Ibero-Hesperic Brainstorming

This is a place to brainstorm about the Ibero-Hesperic branch of the Hesperic family.

First of all, "Ibero-Hesperic" is a provisional designation.

Now to the two languages (there may be more in the future but currently I have only plans for two), what little I already "know".

Corunese is an extinct ancient language known from an inscription found at A Coruña, Spain. This is a bilingual: the same text is found in Corunese on one side of a bronze plaque and in Old Albic on the other. Both languages are written in Old Albic letters. (The text has not been composed yet.) There may be more inscriptions. Balla is a living language, spoken in a few households, somewhere in Cantabria.

In both Ibero-Hesperic and Italo-Hesperic, the genitive *-s has become a topic marker. This may have become an ergative suffix in Balla. Balla may have converged phonologically towards Basque, with fortis/lenis pairs such as p/b, t/d, k/g, tz/z, ts/s, tx/x. Perhaps the beginnings of this trend are already visible in Corunese.

Suffix -ja as feminine marker and the suffix -wa as masculine marker. The ending genitive marked in Proto-Hesperic "-s" , but in the Mediterranean branch of the family, it acquired the meaning of a topic marker and vocative case.

The Proto-Hesperic word for 'me' (objective case) is *mam; in Continental West Hesperic, final */m/ gave /n/, so we get exactly the form man found in the inscription.

The dative of the second-person singular pronoun is *t‘an in Proto-Hesperic, but in Continental West Hesperic, the originally partitive ending *-l acquired the meaning of a dative ending after the original dative had fallen together with the accusative by the aforementioned sound change.

A dative *t‘al for the Mediterranean Hesperic.

Rübenkönig (1989) assumes it to be in origin a past participle in *-at‘, as it is found in other Mediterranean Hesperic languages.

Loss of aspiration (only partially in Albic) Drummond's Law Senantho's Law Vowel umlauts Initial accent (lost in parts of Albic) Small consonant inventories No long vowels Stress accent Topic-prominent noun declension, topic marker from genitive Simple verb morphology

Has five vowels /a e i o u/, there are also five diphthongs /aj ej oj uj aw ew/ Three pairs of sibilants. Loss of non-sibilant fricatives Development of two rhotic consonants.

It marks grammatical relations by adding suffixes to roots. Prefixes are relatively uncommon.

The nouns are marked for definiteness/indefiniteness There are four definite determiners: three demonstratives and a definite article in the form of a suffix. They are marked for number (singular or plural). All the other determiners are indefinite and are not marked for number.

They are languages with ergative-absolutive morphological alignment. Word order, SOV. Modifiers precede the nouns they modify.

Verbs the absolutive is the grammatical case used to mark both the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb the ergative case marks the subject of transitive verbs

Most verbs use auxiliaries which follow the main verb. Finite verbs generally agree in person and number with their subjects, and their direct and indirect objects (if any). Agreement is usually ergative, that is to say, prefixes are used for absolutives, and suffixes are used for ergatives. Certain past-tense forms have ergatives marked by prefixes. Indirect objects are marked by suffixes. Intransitive verbs are conjugated with the auxiliary verb izan ‘be’, which also functions as an independent verb. Transitive verbs are conjugated with the auxiliary edun ‘have’. Besides the indicative mood, Basque verbs also have various imperative, subjunctive, potential, conditional and irrealis (contrary to fact) forms.