Kelun

Kelun or Kelunese (Classical Kelun: se Kệlungìz) is a recently discovered extinct language spoken by the indigenous Kelun people in the area around Qingdao, China.

The Kelun people were among the first to invent writing. Kelun is written using the Kelun syllabaries, which first appeared in year -1500 from an earlier logographic script that dates back to -2100. Kelun language texts came to an end around -300, but it is hypothesized that the language may have survived until around the year 0.

Classification
Kelun is generally considered to be an isolate, however, some believe that the language may be distantly related to the Koreanic, Tungusic, or Nivkh languages.

It is presumed that the language(s) of the nearby Yueshi culture is/are similar and related to Kelun, but no records of that/those language(s) exist.

Stages
The evolution of the Kelun language can be divided into 5 stages.

Proto-Kelun (before -1700)
This stage is written using the older logographic script, which is not currently deciphered, therefore no readable records of this stage exist.

Archaic Kelun (-1700 - -1200)
This stage is when the Kelun syllabaries were invented. In Archaic Kelun, there were no voicing or aspiration distinctions on consonants, and vowels had only one form and do not distinguish length and nasalization.

Classical Kelun (-1200 - -800)
Most Kelun texts were from this stage. Voicing and aspiration distinctions on consonants, and multiple forms and length and nasalization distinctions appeared during this stage.

Middle Kelun (-800 - -400)
Starting around -800, Kelun starts becoming increasingly analytic, marking the transition between Classical and Middle Kelun. During Middle Kelun, the number of noun cases has been reduced from 21 to just 4 (ergative, absolutive, genitive, and dative), the rest being marked with prepositions instead.

Late Kelun (-400 - 0)
Late Kelun is an isolating language with little inflection. The case system is completely lost, and the word order became strictly SVO.

Consonants
Classical Kelun has the following consonants: In the Kelun syllabaries, voicing and aspiration are distinguished with diacritics.

Vowels
Kelun has 8 basic vowels:

/a e i o u â ê ô/

In Classical and Middle Kelun, the vowels a, e, i, o, and u can have 3 forms:

/a e i o u/

/á é í ó ú/

/à è ì ò ù/

In Classical Kelun, the vowels â and ê can have 2 forms:

/â ê/

/â̛ ê̛/

The vowel ô can only have one form in Classical Kelun: /ô/.

Pronunciation of the different vowels and vowel forms are disputed, and may have differed between dialects.

Traditionally, the Kelun syllabaries do not distinguish between the different forms of a vowel, which have to be inferred from context. However, all vowels can be nasalized (ạ), long (ā), or both (ạ̄), which the Kelun syllabaries distinguish with diacritics.

Nouns
In Classical Kelun, nouns can be singular or plural, and they have 21 cases. In Middle Kelun, the number of noun cases was reduced to 4, and it was completely lost in Late Kelun.

A notable feature of Classical and Middle Kelun is that some body parts coming in pairs (i.e. hands, feet, arms, legs, eyes, ears) use the singular. This is because in Archaic Kelun, there existed a dual number to specify two of any noun, which merged with the singular in Classical Kelun.

In all known phases of Kelun, there has been a definite article (se in Classical Kelun, but agrees with nouns in case and number), but no indefinite article. Instead, absence of an article indicates that the noun is indefinite.

There are many derivational affixes for nouns, mostly infixes that go between the final vowel and consonant of a noun, but also some prefixes. There are no derivational suffixes, since suffixes are reserved for inflection.

Verbs
Verb infinitives generally end in -a.

Pronouns
The basic pronouns are ẉe (first person), ñe (second person), and be (third person), but they inflect for number and case, with the -e taken off when suffixes are added. There is also a reflexive form of the pronouns, which has -ô instead of -e (ẉô, ñô, and bô), and does not inflect for number or case.

There is also a demostrative pronoun (ṟè) and an impersonal pronoun (śe), both of which also inflect for number and case.

Relative pronouns are ṇe (who), ce (what), and ṛé (which), and interrogative pronouns are the same, but beginning with voiced consonants instead of voiceless ones (ne, đe, and ré). Indefinite pronouns are derived from the relative pronouns ṇe and ce, with prefixes lâ- (corresponding to some-), f- (any-), ṗu- (every-), and vi- (no-).