Proto-Oronaic: Difference between revisions

Vowel inventory in non-stressed syllables was restricted: only three reduced vowels were present, marked as *ə₁, *ə₂, *ə₃ and sometimes also *ə₄, which probably was an allophone of *ə₃ The actual realization of them is a question of debate: Vowel harmony also applied to those reduced vowels with *ə₁-*ə₂, *ë-*ə₄ and *ə₃-*ə₄ contrasts with *ə₂ being neutral to both *ə₃ and *ə₄. Some scholars analize them as following:

| š /ʃ~ʂ/<ref group=note> becomes /h/ in Hirtian, /t͡ʃ/ or /ʃ/ in Alpian and /sʲ/ in Carpathian.</ref>

Unlike Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Uralic, Proto-Oronaic had tones, similar to [[w:Yeniseian languages|Yeniseian languages]] or to Mandarin Chinese. However, there was no contrastive stress as in Indo-European; usually only the first syllable of the root was invariably stressed, while unstressed syllables underwent reduction and later elision in Hirtian or consonant alterations in Alpian and Carpathian. Four tones can be reconstructed in some words. These are the rising tone , marked with an acute accent (á), falling tone, marked with a grave accent (à), low-rising, or falling-rising tone, marked with a caron (ǎ), and an abrupt, or high-falling tone, marked with a circumflex (â or àˀ). The default or neutral tone is not marked. Most word reconstructions do not use any diacritics to mark tones as the exact tones are unknown, since no modern descendants are tonal, except for some Hirtian dialects, which distinguish high and non-high pitch accent, but it is mostly an innovation. There were some tone alterations as well, for example: ''*köȍˀcü'' "the moon", which gave ''keahci'' in West Carpathian and ''сю’ə'' (''śu’ə'') in Hirtya, had a falling or a high-falling tone, but ''*köőˀ-tä̌gə₁'' "moonlight" resulted in ''kiettäi'' ("shining") in West Carpathian and ''сюо’т'' (''śuo’т'') in Hirtya.

Verbs were conjugated at least according to number, person, tense (present and past) and aspect(perfective and imperfective, which can be found in all the modern descendants). Mood markers could possibly exist, but they are not reconsructable. There were separate subjective and objective conjugations, but reflexes of the objective conjugation are found only in the Hirtya language, though there are traces in other languages as well. There was a three-way polarity: positive, negative and uncertain, which fully preserved in Hirtya and to a lesser extend in Carpathian. All three were expressed using different verb roots for some verbs while other more complex verbs showed negation and probability periphrastically, using auxillary verbs, which later developed into suffixes. For example, in East Carpathian the word for "to cook" is ''poajet'', while "not to cook" is expressed with a phrase "not to make food" - ''šeuhēt'' and "probably to cook" - ''šeuhestet''. Saying ''poajēhet'' instead of ''šeuhēt'' is correct, but it would mean "not to know how to cook". It is a very unusual feature among both European and Asian languages and can be found only in some Siberian languages near Hirtya, like Nganasan, which have some negative verb roots, but it doesn't show a periphrastic way of negation.