Proto-Artenian

Proto-Artenian Bíghe
Pronounced:	[ˈbi.ɢe]
Spoken:	Central Continent
Total speakers:	0 (Dead language)
Writing system:	Not written
Genealogy:	Artenian
Typology
Morphological type:	Agglutinating
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Accusative alignment
Basic word order:	SVO
Credits
Creator:	u/PA-24
Created:	2025

Proto-Artenian was a language spoken on the northern shore of the Central Continent by the tropical seminomads. It is the mother language of the Artenian languages

Phonology

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar	Uvular
Stops	Voiceless	p	t	k	q
	Voiced	b	d	g	ɢ
Fricatives	Voiceless	ɸ	s	x	χ
	Voiced	β	z	ɣ	ʁ

Proto-Artenian (PAT) phonology is simple and symmetric, divided into stops and fricatives, both with voicing contrast, in four places of articulation: Bilabial, Alveolar, Velar and Uvular.

Vowels
	Front		Near-front		Central		Back
High	i							u
High-mid			e					o
Low					a

No allophonical variation existed in the early days of the language, before any divergence occurred. Stress is always on the penultimate (second-to-last) syllable.

Orthography

The translitration of Proto-Artenian words follows the IPA, except in the following cases:

• /ɢ/ - ⟨gh⟩
• /ɸ/ - ⟨f⟩
• /β/ - ⟨v⟩
• /ɣ/ - ⟨y⟩
• /χ/ - ⟨h⟩
• /ʁ/ - ⟨r⟩

Syllable structure

PAT's syllable structure is similarly simple, CV(L), where L stands for "Voiceless consonant". Consonant clusters exist only intersyllabically, such as in ghéhghe /ˈɢeχ.ɢe/, "fire (NOM)"

Grammar

Main article: Proto-Artenian grammar

PAT's words are formed by agglutination of morphemes. For example, safoyura, "big", is made of 3 morphemes:

sa       foyu    ra
growth + RNR  +  ADJZ

Note that RNR means "result nominalizer", so a word X-foyu means "the result of X", and ADJZ means "adjectivizer". The word safoyura, then, actually means "one who is the result of growth". Stems are nouns by default, and can be turned back to one after another derivation.
Nouns in PTA inflect by number, animacy and cases, of which there are 2 local and 3 synctactic. Its verbs inflect on a simple and regular 3-person and 3-tenses grid. There is optional suffixaufnahme.