Measceineafh Sprachbund

This sprachbund stretches from Tnusjakt in the southeast to Abudam Faraneit in the northwest. It is often categorized as consisting of one major group (the northern and central branches of the Rajo-Faraneit Family as well as Lotá and to a lesser extent Tnusjakt and the Sjasia branches of Pre-Tir'jauta like Héhà) and a secondary group (the eastern Rajo-Faraneih Languages, the various descendents of the Bokeih branches Pre-Tir'jauta).

Nonetheless, these two subgroups are quite frequently treated as parts of the larger sprachbund despite their differences. In a few instances, based almost exclusively on noun class and morphological evidence, Etimri is included as well.

Phonological Evidence

There is a variety of phonological evidence to support the idea surrounding this sprachbund, but this section of the link has frequently taken a back seat to syntax.

Broken Voicing Systems

The Broken Voicing Theory

Perhaps the most common piece of phonetic evidence is the prevalence of broken voicing systems variously applied to fricatives and plosives (most famously plosives however). This situation is best exemplified by Faraneit which has the pairings /p b/, /f v/, /t d/, and /s z/ (and in some dialects /ʃ ʒ/ or /ç ʝ/) but staunchly lacks even [g ɢ] alongside its /k q/ and without /θ/ but with /ð/. It's contrast of voiced/voiceless is broken - present for some but lacking for a number of others.

Usually, labials and alveolar/dental stops and fricatives contrast voiced and voiceless pairs, but the contrast weakens or degrades to nonexistent further back in the mouth, often for palatals, almost always for velars and uvulars.

In the few examples of /g/ or similar phonemes, they are typically slant phonemes or highly restricted in environment (for example, Kelsiut).

Controversy Against Broken Voicing Theory

Broken Voicing Theory, while popular, is not universally accepted as truth, particularly given evidence within the subgroup mentioned in the earlier introduction of this article. Those languages lack a true voicing distinction for their entire plosive and fricative series - therefore rendering the entire discussion meaningless.

Morphological Evidence

Morphology is the backbone of this sprachbund - providing the vast majority of the evidence of influence among all of the languages.

Optional or Weakened Number Marking

For the vast majority of this languages, again, marking a given noun as plural is not required in most or all circumstances.

This situation is most obvious in Rajo-Faraneih Langauges where verbs mark for their subjects person (and in rare cases their gender too) but not plurality.

Fluid or Weakened Gender Marking

Unlike most concepts of grammatical gender, noun classes for this sprachbund can be viewed as purely descriptive. A given noun can be treated as animate to stress its changeability, its motility, its edibility, its size, its intelligence, its complexity, its worth, and a number of other qualities. The noun class is open, however, and virtually all nouns can be used as any of the genders.

Fluid or Broad Lexical Categories

All languages have methods of changing one function of a word, say as a noun (laughter), into an action associated with the noun, a verb (to laugh) or vice versa, but this sprachbund surpasses most with the fluidity and broadness of its lexical categories.

Verb-Noun

Virtually all of these languages have verb-nouns: words that can act as a noun or a verb, with various conjugative or case endings attached to the same base.

It has often been proposed that there is a uniquely Measceineafh form of verb-noun - which inherently acts as a sort of noun describing the action of a verb (eating, sleeping, thinking, screaming) and can be shaded as either more of an action or a thing through context and derivative morphology.

Modifiers

Throughout all of these languages, there is either a limited or nonexistent distinction between a modifier of nouns (what many languages term an adjective) and a modifier of other lexical categories (an adverb). The same words are usually used in both situations.

Syntactic Evidence

The relative divergence of even related languages within this area on some issues of syntax (default principle word order for instance - with Faraneit as VSO, Foróng as SOV, Kelsiut as SVO, and Hana with both SVO and VSO) hides a large number of similarities on smaller issues that unite them across genetic lineage.

Quality Against Quantity

Virtually all of the languages mentioned in this article make a distinction syntactically between quantifying and qualifying modifiers. Typically, quantifiers proceed their head, while qualifiers follow.