Old Kasshian

Old Kasshian is the ancestor of the Kasshian branch of the Taremba language family. It was descended from Proto-Taremba, to which it remained quite similar. This page will focus on Late Old Kasshian, at the stage where it began to break up into the Kasshian languages.

Phonology

Consonants
		Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stop	Voiced	b		d		g
	Voiceless	p		t		k	q
Nasal		m		n
Fricative	Voiced		v	z
	Voiceless		f	s
Aproximates		w		r	y
Laterals				l

The phoneme /h/ had been lost entirely by Old Kasshian. /r/ was lost word-finally and /l/ was lost intervocalically and the prenasalized stops had become voiced stops. Otherwise, the consonant inventory was the same as in Proto-Tareba, though northern dialects had introduced a nasal allophone of /g/

Vowels
	Front				Central				Back
High	i									u
Mid			e		ə		o
Low					a

Vowels could be long or short. Long vowels were less common than in Classical Kasshian, the only long vowels existing being descended from sequences of like vowels.

Syllables

Permitted syllables were broader than in either Proto-Tareba or Classical Kasshian. Syllables could begin with

• Any consonant
• Any vowel
• Any consonant followed by an l, r, w, or y

Syllables could end with any consonant

Stress

Stressed remained variable in Old Kasshian.

Nouns

Gender

The classifiers of Proto-Tareba were in the process of developing into a true gender system in Old Kasshian. In the earliest stages, agreement was only in predicates, and not obligatory even there. By Late Old Kasshian, agreement was obligatory in predicates and optional in attributive adjectives, obligatory when the adjective preceded the noun, as still sometimes happened in Old Kasshian.

In the earliest recorded form of Old Kasshian, there were 11 genders, genders I, II, and IV-XII, which subsequently increased to 12 with the acquisition of gender III. The genders were similar to those of Classical Kasshian, except for XI and XII

• Gender I was for female humans
• Gender II was for male humans
• Gender III was for epicene and androgynes. This was a development of Late Old Kasshian, and had different forms in northern and southern dialects
• Gender IV was for domestic animals and culturally-significant animals, as well as infants
• Gender V was for other animals
• Gender VI was for liquids, fire, wind, and other moving inanimates, as well as plants
• Gender VII was for most inanimates
• Gender VIII was for instruments, tools, language, beliefs, and other cultural abstractions
• Gender IX was for gods, weather phenomena, stars, etc.
• Gender X was for sacred items
• Gender XI was for groups of humans, towns, cities, political units, etc.
• Gender XII was for birds

Genders IX and X were already beginning to be confused by the Late Old Kasshian stage, with nouns moving back and forth between them. Gender XII was vestigial in all dialects, while gender XI was beginning to disappear as well.

Body parts were mixed in their assignment. Some were placed into specific genders, genders VIII and VI being common, while others were assigned according to their owner. The earliest stages of Old Kasshian show the most variability in assignment. By Late Old Kasshian, there was more stability in their assignment, though differing between dialects.

Prefixes

Gender-prefixes had slight variations in form according to the noun or adjective they were attached to. There were three sets of prefixes, one for "hard" consonants (consonants other than l, r, w, or y), one for "soft" consonants (l, r, w, y), and one for vowels. Genders III, V, VI, and IX had dialectal variants. In the case of gender III, the variants derive from different sources, while genders V, VI and IX had the same Proto-Taremba origin.

Gender		Hard consonants				Soft consonants				Vowels
		Singular	Dual	Plural		Singular	Dual	Plural		Singular	Dual	Plural
I		te	tel	tef		t	tel	tef		t(y)	tl	tef
II		na	nal	naf		n	nal	naf		n	nl	naf
III	Northern	do	dol	dof		d	dol	dof		d(w)	dl	dof
	Southern	so	sol	sof		s	sol	sof		s(w)	sl	sof
IV		ki	kil	kif		k	kil	kif		k(y)	kl	kif
V	Variant I	rə	rəl	rəf		r	rəl	rəf		r		rəf
	Variant II	pa	pal	paf		p	pal	paf		p	pl	paf
VI	Variant I	wa	wal	waf		wa	wal	waf		w		waf
	Variant II	kwa	kwal	kwaf		kwa	kwal	kwaf		kw		kwaf
VII		pi	pil	pif		p	pil	pif		p(y)	pl	pif
VIII		on	ol	of		n	l	f		n	l	f
IX	Variant I	ton	tonli	tonna		ton	tonli	tonna		tonk	tonny	tonn
	Variant II	tok	tonkli	tonka		tonk	tonkli	tonk			tonkl	tonk
	Variant III		tokəl	tokən		tok	tokl			tok	tokl
X		la	lal	laf		l	lal	laf		l		laf
XI		kla	klal	klaf		kla	klal	klaf		kl		klaf
XII		ka	kal	kaf		k	kal	kaf		k	kl	kaf

Number

Number was marked for dual and plural

• Dual: After vowels, -i was used; with consonant-final nouns, some nouns used -li, other nouns added -l- before the final consonant and -i after it
• Plural: -f after vowels, -əf after consonants

In Late Old Kassan, the distinction between the dual and plural suffixes had weakened, and some dialects tended to use one or the other for both dual and plural.

Case

There were just four cases in Old Kasshian

• Absolutive: None
• Ergative: -(a)r
• Genitive: -(a)f
• Dative: -(a)z

Case-like postpositions

There were several enclitic postpositions with case-like function, added to noun phrases placed in various cases. In the earliest stages of Old Kassan, they were placed at the end of the entire noun phrase, but by Late Old Kasshian, they'd migrated to the head noun.

• Absolutive
  • Instrumental: li
  • Benefactive: na
  • Commitative: ran
  • Locative: qav
  • Inessive: ka
  • Circumlocative: de
  • Perlative: ne
• Genitive
  • Ablative: ta
  • Ellative: tu
  • Circumablative: kos
• Dative
  • Allative: zə
  • Illative: ba
  • Perillative: baba
  • Circumallative: ma
  • Circumperlative: mama

Verbs

Person and aspect

Person and aspect were indicated by an inflected auxiliary. Typically, the verb itself, with optional prefixes, occurred at the beginning of the sentence while the auxiliary was at the end. By the Late Old Kasshian period, however, a tendency had developed to attach the auxiliary as a clitic to the end of the verb. Person was marked by a prefix on the auxiliary

	Singular	Dual	Paucal	Plural
1st	qo-	lof-	taqe-	ne-
2nd	fen-	feni-	fen(ə)f-	fana-
3rd sapient	tas-	te-	tan-
3rd non-sapient	lə-	li-	ləna-

Aspects in Late Old Kasshian were

• Inceptive: tu(n)
• Progressive: qe
• Habitual: va(n) (sometimes -v after vowels)
• Cessative: ra (sometimes -r after vowels)
• Retrospective: nok
• Perfective: ∅

Verbal prefixes

Voice

• Reflexive: ko-/kw-
• Dative: pə-/p-
• Antipassive: so-

Tense

• Past: fa-
• Future: naqe-

Conditional

• If: ve-
• Contrafactual: kwa-
• Then: os-

Verbal suffixes

Mood was marked by a suffix

• Indicative: -Ø
• Irrealis: -ko
• Imperative/hortative: -kə
• Prohibitive: -ral

Pronouns

Simple

The simple pronouns were used primarily for clarity, and were typically unstressed

1st person					2nd person
Singular	Dual	Paucal	Plural		Singular	Dual	Paucal	Plural
qo	sa	na	ti		gil	dre	gif	gilna

The gender prefixes (of the set used before consonants) were also used as 3rd person pronouns.

Case was marked with the suffixes:

• Nominative: Ø or -ka
• Accusative: -e
• Genitive: -wa
• Dative: -tu

Emphatic

There were two sets of emphatic pronouns, the "ordinary" set, used with standard case-suffixes, and the postpositional set, used with case-like postpositions.

		Singular	Dual	Paucal	Plural
1st person	Ordinary	Qódeg	Sádeg	Nádeg	Tídeg
	Postpositional		Sándeg	Nándeg	Tíndeg
2nd person	Ordinary	Gíldeg	Drédeg	Gífdeg	Gílnadeg
	Postpositional	Gíndeg	Dréndeg	Gífindeg	Gílnandeg

Case was marked by the same cases as simple pronouns.

Syntax

Word order was flexible in Old Kasshian. In the earliest stages, the verb was usually at the end of the sentence. In later stages, the verb's position became more variable, with a tendency towards the beginning of the sentence. Over the Old Kasshian period, adjective placement gradually became more consistently post-nominal.