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Old Albic

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Old Albic (Elbirin)
Spoken in: British Isles
Timeline/Universe: League of Lost Languages; UKW World
Total speakers: extinct
Genealogical classification: Albic

 South Albic
  Old Albic

Old Albic (native name Elbirin 'Elvish') is the oldest Albic language attested in writing. The oldest surviving text fragments date back to the 7th century BCE. Old Albic was the language of the British Elves prior to the Tartessan War and the Celtic takeover in Britain.

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Phonology

Consonants

The Old Albic consonant system consists of 18 consonant phonemes. The language has labial, dental and velar stops, voiceless and voiced: p, t, c; b, d, g. These stops have two allophones each: lenis when following a vowel, and fortis everywhere else. If a stop-initial word is phonetically linked to a vowel-final word, the initial stop is lenis. The so-called aspirates transcribed ph, th, ch evidently already were fricatives [f θ x] in Classical times. But while they are phonetically fricatives, they phonemically behave like stops. This indicates that they were stops in an earlier stage of the language. (This is also evidenced by the fact that they correspond to stops in North and West Albic languages; a stop articulation is also described as occuring in some rural dialects of Old Albic.) The aspirate th is dental (like voiceless English th), in contrast to the alveolar s. The two phonemes thus did not fall together; it is certainly due to the heavy functional load of the distinction between th and s (cf. 2nd vs. 3rd person pronouns and endings!) that the merger was avoided. Other fricatives are the sibilant s and the laryngeal h, which are preserved unchanged except in clusters composed of *s and another consonant, wherein s is deleted and the following consonant, if a stop, changed into a homorganic aspirate: *sp > ph, *st > th, *sc > ch. The phoneme h occurs only before a vowel; in all other positions, it deletes and the preceding vowel is lengthened.

Sonorants are the nasals m, n, ñ (the latter being velar as in sing), the liquids l, r (the latter is an alveolar flap), and the semivowels j (like y in English yes) and v (like English w).

The full consonant inventory is thus as follows:

Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Stops, voiceless p t c
Stops, voiced b d g
Fricatives ph th s ch h
Nasals m n ñ
Lateral l
Flap r
Semivowels v j

Consonant alternations

There are several consonant alternations observable in Old Albic:

Grassmann's Law: every other aspirate in a word is turned into a voiceless stop. Precedence is from right to left, i.e. the penultimate aspirate is de-aspirated.

Rhotacism: intervocalic s becomes r. This, however, is not always the case; many cases of rhotacism are removed by analogical levelling which restored the s.

Metathesis of stops followed by s, e.g. ts -> st.

h deletes with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel when not followed by a vowel.

Vowels

Old Albic has seven vowels: a, e, i, o, u, ø, y, which occur both short and long (transcribed as á, é, í, ó, ú, 'ø, ý). Of these, ø and y are mid and high front vowels, respectively. The long vowels alternate with short vowels followed by the consonant h before vowels in various forms. Long vowels are tense /a: e: i: o: u: ø: y:/ while short vowels are lax /a ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ œ ʏ/.

The classical Elvish grammarians describe the vowels of Old Albic in terms of combinations of three features (`wide', `sharp' and `round', or, in modern terminology, open, front and rounded), and they are represented that way in the Old Albic script. Each of the seven vowels corresponds to one combination of features:

a e i o ø u y
[open] + + - + + - -
[front] - + + - + - +
[round] - - - + + + +

The harmony vowel °, which occurs in several affixes and assimilates to the nearest vowel, can be considered an eighth vowel phoneme that lacks all three features and thus borrows the features from the neighbouring vowel. It is more useful, however, to consider what it actually is, namely a vowel position to which no features are attached.

In lexical roots, the closed vowels (i, u, y) are rare, and ° does not occur. On the other hand, closed vowels and especially ° occur frequently in affixes, while only few affixes contain open vowels. (See Morpheme structure.)

Umlaut

The vowels a, i and u (both short and long) cause changes in preceding vowels. These changes are called umlaut. According to the three umlaut-causing vowels, there are three kinds of umlaut: a-umlaut lowers high vowels, i-umlaut fronts back vowels, and u-umlaut rounds unrounded vowels. The changes are summarized in the following table:

Radical a-umlaut i-umlaut u-umlaut
a a e o
e e e ø
i e i y
o o ø o
ø ø ø ø
u o y u
y ø y y

Umlaut takes precedence from right to left. For example, if an a precedes an i, it is umlauted to e and thus does not trigger a-umlaut in the vowel preceding it. If the vowel preceding the umlauting vowel belongs to a bisyllabic morpheme, both vowels of that morpheme are umlauted. Example: meceli `by means of flesh' (from macal `flesh' with instrumental ending -i).

Vowel harmony

Many affixes undergo vowel harmony: the vowel in the affix always matches the nearest vowel of the stem. The classical Elvish scholars analyzed this phenomenon as an eighth vowel phoneme that has none of the three possible vowel features and thus borrows them from the neighbouring vowel. Such a featureless vowel position in an affix is represented by the symbol °.

Ablaut

Other vowel alternations occur in some derivations. The open vowels e, o and ø alternate with the closed vowels i, u and y; similarly, a alternates with ° or zero. These alternations, known as ablaut, can be considered alternations in the feature [open]. There are also cases of schwebeablaut in which a vowel changes its position in the morpheme: CaRC ~ CRaC.

An autosegmental view of the vowel features

The behaviour of vowel features in Old Albic can be aptly described by an autosegmental approach. This means that the vowel features are assumed to exist on a structural tier separate from the segmental tier. The segmental tier contains the consonants and the vowel positions; the vowel features exist on a tier on their own and bind not directly to vowel positions but to morphemes (which also means that no morpheme may have two vowels of different quality). In the phonetic realization, the vowel features are associated with the vowel positions and thus produce the vowels observed in actual speech. Umlaut and vowel harmony involve spreading of vowel features to neighbouring morphemes.

Consider, for example, the word form semelbesimil, which is the plural locative of semelbas `wheat bread'. This word consists of four morphemes: semel- `wheat', mbas- `bread' (the initial m is elided in the compound), -im `plural' and -°l `locative'. On the segmental tier, the structure of the word is s°m°l-b°s-°m-°l. The first morpheme has the features [+front] and [+open] attached (giving semel-), the second morpheme [+open] (giving -bas-), the third, [+front] (giving -im), while the last morpheme has no vowel feature attached. The feature [+front] of the third morpheme spreads leftward (i-umlaut) such that both [+open] and [+front] attach to -b°s- giving -bes- and rightward (vowel harmony) resulting in the locative ending realized as -il. Graphically: 

 [+open]  [+open]          [+open] [+open]
 [+front]  |  [+front]     [+front] |  [+front]
    |      |     |            |     |  /  |  \
  s°m°l-  b°s-  -°m -°l --> s°m°l-  b°s- -°m -°l --> semel-bes-im-il

Phonotactics

Most Old Albic syllables are CV or CVC, but CCVC, CVCC and even CCVCC syllables occur. Two-consonant onsets generally consist of an obstruent followed by a liquid or semivowel, or of a stop preceded by a homorganic nasal. Two-consonant codas consist of a liquid followed by an obstruent or nasal, or a nasal followed by a homorganic obstruent. Zero onsets occur, but only word-initially or after an open syllable. No more than three consonants may occur together between two vowels.

Accent

Old Albic has a phonetic stress accent that depends on syllable weight. Words with one or two syllables are always stressed on the first syllable. In words with three or more syllables, the accent falls on the antepenultimate (third-last) syllable if the penultimate syllable is light (i.e., it is open and has a short vowel), otherwise on the penultimate syllable. If the penultimate syllable ends in a stop followed by a liquid or semivowel (e.g., cv, thr), the accent is on the antepenultimate syllable.

Linking

In Old Albic, neighbouring words are often phonetically linked, similar to the liaison in French. Linking occurs between the elements of a noun phrase, as well as between a verb or a preposition and the following adverb or noun phrase. While each of the linked words has its own stress, the words are phonetically run together. If two words are linked of which the first ends in a vowel and the second begins with a stop, that stop is pronounced as a lenis stop just like a stop following a vowel in the same word. Thus, Old Albic shows a subphonemic initial mutation.

Morphology

Old Albic has a wealth of derivational and inflectional morphology. The noun distinguishes four genders, three numbers and eight cases; adjectives agree with the nouns in all these categories and have four degrees of comparison; verbs distinguish eight tense/aspect/mood forms and are conjugated for the person and number of their core arguments. Most of the Old Albic morphology is regular and agglutinating, though umlaut and other morpho-phonemic alternations cause several apparent irregularities in the paradigms.

Morpheme structure

Roots

Most lexical roots in Old Albic are of one of the forms CVC, CRVC or CVRC (wherein R is a resonant and V is a short vowel). There are a few roots with an initial homorganic nasal-stop cluster, e. g. nder- `man'. Some roots are of the form CV:C or CRV:C, with a long vowel V:. There are also bisyllabic roots with the structure CVCVC (e. g. macal- `meat', semel- `wheat'). In such bisyllabic roots, the two vowels always have the same quality.

There are a few constraints regarding the distribution of stops in the root. In a true monomorphemic root, no two voiceless stops occur (forms such as tolt- `8' are actually compounds, in this example to-lt-); aspirates do not co-occur with voiced stops. The root vowel is a in the more than half of all roots; e and o also occur in a number of roots, while i and u are rare and ø and y do not occur.

Affixes

Affixes have rather simple structures. There are far more suffixes than prefixes. Most suffixes have the shape -C, -V, -VC or -CV; -CVC also occurs. Prefixes are usually CV-, sometimes C- or V-. Inflectional affixes do not contain voiceless stops. The vocalism of affixes is markedly different from root vocalism. The most common vowel in affixes is ° (i. e., there is no vowel feature attached to the affix), also common are i and u. The open vowels a, e and o occur only in few affixes.

The striking differences in root and affix vocalism can be explained by the working of ablaut in conjunction with a Proto-Albic accent on the root syllable. Under this accent, the root was in full grade and thus its vowel received the feature [+open]. The affixes, being unaccented, were in reduced grade with the feature [-open].

Word formation

A word in Old Albic consists of at least one root to which zero or more derivational and/or inflectional morphemes are affixed. Verbs always carry at least one inflectional affix; in contrast, there are nouns consisting of a bare root, but derived nouns are more common. If both derivational and inflectional affixes are present, the derivations are closer to the root than the inflections. For example, maneri `thinkers' is a word (man- `think' + -°r `agent' (derivation) + -i `plural' (inflection)), while #meniir (man-i-°r) is not.

Derivation

Derivation is mostly done by suffixing, though a few derivational prefixes (such as na- `not, non-') exist. Derivational prefixes never change the word-class of the word (though they may change the valency of a verb), while suffixes often do.

Compounding

Compounding is a highly productive process in Old Albic. Compounds are generally head-final; the second element thus determines the word-class of the compound (which can, however, be changed by a derivational suffix). The first element of a compound is a bare stem (short objective stem in case of an animate noun); if the stem ends in an obstruent, a vowel matching the stem vowel of the first element is infixed between the first and second element of the compound. Example: att- `father' + landa `shire' -> Attalanda (name of a shire in southeastern Britain). Most compounds are nouns. The largest group of nominal compounds are attributive compounds, i. e. the first element specifies the second one, e. g. semelbas `wheat bread'. There are also externally headed (bahuvrihi) compouds.

Nouns

Animate and inanimate nouns; gender

Nouns in Old Albic fall into one of two major classes: animate and inanimate. Animate nouns denote living beings, spirits, collective entities of living beings, and a small number of other things which were for some reason (mostly mythological) considered animate, such as heaven, the earth, celestial bodies and certain forces of nature. Most nouns referring to non-living objects (both natural and man-made) are inanimate. Most abstract nouns are also inanimate, but there are exceptions.

The importance of the animate-inanimate distinction for grammar is paramount. The animate noun has a greater number of cases; these extra cases are missing from the inanimate paradigm because certain arguments, such as agents, are required to be animate.

Within the animate noun class, three genders are distinguished: masculine, feminine and common/neuter. These are marked by final vowels:

Masculine -o
Feminine -e
Common/Neuter -a

The masculine and feminine genders are used only for entities of the corresponding natural gender, i.e. male or female, respectively. Whenever the gender is unknown to the speaker, irrelevant to the discourse, or not applicable (e.g. in case of collective entities), the common form is used. There are a few mythologically motivated exceptions: Nabo `heaven' and Sino `moon' are masculine, Dage `earth' and Are `sun' are feminine.

Many nouns exist in different gender forms, such as words for animal species, ethnic groups, professions etc. For example, the word for `dog' is chvana; `male dog' is chvano and `female dog' is chvane. `Elf' is alba, `male Elf' albo, and `female Elf' albe. A few nouns have fixed gender because the gender is part of the semantics of the word: atto `father', amme `mother'. Entities to which no gender can be ascribed are always common/neuter. This includes collective entities such as tamba `family', forces of nature such as phaja `fire', or abstract notions such as phanara `morphic field'.

Inanimate nouns do not distinguish gender.

Number

The Old Albic noun has three numbers: singular, dual and plural. The dual is used only for matched pairs, e.g. of eyes, shoes, husband and wife, etc. It is no longer productive, and verbs agreeing with animate dual nouns take plural forms.

Animate nouns take the number suffixes -u for dual and -i for plural. In the common/neuter gender, these suffixes replace the gender vowel -a. In the masculine and feminine genders, the suffix is affixed to the gender vowel, e.g. chvanei `bitches'. In words with fixed gender, the number marker replaces the gender vowel: nderi `men'. The number suffixes of the inanimate noun are -um for dual and -im for plural.

Case

In Old Albic, the noun is inflected for eight cases: agentive, genitive, dative; objective, instrumental, locative, allative, ablative. Only animate nouns have forms for all these cases; inanimate nouns have a defective paradigm without agentive, genitive and dative cases.

The cases are based on two case stems, the agentive stem (AS) and the objective stem (OS). Animate nouns have an AS and an OS, while inanimate nouns have only an OS. The animate agentive stem is the noun root with the gender/number vowel as discussed above. There are two ways to form the objective stem of an animate noun. Long objective stems are used in the non-singular numbers, with masculine and feminine nouns and with all nouns referring to individual humans; they are formed by adding -m to the agentive stem. Examples: cvastam `human', chvanem `bitch', elbim `Elves'. Pronouns also have long objective stems. Short objective stems are the usual way of forming an OS in all other occurences. The short OS is obtained by removing the gender vowel, e.g. cath (AS catha) `cat'. Adjectives also have short objective stems. In poetry, the choice of long or short objective stems is often guided by the metrical structure of the poem.


The agentive, genitive and dative cases are formed from the agentive stem, the other cases from the objective stem using the following endings:

Agentive AS-Ø
Genitive AS-s
Dative AS-n
Objective OS-Ø
Instrumental OS-i
Locative OS-°l
Allative OS-°n
Ablative OS-°d

This means that inanimate nouns have no agentive, genitive or dative case as said above.


Examples: alba `Elf', chvana `dog', ont `stone'.

Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural
Agentive alba elbi chvana chveni -- --
Genitive albas elbis chvanas chvenis -- --
Dative alban elbin chvanan chvenin -- --
Objective albam elbim chvan chvenim ont øntim
Instrumental albemi elbimi chveni chvenimi ønti øntimi
Locative albamal elbimil chvanal chvenimil ontol øntimil
Allative albaman elbimin chvanan chvenimin onton øntimin
Ablative albamad elbimid chvanad chvenimid ontod øntimid

Syntax

Selected Conlang mailing list articles on Old Albic

Attention: The older of these posts predate later revisions of the language and are now partly out of date.

Old Albic texts

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