 'yonder' |
| isya | 'to here' | asya | 'to there' | usya | 'to yonder' |
| igyu | 'from here' | ayu | 'from there' | uyu | 'from yonder' |
Pronouns
Kijeb pronouns have several unique morphological characteristics. Most basic pronoun roots have the shape CV. Such a root cannot stand on its own, but attaches clitically to a noun or verb stem. A clitic pronoun functions as a possessive marker when attached to a noun and as a person agreement marker when attached to a verb.
Free standing pronouns are emphatic, and are formed by reduplicating the CV root.
Plural pronouns are formed either suppletively or by infixation of the plural marker -n or -r between the syllables of the reduplicated CV root. For this reason plural emphatic pronouns take simple case markers -s, -t etc., thus the accusative of anda is andas rather than **anans or **andans.
Personal and demonstrative pronouns
| First and second person pronouns
|
Singular | Plural (animate) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clitic | Emphatic | Clitic | Emphatic | ||||
| First person | -ta | tata | 'I' | -di | didi | 'we (exclusive)' | |
| -pu | pupu | 'we (inclusive)' | |||||
| Second person | -ba | baba | 'thou' | -gi | gigi | 'you (pl.)' | |
| Third person clitic pronouns
|
