Phonology

Inventory

Consonants

Vowels

Stressed vowels are written with an acute accent (á), long vowels with a grave accent (à), and long stressed vowels with a circumflex accent (â).

Diphthongs

Any non-high vowel can combine with either high vowel as a valid diphthong.

Allophony

Morphology

Accent-ablaut

The inflection of a word is not only given by the endings, but also by the accent-ablaut rule governing the vowels and the placement of the stress. There are four types in polysyllabic stem formations, based on the movement of the stress. Root formations only have two types, static and kinetic. However, these are grouped with acrostatic and amphikinetic accent-ablaut respectively. They are all listed below.

Note: In proterokinetics with multiple suffices, the stress falls on the last suffix in the weak forms, and on the penultimate suffix in the strong, not the root.

Nominals

Nouns inflect for singular and plural number, and at least agentive, patientive, vocative, and genitive cases. It is likely that there were more oblique forms, but these are difficult to properly reconstruct. It is also possible that some cases were expressed by periphrastic constructions. Nominals also posses common and neuter gender, with nouns being lexically assigned to one or the other, while adjectives inflect for both. Neuter nominals do not posses a plural, instead relying on collectives. They also display only a single direct case, with no ending. The common gender endings are given below.

Nouns employ an accent-ablaut alternation between the direct and oblique cases - the direct cases (agentive, patientive and vocative) are the strong forms, and the oblique cases (all others) are weak.

Pronominals

The inflection of the personal pronominals is a very complex problem. The nominatives exhibited a unique stem, apparently hágax, wáy and túx, yúy. If, however, the first singular is in fact the first singular of a verb hag-, the original formation may have been something like hâgxa or hégxa. However, it is impossible to know, so we will use hágax.

On the other hand, the inflection of the other pronouns is fairly simple. There are two kinds of stem types, those in -a and those in -i/e. Apart from sâ, which is irregular only in its common agentive singular, lacking a final -s, pronominal inflection is very uniform. All display a shared set of anomalous endings, which characterise the inflectional type. The neuter direct cases end in -d, rather than the null ending of the nominals. The relative pronoun will demonstrate the inflection of the a-stems. The uniform -à- may be part of the stem, or the contraction of the stem in -a- and the -a- of the endings.

The i/e-stems display an ablaut unique to these pronouns. The third person pronoun will serve to represent these stems. The neuter direct is íd.

Verbs

Derivation

Syntax

Word Order

The underlying word order is SOVI, with complements placed on the left. However, any element can be fronted for topicalisation, and existential verbs and imperatives are always fronted. Additionally, wh-elements are fronted to just after the topic slot, and relatives and non-clitic conjunctions occupy this slot as well.

Clitic Placement

Word-level clitics are placed immediately after the word they modify, while connective clitics attach to the first element of the component they act on. Sentential clitics are placed after the first element of the clause. Prepositions are proclitic when the NP is only a single word; otherwise, they are their own word. Pronouns and the copula are dropped if they can be inferred from context, and their presence in such cases is usually emphatic.

Clauses

Relative clauses precede the main clause, and if the antecedent is a noun, it is placed in the same case as the relative pronoun and copied into the relative clause, being placed after the pronoun. Negation is done by the negative particle, which acts as a sentential clitic when modifying clauses. When it is modifying a single word, it is a prefix.

Other Formations

Absolute constructions are formed from active clauses by placing the object in the instrumental, and making the verb a participle. Subjects are dropped, and indirect objects remain as they were.

Miscellaneous

Name Formation

Sound Changes

To PIE dialects

• Laryngeal colouring: ə > a / _χ, χ_; ə > ʌ / _x, x_
• Schwa loss: ə́ > é; ə̄ > ʌ̄ ; ə > ₑ
  (ʌ̄ > ā in IIr open syllables, a elsewhere, and o in all other dialects)
  (ₑ has complex outcomes in PIE. It is generally dropped, though is strengthened to e in some cases)
• Voiced fricative hardening: Ð >? DÐ >? Dʱ or D
  (>? indicates that the change was optional, and not all dialects underwent it. The initial outcomes seem to be areally determined)
• Dorsal fronting chain shift: Q > K >? C
  (Whether or not a dialect underwent the palatalisation defines it as centum or satem dialect. This is areal)