Old Albic/Version 1

Introduction

Old Albic (OA) is the oldest Albic language attested in writing. The language was spoken in southern Britain prior to the Celtic invasions. This sketch describes the classical language as it was spoken and written in the heyday of the Albic civilization in the 6th century BC. The native term for the standard language is Tañ Tach (Is Elbis), "proper language (of the Elves)".

Phonology

Consonants

Old Albic has 18 consonant phonemes, which are summed up in the following chart:

                     Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
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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
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Most are as in IPA, except: c = /k/, ph = /f/, th = /T/, ch = /x/, ñ = /N/, v = /w/.

The stops (p, t, c, b, d, g) have fortis and lenis allophones. The lenis allophones occur between vowels, semivowels and liquids, the fortis allophones in all other environments.

The phonemes ph, th and ch, while phonetically fricatives, phonologically behave like stops, and probably were aspirated stops in an earlier stage of the language.

Clusters of stop (including ph, th, ch) and /s/ undergo metathesis, e.g. ps -> sp. Between vowels, /s/ becomes /r/ (rhotacism).

Vowels

There are 7 vowel qualities in Old Albic:

        a e i o ø u y
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[open]  + + - + + - -
[front] - + + - + - +
[round] - - - + + + +
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All seven vowels have roughly their IPA values. These vowels can be short or long. Long vowels are transcribed with an accent mark: á, é, í, ó, ú, ǿ, ý. Long vowels are tense, short vowels are lax.

Umlaut

The vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/ (both short and long) cause changes in preceding short vowels. These changes are called umlaut. Corresponding 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
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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
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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.

Vowel harmony

Some affixes undergo vowel harmony: the vowel in the affix always matches the nearest vowel of the stem. The classical Albic 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 _@_.

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 or /s/. Two-consonant codas mostly consist of a liquid followed by an obstruent or nasal. 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 both the penultimate and ultimate syllable are light (i.e., they are open and have a short vowel), otherwise on the penultimate syllable.

This accent rule can be formulated in a more concise manner using the concept of the mora. A mora is a metric unit below the syllable. A light syllable consists of one mora, a heavy syllable of two. In light of this, it is the third-last mora that carries the accent in Old Albic.

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 seconds 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.

Nouns

Animate and inanimate nouns; gender

Nouns in OA fall into one of two major classes: animate and inanimate. Animate nouns denote living beings, spirits, collective entities of such, 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 '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.

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 formed from 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 and with masculine and feminine forms of nouns with variable genders; they are formed by adding -m to the agentive stem. Examples: 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.

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-na
Objective    OS-Ø
Instrumental OS-i
Locative     OS-as
Allative     OS-ana
Ablative     OS-ada

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

The agentive is used to mark the animate, autonomous agent of the action denoted by the verb. Typically, the agent acts volitionally.

The genitive marks the (animate) alienable possessor of an object.

The dative has several functions: it marks the (animate) experiencer, the mentally affected object and the agent acting involuntarily out of accident (see Degrees of volition, below); it is also used with some prepositions that require an animate object.

The objective marks the (animate or inanimate) undergoer of an action or event, or the entity that is in a particular state.

The instrumental marks the (typically inanimate) instrument, way or means of an action, event or state, and is used to derive adverbs from adjectives. It also expresses an animate agent acting involuntarily under external force (see Degrees of volition, below).

The locative marks the place of an action or event, also the whole something is part of, and the inalienable possessor. It is also used with many prepositions.

The allative marks the direction or goal of an action or event.

The ablative marks the origin or source of an action or event.

Suffixaufnahme

Whenever a noun modifies another noun, it acts like an adjective. It does not only carry its own case marker, but is also marked for the gender, number and case of the head noun. For example, the locative plural of 'the father's houses' is mberimas attosemas, wherein the analysis of the form attosemas is as follows: atto `father' + -s genitive + -im plural OS + -as locative. This phenomenon is known as suffixaufnahme. Suffixaufnahme is only mandatory if the dependent noun is moved away from the head noun; in ordinary speech, the secondary endings are usually omitted.

The construct state

A noun modified by a possessor (genitive or locative) is in the construct state: it is definite without taking a definite article. Often, the case and number marking on the noun is left out and only the bare short OS appears, as these categories are expressed on the possessor (suffixaufnahme).

Adjectives

The inflection of adjectives follows that of nouns; they agree with the head noun in animacy, gender, number and case. The singular objective stem of the adjective is the simplest form, consisting of the base of the adjective, i.e. the root or the root with derivational morphemes attached to it. The dual and plural OSs are formed by adding the suffixes -um (dual) or -im (plural) to the singular OS. Each adjective has three animate singular agentive stems, one for each gender, formed by adding the respective gender vowel (-o, -e, -a) to the singular OS. The dual and plural ASs are formed with the vowels -u and -i suffixed to the singular OS.

Sample paradigm (ban `beautiful'):

                        AS   OS
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Inanimate singular      --   ban
Masculine singular      bano ban
Feminine singular       bane ban
Common animate singular bana ban
Dual (*)                bonu bonum
Plural                  beni benim
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(*) The dual number of the adjective already was a dying category in classical times. There are numerous examples of dual nouns accompanied by plural adjectives, and in Late Old Albic the dual number of the adjective had faded away completely.

Comparison

Comparison is a morphological category particular to the adjective. The positive degree is unmarked. The comparative degree is marked with the suffix -@r, the superlative degree is marked with the suffix -@th. There is also an equative degree ('as ... as'), which is marked with the suffix -@ch. These forms are the singular OSs; non-singular number forms and agentive stems are formed from them as shown above. The standard of comparison (i.e., the entity to which is compared) is in the instrumental case. Examples: banach elbi 'as beautiful as an Elf'; banar chveni 'more beautiful than a dog'; banath 'most beautiful'.

Adverbs from adjectives

The instrumental case of the adjective also serves as adverb: beni 'beautifully'.

The definite article

Old Albic has a definite article, but no indefinite article. The definite article agrees with the noun in gender, number and case. It precedes the noun and has the following forms:

                        AS OS
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Masculine singular      o  om
Feminine singular       e  em
Common animate singular a  am
Inanimate singular      -- am
Dual                    u  um
Plural                  i  im
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The cases are formed normally from the agentive and objective stems.

Prepositions

Compared to a language like English, Old Albic makes rather little use of prepositions, as many of the relations expressed by prepositions in English are expressed by noun cases. Nevertheless, there are several prepositions in Old Albic; most govern the locative.

Local prepositions

An important subclass of prepositions are those expressing specific local relations such as 'above', 'below', 'inside', etc. These prepositions are actually inanimate nouns that are in turn inflected for case. Example:

tharas amas(as) mbaras(as) (locative) 'behind the house' tharana amas(ana) mbaras(ana) (allative) 'to behind the house' tharada amas(ada) mbaras(ada) (ablative) 'from behind the house'

(The suffixes in parantheses are secondary case suffixes (see suffixaufnahme, above) that are not mandatory, and usually omitted.)

Pronouns

The animate/inanimate opposition is a characteristic feature of the OA pronoun system. With the exception of 1st and 2nd person pronouns (for obvious reasons), each pronoun has different, often suppletive, animate and inanimate forms. Pronouns are generally inflected like nouns.

Personal pronouns

The 1st and 2nd person pronouns are always animate. In the dual and plural, there is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive 1st person pronouns. The difference is that the inclusive pronouns are used if the addressee is a member of the 'we'-group. The pronouns have the following agentive stems:

                          Singular Dual Plural
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1st person (exclusive)    ma       mu   mi
1st person (inclusive)             vu   vi
2nd person (familiar)     tha      thu  thi
2nd person (deferential)  la       lu   li
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The objective stems are formed by adding -m to the agentive stems. The cases are formed in the same way as for nouns. Pronominal core arguments are redundant and usually omitted, but the pronouns are used emphatically.

Anaphoric pronouns

The anaphoric ('3rd person') pronouns have different animate and inanimate forms. The animate pronouns have masculine, feminine and common gender forms. The agentive stems of the animate forms are so 'he', se 'she', sa 'he/she/it'. The dual and plural ASs are su 'they both' and si 'they', respectively. The OS of the inanimate anaphoric pronoun is tath 'it' (dual tothum, plural tethim).

Demonstratives

There are three demonstratives: san 'this (near me)', than 'that (near you)', an 'that (over there)'. They are inflected like adjectives and are placed at the end of the NP which also has a definite article, e.g. am mbar san 'this house' (lit. 'the house this'; inanimate objective singular), ena chvanena machena thanena 'those large dogs' (lit. 'the dogs large those'; animate dative plural).

Interrogative pronouns

The animate interrogative ('who?') has the agentive stem chva (OS chvam); the inanimate interrogative ('what?') is man.