Middle Kólşärkic
The Middle Kólşärkic Language—also called Lower Middle Kólşärkic, Lower Kólşärkic, or just Kólşärkic when there is no ambiguity—was the common tongue of the Kingdom of the Lower Kólşärk and a major language of the Heartland during the late Warring Kingdoms Period. It was the effective lingua franca of the Central and Southern Heartland during the waning years of the period. It's immediate descendant was Late Kólşärkic, also called Early Heartlandic, was was the lingua franca of the First Kingdom of the Heartland and the early Heartland Empire.
History
Middle Kólşärkic was a member of the Hestian languages, and more directly a member of the Heartlandic branch of the South-Hestian languages. It was closely related to other Heartlandic languages, with its closest living relative during its lifetime being the Late Curvusic language of the South Bend. It was also distantly related to other languages, such as the various Ignisian languages. Its descendants, including its immediate descendant Late Kólşärkic (also called Early Heartlandic) became the de facto official languages of the Heartland Empire and thus the lingua francas of much of the Southeastern Interior.
Phonology
While much of the following is general to the various dialects of Middle Kólşärkic, it was specific to the dialect spoken on the island of Hetóyzi Tyotí in Kértukoynay Kólşärktes, also called the Royal Dialect. This was the dialect spoken by the Paklyéşëpkòlut royal family and the nobility of Kértukoynay Kólşärktes.
Phoneme Inventory
Consonants
Middle Kólşärkic had a phonemic distinction between so-called hard and soft consonants. Soft consonants were those that were palatalized, and hard consonants were those that were non-palatalized. Every consonant except /j/ came in hard and soft varieties. Also important was the contrast between dental and alveolar fricatives, affricates, and non-nasal plosives.
The romanization of Middle Kólşärkic consonants was as follows.
/p pʲ t̪ t̪ʲ t tʲ k kʲ/ <p py ţ ţy t ty k ky>
/t̪͡s̪ t̪͡s̪ʲ t͡s t͡sʲ/ <z̧ z̧y z zy>
/f fʲ θ θʲ s sʲ x xʲ/ <v vy ş şy s sy h hy>
/m mʲ n nʲ/ <m my n ny>
/l lʲ j/ <l ly y>
/ɾ ɾʲ/ <r ry>
Vowels
The following is the romanization of Early Heartlandic vowels.
/i u/ <i u>
/e ə o/ <e ë o>
/a ɑ/ <a ä>
Note that /ɑ/ in a stressed syllable is denoted with <â>.
Phonotactics
Onset
Any single consonant.
An obstruent followed by /l lʲ r ɾʲ/
Nucleus
Any single vowel.
Mid or low, non-central vowels + /j/. That is, /ej oj aj ɑj/
Coda
No consonant.
Any single consonant.
A fricative + a homorganic plosive or affricate.
/l lʲ r ɾʲ/ + a plosive or fricative.
/m mʲ n nʲ/ + an obstruent.
World-Level Rules
Word-initially, consonant clusters were disallowed.
Word-initially, an empty onset was allowed.
/ə/ does not appear word-finally.
Plosives could not be followed by a homorganic affricate.
Repeat consonants were disallowed in any position.
Consonant clusters could not have mixed palatalization.
Consonant clusters could not have mixed alveolar and dental obstruents when there was a dentalized or alveolarized variation of one of the phonemes in the cluster. For example, something like /ɾθ/ is allowed, because there is no dental flap/tap /r̪/; on the other hand, /*tθ/ was not present because /t/ has a dentalized 'counterpart' /t̪/ and /θ/ has an alveolarized 'counterpart' /s/.
Allophony
/f/ → [ɸ] / word initially, word finally, or when adjacent to a labial.
/u e ə o a ɑ/ → [ʉ ɪ ə̝ ɵ̩ ɛ ɞ] when following either /j/ or a palatalized consonant.
/ej oj aj ɑj/ [ei̯ oi̯ ai̯ ɑ̯i̯].
When following /θ/, both /t̪͡s̪ t̪͡s̪ʲ/ are realized as interdental affricates rather than plain dental affricates.
/n nʲ l lʲ/ → [n̪ n̪ʲ l̪ l̪ʲ] when adjacent in a syllable with a dental consonant.
Sandhi
Internal Sandhi
/t̪ t̪ʲ t̪͡s̪ t̪͡s̪ʲ θ θʲ/ → /t tʲ t͡s t͡sʲ s sʲ/ when preceding an alveolar consonant.
/t tʲ t͡s t͡sʲ s sʲ/ → /t̪ t̪ʲ t̪͡s̪ t̪͡s̪ʲ θ θʲ/ when preceding a dental consonant.
/n/ → /m/ when preceding a labial or labiodental consonant.
/V+H/ → /H/ where V is a vowel and H is a higher vowel.
/V+F/ → /F/ where V is a vowel and F is a more fronted vowel.
/-palatalized/ → /+palatalized/ for consonants in a cluster with at least one palatalized consonant.
An alveolar plosive followed by an alveolar or dental fricative merges into an alveolar affricate.
A dental plosive followed by an alveolar or dental fricative merges into a dental affricate.
Morphology
Middle Kólşärkic's nominal and verbal inflectional morphologies were generally fusional, with occasional agglutinative elements. This means that most affixation, specifically the affixation of the most-required inflectional elements, were marked through morphemes that were heavy in their semantic and syntactic content, while some less-required elements (such as possession) were formed through additional affixation. For verbal morphology, the typical system can be demonstrated with the verb näşhulş, which consists of the morphemes näş- and -hulş. Näş- means "to pray", while -hulş denotes future tense, progressive aspect, imperative aspect, and antipassive voice. For nouns, this can be demonstrated with pehíto and pehítul, which mean "a house" and "my house", respectively. Pehi- means "house", "home", or "dwelling", while -to marks singular number, ergative case, inanimate class, and definiteness. -ul is a second affix that marks for first person, singular number, and possession.
Nominal Morphology
Nouns could maximally take the following form, where boldface denotes the stem and italics denote optional elements or portions that are syntactically optional.
root-aug/dim-hon-case.num.class.def-poss
Thus, the most minimal form a word could take was a root followed by a suffix that denoted case, number, class, and possibly definiteness. Definiteness was incorporated into the preceding suffix but was only optionally marked (see below for more details). These can be demonstrated by the words túlnke and túlnkey, meaning "a king" (though not necessarily denoting indefiniteness) and "the king" respectively (where túlnk- means "king" or "lord", -e means singular number, absolutive case, and person noun class, and -ey means the same but with definiteness). Maximal examples are túlnkoyirila, túlnkoyirey, and túlnkoyire, meaning approximately "Our Great and Respected King", "The Great and Respected King", and "A Great and Respected King". Here, -oy is an augmentative, -ir is a politeness marker, and -ula (merged with -e through internal sandhi rules to become -ila) is a third person plural possession marker.
Cases
There were fourteen cases in Middle Kólşärkic: as an ergative-accusative language there were three core, syntactic cases and then eleven other cases. The core cases were,
Absolutive (abs): Marks the sole argument of an intransitive verb (that is, the S argument), and is as such also often called the intransitive case. This is the least-marked case, and used for the citation form of the word.
Ergative (erg): Marks the prototypically agent-like argument of a transitive verb (the A argument).
Accusative (acc): Marks the prototypically patient-like argument of a transitive verb (the O argument). This case also marks the recipient of the action of a ditransitive verb.
The remaining eleven cases are (excluding the vocative case) positional, and relating to spatial, temporal, or conceptual relations.
Vocative (voc): Marks nouns used syntactically in isolation, such as in exclamations, reference, or calling attention to an object.
Genitive (gen): Marks a noun that modifies other nouns, such as through alienable or inalienable possession.
Benefactive (benf): Marks a noun that benefits from some action.
Causal (caus): Marks the noun that is the cause or instigator of an action, though the object that semantically has this property may not always be marked and depends on a notion of "volitional distance" to the action of relevance. E.g., a noun that purposefully causes an action is more likely to be marked with this case than one that does so by accident.
Instrumental (ins): Marks the noun by which some actions is completed with or accomplished by. It also marks the theme-like argument of certain ditransitive verbs.
Prepositional (prep): Marks nouns that take a preposition. By the time of Middle Kólşärkic, most prepositions had been lost or merged with the dative of Late Pre-Heartlandic, but a few remained. This case was also used as the historical dative case in a small, sporadic collection of verbs.
Locative (loc): Marks the noun that an action is in, on, or around.
Ablative (abl): Marks the noun that an action is moving away from. It may also be used in the sense of an action moving against something.
Lative (lat): Marks the noun that an action is moving towards. It may also be used in the sense of an action moving with something.
Perlative (perl): Marks the noun that an action is moving is moving in, through, on, within, or along.
Comitative (com): Marks the noun that is a companion of some action.
Number
There were two number paradigms which nouns broadly fell into: the singular-dual-plural paradigm and the singulative-plurative-collective paradigm. These were not generally predictable except from semantic properties. That is, the latter generally applied to food, tools, resources, and animals or other objects generally considered en masse, while the latter applied to all other nouns. This method was imperfect and each had exceptions.
Singular-Dual-Plural
The singular-dual-plural paradigm was the most common paradigm in Middle Kólşärkic, with a majority of nouns declining as such. The three number in this paradigm were,
Singular (sng): The least-marked number, this indicated a single instance of a noun.
Dual (du): This marked a pair of nouns.
Plural (plu): This marked more than two of a given noun.
By the time of Middle Kólşärkic the dual number—which was historically prominent—had become marginalized and rarely used. This manifested in three patterns.
In the restricted dual pattern, the dual was lost except for nouns that fell into a "naturally-paired" class, mostly limbs and organs. In these dialects, the singular and dual were preserved in nominal morphology but lost elsewhere, and the dual pattern was used only for the elements in this class. For nouns outside this class, the dual was non-grammatical and the plural was used instead.
In the lost dual pattern, the dual number was lost entirely and it was replaced by the plural number.
In the defective dual pattern, nouns in the above "naturally-paired" class replaced the singular form with the dual so that by default a pair is referred to. To mark a single instance of a noun, a partitive construction involving a classifier and the plural form is used instead.
The restricted dual and lost dual patterns were most common, with the Lower Kólşärk serving as a good isogloss dividing the western speakers using the restricted dual pattern from the eastern speakers using the lost dual pattern. The defective dual was highly marginal, and only found in rural speakers in the region of the Pit. Even there, it was an uncommon pattern.
The table below provides a brief look at how these patterns apply in practice. Noble komó- is not in the "naturally-paired" class, while leg há- is.
Singulative-Plurative-Collective
The singulative-plurative-collective paradigm was the second, less-common number paradigm.
Singulative (sgv): Marks a single instance of a noun.
Plurative (plv): Marks a specific multiple of instances of a noun.
Collective (col): Marks multiple, but non-specific, instances of a noun. This is the least-marked number.
The plurative number was an innovation to Middle Kólşärkic, and even then only in the most innovative dialects. The most common area for this change was the area around Kértukoynay Kólşärktes, as well as many areas to the east. Here, the plurative was adapted from the plural number of the singular-dual-plural paradigm. In other areas, those lacking the plurative number, specific counts of a number greater than one were measured using a genitive construction in the singular form, together with a classifier.
The table below shows an example of the Singulative-Collective number paradigm, especially for the distinction between plurative and non-plurative dialects.
Classes
Middle Kólşärkic preserves the three-way class distinction from Proto-Hestian.
Person (pers): Marks persons, which includes mostly individuals, professions, deities, and other rational, humanoid objects.
Animate (anim): Marks animate non-persons. This includes animals, weather and water phenomena (such as lakes or rivers), and some plants.
Inanimate (inan): Marks inanimate objects, such as materials, textiles, foodstuffs, and tools.
Definiteness
There is a definite vs. non-definite distinction in conjugational suffixes of Middle Kólşärkic. For consonant-final suffixes, this was indicated by palatalization (komólik "nobles" vs komóliky "the nobles") while in vowel-final suffixes this was indicated by the formation of a "long vowel", which was one of /uj ej oj aj ɑj/. When the base suffix was already palatalized or already contained a long vowel, the formation of the definite-form suffix varied.
It is important to note that the non-definite variant of the did not encode indefiniteness, which instead must be inferred from context. This is because after the introduction of a definite noun the non-definite form could be resumed.
Possession
Possession was dually-marked: the head would take a suffix that agreed with the possessor, and the dependent would decline for the genitive case. The suffix on the head agreed for person and number. In third person, it also agreed with the noun class of the possessor, whether it was person or animate. Objects in the inanimate noun class could not be marked for possession in this manner, and instead were denoted pariphrastically.
Not all nouns could be marked as possessed in this manner. Those that could formed the class of possessable nouns, while the remaining nouns were non-possessable. The former included domesticated animals, many plants, tools, structures (such as houses, forts, and so on), and money. Non-possessable objects included family members, possessions, wild animals, land and landscape features, and weather.
Possessed nouns were treated specially for definiteness. They would always be marked for it, even if they otherwise wouldn't be (e.g., if the object was unknown but owned, or if the object had already been introduced and definiteness could be dropped otherwise according to non-possessed rules). This behavior was common in most dialects, but was not present in some dialects of the southeast along the Kólşärk Sea.
Pronouns were dropped following a possessed noun, e.g. house-sng.abs.inan-poss.3sg Valyárh-sng.gen.pers "Valyárh's house" versus house-sng.abs.inan-poss.2sg "your house". Pronouns could be re-introduced as an intensifier or for clarification, as in slave-sng.abs.pers-poss.1pl "my slave" versus slave-sng.abs.person-poss.1pl 1pl.gen.pers "our slave" (as opposed to someone else's slave). Synrchonically this behavior is because, for pronouns, all information conveyed by pronouns is also conveyed by the possessive suffixes, and so except for purposes of intensification pronouns are redundant. Diachronically, this behavior is because the possessive affixes evolved from possessive determiners, which themselves evolved from possessive pronouns (which were lost by the time of Middle Kólşärkic).
Augmentatives and Diminutives
There are a number each of augmentatives and diminutives in Middle Kólşärkic, but the most common were -oy and -yi respectively. These were present in, for example, túlnkoyey and Luşoyey—meaning "the great king" and "the High God" respectively—and child-yi meaning "young child" or "little child". These two carried the generic meanings of "large", "great", "high", or "above" (-oy) and "small", "lesser", "low", or "below" (-yi) and could be used in many situations.
Other Augmentatives
In addition to -oy, there were other augmentatives with more specific and restrictive uses.
-enk: Marks a supervisor, overseer, manager, commander, or leader of a profession or title. E.g., soldier-enk is someone who commands a group of s soldiers (regardless of the rank of the commander).
Honorifics
Middle Kólşärkic has two primary honorifics, affixed to nouns: the politeness marker -ir (pol) and the humility marker -erk (huml). -ir marks nouns relating to those perceived to have higher social rank; -erk was complementary, and marked nouns that were showing deference to one perceived to have higher social rank. The two were often used in tandem, and this was more likely the greater the social distance between persons. For example, a child speaking to their parent may only use the politeness marker, a person speaking to their teacher, priest, or lord would almost certainly use both in addition to other honorifics.
-ir had a secondary function of coordinating with the various honorific clitics in the language. Grammaticalized clitics always required that the head of the noun phrase they're attached to. This is visible in, for example, the phrase kyúmäş-pol-sng.voc.per=lord "Lord Kyúmäş", with the politeness marker and honorific in bold.
The following shows several examples of when the politeness and humility markers appear, as well as some of the honorific clitics. The honorifics in the following are in bold.
Between friends of similar social standing, it is uncommon to use honorifics except in jest.
Ásya-sng.voc.pers, 2sg.erg.pers copula-prs.pfv.subj place-loc.sng.inan.def intr? or Ásya-sng.erg.pers place-loc.sng.inan.def intr?
Ásya, where are you? (lit., "Ásya, at what place are you?")
Here, no honorifics appear, signifying the close relationship and similar social rank of the speaker and the person they're speaking to.
Some level of deference is typical between a parent and a child, though due to their typical social standing it is uncommon to use the humility marker.
1sg.erg love-prs.pfv.ind 2sg.acc-pol, mother-sng.voc.pers-pol!
I love you, o dear mother!
There were certain relationships—such as between a student and a teacher, or between a priest and non-priest—where humility on the speaker's behalf was always prescribed regardless of their social rank relative to the speaker.
1sg.erg-huml speak-prs.pfv.subj=intr question-sng.ins.anim 2sg.acc-pol, teacher-sng.voc.pers-pol 1sg.gen-huml?
May I ask a question, teacher? (lit., "May I ask a question to you, my teacher?")
day-sng.erg.anim det.prox equative-prs.prof.subj good-col.acc.anim 2sg.benf-pol, priest-sng.voc.anim-pol 1sg.gen-huml
I hope you are having a good day, my Priest. (literally, "Hopefully this day is being good for you, my Priest.")
Lastly, certain relationship almost-universally called for an especially-high level of politeness, such as when speaking to one's lord.
1sg.erg-huml ask-prs.pfv.subj=intr 1sg.erg-huml speak-fut.pfv.subj 2sg.acc-pol c, Kyúmäş-pol-sng.voc.anim=lord 1sg.gen-huml?
May I request an audience with you, Lord Kyúmäş? (lit. "May I humbly ask that I speak to you, my Lord Kyúmäş?")
Verbal Morphology
Middle Kólşärkic verbs had a much lower tendency towards agglutination than nouns, and were instead analyzed in an analytic-fusional combination. This largely manifested as various particles and clitics, but also as auxiliary verbs.
Tense
There was a simple three-way distinction between past (pst), present (prs), and future (fut). The present tense was least-marked. These tenses are demonstrated in the following table.
A point that needs to be clarified is that "They run." in the above does not indicate any habitual or repeat behavior (i.e., it does not convey They run. in the same sense as in the brief conversation, "What do they do in the morning?" "They run."). It is instead closer to the use of this phrase in the sentence, "I open the door, and they run." There is no internal structure to the act of running, just an indication that the act had occurred.
Aspect
The language had five aspects.
Cessative (cess): Denotes the end, stop, cessation, or termination of an action.
Habitual (hab): Denotes an action that is performed habitually, ritually, or regularly in some way.
Inceptive (incep): Denotes the beginning, start, or inception of some action.
Perfective (pfv): Denotes an action without internal composition, simply viewed as a whole. It also can be used to denote actions that are completed or are simply momentary, or reflect a current state.
Progressive (prog): Denotes an action that is incomplete or one that is progressing.
The habitual, perfective, and progressive aspects were carried over from Proto-Hestian, while the syntactic inceptive and cessative aspects were Kólşärkic innovations from the Pre-Heartlandic paraphrastic forms.
Mood
The four moods of Pre-Heartlandic were preserved.
Conditional (cond): Marks a hypothetical or imagined states of affairs, or a state that is contingent on a scenario which may or may not exist or be true.
Imperative (imp): Marks commands, orders, and directives.
Indicative (ind): Marks a state of affairs that the speaker knows, believes, expects, or asserts to be true. This is the least-marked mood.
Subjunctive (subj): Marks a state of affairs the speaker hopes, wants, wishes, or considers to possibly be true.
Voice
There are five voices.
Active (act): Marks a verb whose subject is prototypically agent-like argument. This is the least-marked voice.
Passive (pass): Marks a valence-decreasing operation that promotes the prototypically patient-like argument of a transitive verb (that is, the "object" of a transitive verb) to the sole argument of an intransitive verb. The prototypically agent-like argument (the "subject") is deleted. This voice is similar and complementary to the antipassive voice below.
Antipassive (ap): Marks a valence-decreasing operation that promotes the prototypically agent-like argument of a transitive verb (that is, the "subject" of a transitive verb) to the sole argument of an intransitive verb. The prototypically patient-like argument (the "object") is deleted. This voice is similar and complementary to the passive voice above.
Middle (mid): This verb marks a verb where the patient and agent are the same, where the argument of the verb also undergoes the change indicated by the verb in some way. It can also be used to indicate that the argument of the verb was changed by the action of the verb, but by an unknown agent. The middle voice is used to mark reflexive verbs, along with the a reflexive particle or reflexive pronoun (depending on whether the subject is a pronoun or a noun). This is a valence-decreasing operation.
Causative (caus): Marks an action that was caused by some party, with that party being promoted to a core argument of the verb, typically marked in the instrumental, causative, or prepositional case. As such, this is a valence-increasing operation.
Samples
The Farmer and His Children
“
Pásyuteh z̧unyosy pëlahole Ikyelësyil. Tilómävyil kokéthole Molmëş yä mäk hoşpro Äyhímar. Tirótekil mupoli, säy lyunktosi Tilópihyil Ikyelustil opú nóslätosi: "Tilóţohyil, Läytsyo yä eley şoşţosi Volómëş, Eţúkreh nóslätosi ise vi Paklúyul ţesyon Mólistetyest Äyhíremy Läytsyo yä eley pëlatos opú Paklúyur nir tor kopápro."
”
A farmer laid dying in his bed. His children argued how they should divide the farm. With his last breaths, he called the children to his bed then spoke: "My children, when I was young, Eţúkro spoke to me and told me that a great fortune exists in this farm's soils. When I have died, this fortune will belong to you."