Hesperic
| Hesperic | |
| Spoken in: | Europe |
| Conworld: | League of Lost Languages |
| Total speakers: | ca. 50,000 |
| Genealogical classification: | see below |
| Basic word order: | varies |
| Morphological type: | varies |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | varies |
| Created by: | |
| Jörg Rhiemeier | 2000- |
Hesperic is a family of diachronic conlangs by Jörg Rhiemeier spoken in the world of the League of Lost Languages. So far, Old Albic is the best-elaborated language of the family.
The Hesperic languages are spoken in various residual zones in Central and Western Europe, with a total number of speakers not exceeding 50,000 today, though the family once had many more speakers as the extant Hesperic languages are the last remains of a once great language family that was later eclipsed and displaced by Indo-European (Old Albic alone is estimated to have been spoken by about 2 million people during the apogee of the Commonwealth of the Elves around 600 BC).
The Hesperic languages are an attempt at fleshing out the hypothetical Aquan languages. The common ancestor of the Hesperic languages, Proto-Hesperic, may have been the language of the Linear Pottery culture, the first Neolithic farming culture of Central Europe. The common ancestor of the West Hesperic branch (see below) may have been the language of the Beaker culture. However, such identifications of language families with archaeological cultures always have to be taken with a grain of salt, as languages and material cultures often do not match. The Old European hydronymy may be Hesperic in origin, but as the original meanings of those names are unknown, such an identification remains speculative.
Classification
The classification given here is preliminary, and many designations (in italics) provisional, as most of the Hesperic languages are still unexplored.
Hesperic
- West Hesperic
-
- Continental West Hesperic
- Gallo-Hesperic
- Alpianic
- Mediterranean Hesperic
- Ibero-Hesperic
- Italo-Hesperic
- Viddan (incertae sedis)
- East Hesperic
- Balto-Hesperic
- Carpathian Hesperic
Viddan shows a mixture of western and eastern traits, and its affiliation is unclear.
The "Kastenholz scheme"
The Kastenholz scheme (named after a fictional linguist) groups the eight branches of Hesperic in a 3x3 grid (with one empty cell):
| West | Central | East | |
|---|---|---|---|
| North | Albic | Viddan | Balto-H. |
| Central | Gallo-H. | Alpianic | Carpathian H. |
| South | Ibero-H. | Italo-H. |
This chart corresponds to four major isogloss bundles, two running north-south and two running east-west, characterized as below.
Northern zone
- Moderate to large consonant inventories
- Long and short vowels
- Pitch accent with two contrasting intonations (thrusting and slipping tone) on long vowels
- Preservation of all five Proto-Hesperic primary cases
- Richly developed secondary cases
- Complex verb morphology with two sets of personal endings
Central zone
- Moderate consonant inventories
- Long and short vowels
- Stress accent
- Four-case system
- Moderately complex verb morphology
Southern zone
- Small consonant inventories
- No long vowels
- Stress accent
- Topic-prominent noun declension, topic marker from genitive
- Simple verb morphology
Western slice
- Loss of aspiration (only partially in Albic)
- Drummond's Law (velarization of consonants followed by laryngeal with loss of the laryngeal)
- Vowel umlauts
- Initial accent (lost in parts of Albic)
Central slice
- Spirantization of aspirates (also in parts of Albic)
- Drummond's Law (uvularization in Viddan)
- Monophtongization of diphthongs (also in parts of Albic)
- Initial accent
Eastern slice
- Loss of aspiration
- Gemination of consonants followed by laryngeals
- Palatalizations
- Penultimate accent
Influence of Standard Average European
The Hesperic languages have been influenced to various degrees by the Standard Average European linguistic area. The influence of this Sprachbund is strongest in Alpianic and weakest in Albic.
External relationships
Hesperic shows all the hallmarks of a Mitian language family. Typologically the Hesperic languages show affinity to the Indo-European, Uralic and Kartvelian languages. The phonology is most similar to Indo-European, the morphology to Uralic and the syntax to Kartvelian.
The most likely closest kin of Hesperic is Indo-European, with which Hesperic shares more than 100 lexical cognates. Also, internal reconstruction in Proto-Indo-European leads to a stage that shows a substantial affinity to Hesperic. The morphological affinity to Uralic is best explained as a shared retention from Indo-Uralic, while Indo-European has innovated. The similarities to Karvelian, which seem also to hold for an earlier stage of Proto-Indo-European, are probably due to contact.
