We’ve already established that protolanguage 1 had a direct-inverse system of alignment. (See the seventh post in this series, “A Sketch of Verb Agreement”). However, I don’t want that to be the case in protolanguage 0. Instead, I want protolanguage 0 to only have focus agreement in the verb, using the inverse as a kind of “patient trigger” to specify that the object’s being marked rather than the subject. I use the terminology “patient trigger” because this looks fairly similar to a rudimentary system of symmetrical voice, also known as Austronesian alignment. While symmetrical voice is extremely complicated, here’s the brief run-down:
- One noun is marked as the focus.
- In Austronesian languages, this is typically done by placing the noun in the direct case. In protolang 1, it’d be done by subject agreement.
- The verb takes a marker to show how the focus relates to it. For instance, the “patient trigger” specifies the focus as the verb’s object.
In language family 2, my plan is for this to develop into a more robust symmetrical voice system. The patient trigger will fuse with various applicatives to form into other agreement markers. In protolanguage 1, on the other hand, the non-focus pronoun is incorporated into the verb as a suffix. This means that, when the patient trigger is absent, the suffix pronoun is the patient, but when the patient trigger is present, the suffix pronoun is the agent. Now, our patient trigger is starting to look a lot like an inverse marker, especially as protolanguage 0 preferred to make the higher-animacy argument the focus. The applicatives will then stick around as true applicatives.
Now is probably a good time to note that protolanguage 0 uses verb-initial word order. I have the vague idea that there was a pre-protolanguage 0 which was SVO, which explains why subjects were marked as prefixes. However, as the language shifted to a more symmetric-voice-like system, the subject moved after the verb, a better configuration for this type of alignment. Verb-initial word order isn’t something that conlangs often play around with, but I think it makes sense for this language.
Now that we know how protolanguage 0 operated, we can start to figure out more about how protolanguage 1 will operate. Specifically, we can now begin to evolve some tense and aspect. The tense system in protolanguage 0 was very simple. A past tense suffix, /-ɬaː-/, was affixed, directly after the verb stem. Any tense other than the past was inferred by context or a time-specifying adverb or clause.
The past/non-past distinction from protolanguage 0 is kept in protolanguage 1. However, aspectual distinctions will begin to emerge. Two verbs begin to semantically weaken, becoming light verbs that serve to convey aspectual information. These light verbs take focus agreement, but the patient trigger still occurs on the main verb. I think this makes sense – after all, in English, we say “It has been broken,” not “It is had broken.” The past tense affix also goes on the main verb. Because of this, it’s easy for these light verbs to agglutinate to the main verb, with the weak verb root essentially becoming an aspect marker that goes between the focus marker and the main verb. Because this occurs before most of the impactful sound changes between protolanguage 0 and protolanguage 1, they’ll behave like normal verb prefixes.
I’ve decided to keep the aspect system itself fairly simple, with two affixed aspects, perfect and prospective:
/-hu/ (own, v. protolanguage 0) →
/-u-/ (ᴘᴇʀꜰ., protolanguage 1)
/-ri/ (go, v. protolanguage 0) →
/-ri-/ (ᴘʀᴏsᴘ., protolanguage 1)
In language 1a, these affixes will stick around alongside the past tense affix. This provides a 3-aspect 2-tense system, kind of similar to latin’s 3-tense 2-aspect system, except with a future-in-the past and no future perfect:
| Past /-aː/ | Non-past /-∅/ | |
| Perfect /u-/ |
Pluperfect |
Perfect |
| Simple /∅-/ |
Past |
Present |
| Prospective /ri-/ | Future-in-the-past | Future |
The future-in-the-past is very volatile, and may gain some kind of modal or conditional meaning. I also need to figure out the distinction between past and perfect. I’m thinking that the simple past either becomes a past imperfective (like in Latin & the romance languages) or a discontinuous past. We’ll see what’s necessary once I start developing more morphology and periphrastic tense/aspect constructions in language 1a.
In language 1b, however, I want the past/non-past distinction to dissolve, and have it be supplanted by the aspect system (with the perfect turning into the past and the prospective turning into the future). Aspectual morphology can be conveyed by periphrasis. A fun thing about language 1b is that the perfect aspect marker, /u-/, will take part in vowel coalescence. This means that you have to learn a separate set of personal prefixes for the past tense:
| Singular |
Plural |
|
| 1st |
sYː- |
sYː-…-k |
| 2nd |
ʃuː- |
ʃUː-…-k |
|
3rd proximate |
u- |
xYː- |
|
3rd obviative |
ðOː- |
ðYː- |
|
3rd inanimate |
ʒUː- | |
|
Indefinite |
nOː- | |
This ended up being much longer than I had intended, and I honestly have no clue how to finish it up neatly. But I think that this is all the work we need to do on protolanguage 0 for now. Next up, I go on another completely random tangent because this is how my brain works I guess.