Hello! Here, I’m going to show off what the verb agreement will look like in the descendant languages (which both keep the same basic system.) But to do that, we need a cleaner notation system. Therefore, let’s set a standard for these languages by talking about underspecified phonemes!
Underspecification is not something that I understand fully. But, when talking about harmony, an underspecified phooneme is a symbol used to refer to all potential versions of a phoneme in words with different harmonies. For instance, in language 1a, the underspecified phoneme /I/ corresponds to the phonemes [i] and [e]. These are helpful when writing out morphology – because instead of having to write each form of the affix, you can write it using the archiphoneme. To do that, however, we’ll need to set what these underspecified phonemes are:
| Lang 1a | ||
| Symbol | Close/Velar | Open/Uvular |
|
A |
ɐ | ɑ |
| U | u | o |
| I | i | e |
| K | k | q |
| X | x | χ |
| G | ɣ | ʁ |
(When one of the underspecified vowel phonemes is followed by a long mark, ː, that means that it’s a long version of whichever vowel the underspecified phoneme becomes.)
| Lang 1b | ||||
| Symbol | Front Unrounded |
Front Rounded |
Back Unrounded | Back Rounded |
| A | ɜ | ɞ | ɑ | ɒ |
| I | i | y |
ɯ |
u |
| Yː | yː | yː | uː | uː |
| Oː | ɞː | ɞː | ɒː | ɒː |
Same deal applies here. Note the underspecified phonemes Yː and Oː, which were formed when diphthongs with an off-glide [u̯] coalesced. We won’t see these here, but we’ll be dealing with them later. With that out of the way, let’s get to the actual affixes:
|
Language 1a |
||
|
Singular |
Plural | |
| 1st | sI-, -s | sI-…-K, -sIK |
|
2nd |
çU-, -ç | çU-…-K, -çuk* |
|
3rd proximate |
∅-, -∅ |
XI-, -X |
|
3rd obviative |
tA-, -z |
tIː-, -zI |
|
3rd inananimate |
tsU-, -ʝ |
|
|
Indefinite |
nA-, -n | |
|
Relative singular |
vA- | |
| Relative plural | vAX- | |
| Relative inanimate | vAʝ- | |
*(Note that the suffix form of the second person plural will always be close/velar, because the [ç] blocks backing harmony.)
|
Language 1b |
||
|
Singular |
Plural | |
| 1st | sI-, -s | sI-…-k, -sIk |
| 2nd |
ʃu-, -ʃ |
ʃu-…-k, -ʃuk |
|
3rd proximate |
∅-, -∅ |
xI-, -x |
|
3rd obviative |
ðA-, -t | ðIː-, -ðI |
| 3rd inanimate | ʒU-, -tʃ | |
| indefinite | nA-, -n | |
|
Relative singular |
vA- | |
| Relative plural | vAx- | |
| Relative inanimate | vAʒ- | |
And with that, the verb agreement affixes are pretty much done! Next time, I’ll show the romanization system of these languages, and discuss some of the choices I made.