Proto-Fanezish

Proto-Fanezish (PF) was the common ancestor of the Fanezish language family. It developed in the north-eastern regions of Buvara and northern Eloma. As such, its discourse was heavily influenced by cold weather, coniferous forests, mountainous terrain and the fauna found in those conditions.

The Old Fanezish peoples were known for their adaptability. They were competent seafarers, although not as remarkable in comparison to the North-Heortish peoples. In terms of culture, they were proficient woodcarvers since wood was far more common than stone. They had a clan-oriented society but they were not isolationist; individuals from other tribes and peoples were accepted as long as they learnt their way of living, language and did not commit any crimes.

In the matters of science, the Fanezish peoples were not as advanced as other peoples, but they had acceptable wood-related technology allowing them to build long-lasting homes and public spaces as well as boats and weapons. In regards of religion, they had their own version of the 12-deity based pantheon worshiped by the Dutronish and Buvaro-Elomish peoples.

Proto-Fanezish was characterised by agglutination, a vast system of grammatical cases, a rather simple vowel harmony and an ergative-accusative (tripartite) alignment.

Phonology
Proto-Fanezish had a discrete inventory of phonemes:


 * Two series of unvoiced stop consonants, plain and aspirated.
 * Two series of unvoiced fricatives consonants, plain and aspirated.
 * Two liquid consonants.
 * Five vowels with a quite simple vowel harmony system.

Consonants
The consonants of Proto-Fanezish were the following: 1 The nasal [m] is uttered as [ɱ] before [f], [fh] and [ʋ].

2 The nasal [n] is uttered as [ŋ] before [k] and [kh].

3 These consonants were grouped as liquid consonants.

Vowels
Proto-Fanezish had five vowels: As mentioned before, Proto-Fanezish had a simple system of vowel harmony that allowed easier agglutination. Words could only have either front vowels (e, i) or back vowels (o, u). The vowel a was neutral and was allowed to be present with either of the aforementioned vowel sets.

Phonotactics
Proto-Fanezish had easy phonotactics rules. The basic syllable structure was (C1)(J)V(C2), although there were some restrictions of which sounds occur depending on the place of the syllable:


 * C1 may be any consonant, except the glottal stop [ʔ].
 * J is the palato-alveolar approximant.
 * C2 may only be nasals and plain stops and fricatives except glottals.
 * Consonant germinates are allowed.
 * The glottal stop [ʔ] can only occur between vowels.
 * Diphthongs are the following: a + any other vowel, ei and ou.

Rhythm and word-accent
Proto-Fanezish had a syllable-timed rhythm, which suited its agglutinative morphology. Stress always fell in the first syllable.

Writing system
Proto-Fanezish was written using runes, but it also exists a version using the later developed Loksish script for teaching purposes.

Grammar
Proto-Fanezish was an agglutinative tongue because of the use of affixes, more frequently suffixes than preffixes, to indicate the grammatical function of a word and to create new words. such as creating a verb or adjectives from a noun, or a noun from a verbal or adjective root.

Proto-Fanezish sentences followed an ergative-accusative alignment, also known as tripartite alignment, and had a rather free word order, although the neutral word order was Subject-Verb-Object. It was mostly head-final, but used prepositions and adverbs followed the Place-Manner-Time layout.

Nouns
Classification

Nouns in Proto-Fanezish were classified in three categories: heavenly nouns, waterly nouns and earthly nouns.


 * Heavenly nouns included words for sky, wind and fire. It also included flying animales, abstractions and untouchable nouns like time. These nouns ended in vowels or fricative consonants.
 * Waterly nouns, as the name suggests, included words for water, fluids, water-related nouns like boats and aquatic animals and plants. These nouns ended nasal or liquid consonants.
 * Earthly nouns included words for most animals, humans, plants, tools and basically anything that could be touched and was solid. These nouns ended in stop consonants.

Inflection
The dictionary form of a noun can take up to three kinds of inflectional suffixes in the following order:


 * Definite suffix
 * Number suffix
 * Case suffix

Definiteness
Nouns could be definite (DEF) or indefinite, but only definite nouns had the suffix -'a. However, if the noun ended in a consonant, this suffix caused germination of the last consonant.


 * fhila (star) - fhila'a (the star)
 * alen (river) - alenna (the river)
 * woruk (sword) - worukka (the sword)

Number
Proto-Fanezish had four numbers: singular (SING), dual (DU), paucal (PAU) and plural (PLUR). Singular was the base form, dual referred to pairs, paucal referred to a set of three to twelve and plural to sets greater than twelve.


 * fhila (star) - fhilase (two stars) - fhilapi (a few stars) - fhila'e (many stars)
 * alen (river) - alense (two rivers) - alempi (a few rivers) - alene (many rivers)
 * woruk (sword) - worukso (two swords) - worukpu (a few swords) - woruko (many swords)

Case
Proto-Fanezish had a vast system of grammatical cases

Absolutive

The absolutive case (shorthanded ABS) is the citation form of a noun in a dictionary and is used for the subject of intransitive verbs


 * fhila (star)
 * alen (river)
 * woruk (sword)

Ergative

The ergative case (shorthanded ERG) is the citation form of a noun in a dictionary.

Accusative

Dative

Genitive

Inessive

Elative

Illative

Adessive

Ablative

Allative

Essive

Translative

Instrumental

Comitative-Associative

Abessive