Ćín

General Information
Proto-Sitʲan (/sitʲan) is the mother language for the sitʲan language family, spoken by the la sitʲa race, who were wiped out during the First Elder War, approximately 12,000 ybm (years before Molivian), this language is believed to have been spoken by them around 15,500 ybm. Because of the age of the language, this reconstruction is still not universally accepted.

Proto-Sitʲan is an agglutinative language that uses extensive vowel-ablaut and very few suffixes/prefixes. It is notable for it's extensive range of palatized consonants. Note, IPA will be used until I come up with an ortho. Also, because number is indicated on the article, not the noun, I will usually type an indefinite article with the noun.

Consonants
Allophones are in The palatalized consonants were short lived. It is believed that in many early daughter languages around 14,900 ybm, the palatalized consonants had become diphthongs. However most linguists agree that they did exist, even if only for a short time. Given that there is no ablaut chain that starts on /jV/, it is believed those diphthongs come from palatalized consonants.

Vowels

 * only found in the ɔ and u ablaut chains.

Accepted diphthongs include /eɪ/, /aɪ/, /ɔɪ/ outside of the ablaut chains, and /ja/, /jɛ/, /je/, /wɔ/, and /wo/ within the ablaut chains. I will use iV and uV for /jV/ and /wV/


 * /n/ becomes /ɲ/ before /e/.


 * All plosives become palatalized before /e/

Phonotactics
Syllables in Proto-Sitʲan are simple, they are believed to be given by (CC)V(CC). Stress is usually on the first vowel, unless otherwise indicated by an accent mark. The stress is always on the second vowel in a diphthong.

Writing System
Proto-Sitʲan was a spoken language, not a written one. However, this is the orthography used to represent the language

Ablaut
Proto-Sitʲan makes extensive use of ablaut to indicate grammatical information. Thankfully, the ablaut process is very simple and usually regular. All vowels, except o, are part of an "ablaut chain." There are 5 states, base, middle 1, middle 2, upper, and top. Note that each letter has several possible ablaout chains and not every chain has each position. The ablauts are listed below.

Noun Phrase
All noun phrases in PS consist of a head and any number of modifiers, such as adjectives and prepositions. It is believed that nouns inflect for 5 cases and gender, but do not inflect for anything else. Nouns inflect for the nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and instrumental cases and have 3 genders, masculine, feminine, and netuer. Gender is shown by the base vowel. For most nouns, masculine gender is shown by a final a, feminine by a final e and netuer by a final ɔ. It is also believed that most nouns expressed formality, indicated by a suffix.

Nouns are grouped into different declensions by length, with the ablaut on a different vowel for each declension. The only exception to this is declension IV, nouns that end in a consonant. For declensions I, II, and II, the marking for case follows the same pattern.

Declension I
This is for nouns that have 3 or more vowels. Case is shown on the penultimate vowel. Declension Ia

Declension Ia is for nouns that have a palatalized consonant as the consonant before the penultimate vowel and/or for nouns that have ê or o as the penultimate vowel. It uses the V1 chain. The example here uses the e1 chain.

xaltjésa - cloth

Declension Ib

Declension IB is for nouns that do not have a palatalized consonant as the consonant before the penultimate vowel. It uses the V2 chain (except for ê and o). An example is shown below.

zhildezo - dance (n) Type Ic declensions are nouns that have azV at then of the word. This declension uses the a3 chain. They are believed to have been very rare.

chishaze - death

Declension II
This is for nouns that have 2 vowels; case is shown on the ultimate vowel. This declension is believed to be the most common in the language.

Declension IIa

This declension is for nouns that have a palatazlied consonant as the last consonant. It uses the V1 chain.

chêlje - fire

Declension III
This is for nouns that have 1 vowel. Case is shown on the vowel.

ko - spirit

Declension IV
Declension IV is for nouns that end in a consonant. The declension pattern is different, gender is still indicated on the last vowel, but case is indicated by adding a suffix. It is believed that in very late Proto-Sitʲan declension IV also inflected for number. While this is not universally accepted, the possible inflections for number are shown here as well.

loivas - sky
 * Disputed

Instrumental Case
Unlike other Sitʲan languages, Proto-Sitʲan is believed to have made a big distinction out of the instrumental case. The instrumental case is used in the following ways

1) To describe an object being used to complete a task

2) To describe the feeling of being used

3) To describe a criminal

4) To describe sorcerers

5) To describe medications/and or drugs being taken

6) To describe the means of an action with the preposition pi (by)

7) To describe the cause of an action (sometimes with certain prepositions)

8) To describe the company of a thing

9) Certain expressions

Pronouns
It is believed that Proto-Sitʲan (PS from here on out) had 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person pronouns that declined for case, number, and gender. It is unknown whether or not there were emphatic and unstressed pronouns. Pronoun declensions are very irregular and are one of the only things that are believed to have used extensive suffixes in addition to ablaut to indicate grammatical information.

The current reconstruction has 1 pronoun, for each gender zhêl (netuer) (from zhêló, literally "thing"), chil (masculine),  and shal (feminine) Ablaut was used to indicate differing persons and suffixes were used to indicate number/case. These forms are listed below.

Person/Number

Netuer Masculine Feminine Case

Note, ʒɛl and ʒɛlz are used as an example to express case. However, the patters are the same for each person and gender.

Verbs
Verbs in PS inflect for person, number, tense, mood, and aspect. Almost all of these are shown by ablaut, except for aspect and irregular verbs. Most verbs end in VCVPV (where V = vowel, C = any consonant, and P = any plosive). A few verbs end in VCVF, in which case a suffix is required for some conjugations.

There are 6 verb conjugations for VCVPV, VCVbV, VCVpV, VCVtV, VCVdV, VCVkV, and VCVgV. Each conjugation differs only by the last consonant. All vowels will be referred to by their position in the ablaut chain.

PS inflects for 3 persons, 2 numbers (singular and plural), 5 tenses (past, present, future, remote future), 5 moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, conditional, and dubitative moods), and 3 aspects (simple, perfect, and perfective). Each vowel usually starts on a different part of the chain. Because the chains are very similar, they will all be listed here.