Proto-Albic
| Proto-Albic | |
| Spoken in: | British Isles |
| Timeline/Universe: | League of Lost Languages; The Elvenpath |
| Total speakers: | extinct (evolved into various daughter languages) |
| Genealogical classification: | Hesperic
|
| Basic word order: | VSO |
| Morphological type: | agglutinating |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | active-stative |
| Created by: | |
| Jörg Rhiemeier | 2001- |
Proto-Albic is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Albic languages; it is assumed to have been spoken in southern Britain between 2000 and 1500 BC.
The language can be reconstructed very well from the attested dialects of Old Albic and their descendants.
Phonology
Consonants
Proto-Albic is reconstructed with 19 consonant phonemes.
| Labial | Coronal | Dorsal | Laryngeal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | *m | *n | *ng | |
| Voiced stops | *b | *d | *g | |
| Neutral stops | *p | *t | *k | |
| Aspirated stops | *p' | *t' | *k' | |
| Fricatives | *s | *h | ||
| Liquids and semivowels | *w | *l *r | *j | *3 |
As usual with protolanguages, the exact phonetic values of these sounds are uncertain. Especially the sound *3 (the "soft laryngeal") is somewhat mysterious, but the best guess is that it was a voiced glottal or pharyngeal fricative or approximant. The phonotactic behaviour at any rate shows that it had a high degree of sonority, in a class with the liquids and semivowels, effectively ruling out a glottal stop. The "hard laryngeal" *h is generally considered a voiceless glottal fricative, as which it is reflected in all dialects except XII (Ivernirin) where it is lost; though it may have been velar at an early stage (its Proto-Hesperic antecedent is the cluster *sx).
Stop correspondences in Old Albic dialects
| PA | I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX | X | XI | XII |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| *p | p | p | p | p | p | p | p | p | p | p | p | p |
| *t | t | t | t | t | t | t | t | t | t | t | t | t |
| *k | c | c | c | c | c | c | c | c | c | c | c | c |
| *p' | ph | ph | ph | ph | ph | ph | ph | ph | p' | p' | p' | p |
| *t' | th | th | th | th | th | th | th | th | t' | t' | t' | t |
| *k' | ch | ch | ch | ch | ch | ch | ch | ch | c' | c' | c' | c |
| *b | b | b | b | b | b | b | b | b | b | b | p | b |
| *d | d | d | d | d | d | d | d | d | d | d | t | d |
| *g | g | g | g | g | g | g | g | g | g | g | c | g |
Note: The letters k and c denote the same sound.
Vowels
The vowel inventory of Proto-Albic consists of only three vowels.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | *i | *u | |
| Open | *a |
There is no length, nasality or other secondary distinction that can be reconstructed.
Morphology
As the Old Albic dialects agree very closely in terms of morphology, the morphology of Proto-Albic probably was very similar to that of Classical Old Albic, though it is of course possible that all dialects innovated in some points into the same direction.
