Proto-Mountain

Proto-Mountain, often referred as Proto-Mountainic, Common Mountain or Common Mountainic, is the hypothesized common ancestor of all of the Mountainic languages.

General information
This language was spoken in New Earth between 1200 BC and 50 AD, prior to the events of spreading widely across the mountain regions, in which it was called "The Mountainic Migration". Verifiable records of evidence that the language existed are limited to occasional inscriptions written in Mountainic Script (a syllabary) and transcriptions by Mountainians and Inuits that were studying the language. The primary means of reconstruction was through the comparative method.

One of the most prominent features of that language is its ergative-absolutive alignment, a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the single argument of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the agent of a transitive verb.

Consonants
This is the table of the consonants of Proto-Mountainic, displayed in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Since transcription of Proto-Mountain uses the Latin alphabet, romanization is italicized in angle brackets. Proto-Mountain has about 36 to 38 consonantal phonemes, depending on study. It also features a normal-aspirated-ejective stop distinction of alveolar, velar, palatalized velar, labiovelar and uvular stops. The aspirated stops have allophones with no audible release and without aspiration when used as finals.

Phonemes in brackets indicate disputed sounds.

The exact existence of /p/ and /t͡ʃ/ are unknown. /p/ might've only occurred in words derived from onomatopoeia e.g. *bāba (father), and /t͡ʃ/ was only attested in suffixes e.g. *-atšı (diminutive marker), or as an allophone of /ʃ/ after /n/.

Monophthongs
Proto-Mountainic had a highly unusual vowel system, reminiscent of the vowels of Ojibwe. It had three vowels with short-long distinction, one exclusively short vowel, and one exclusively long vowel, making a total of 8 vowels. /ɔ/ might have been mid [ɔ̞].

Diphthongs
Proto-Mountainic had about 7 diphthongs. Asterisks in cells indicate combinations judged impossible.

Syllable
The typical syllable structure of Proto-Mountain was relatively simple, it was (C)V(N), where N refers to its only coda: the final -n.

Mora
The most basic unit of timing of Proto-Mountain was the mora. Every mora contains a vowel. In case of long vowels (except u), diphthongs and the presence of its only coda, -n, there are two morae. Syllables can have at most three morae.


 * Monomoraic: a, ı, o, u, v
 * Bimoraic:
 * Long vowel: ā, ī, ō
 * Diphthongs: aı, ao, oa, oı, ou, vi, vu
 * Short vowel + n: an, ın, on, un, vn
 * Trimoraic: aın, aon, oan, oın, oun, vin, vun (long-vowel + n is deemed impossible)

Tone
Proto-Mountain is a tonal language, meaning that in addition to vowels and consonants, the pitch contour of a mora/syllable is used to distinguish words from each other.