Early Kionc

Early Kionc was a dialect of Old Moca spoken by the Kionc people.

=Substrate= Early Kionc arose when the Kionc people came into contact with the Moca people who were expanding outwards from their urheimat. Before this they spoke Kheldre, a dialect of Old Sumrë. While they gave up speaking Kheldre for Old Moca they did speak Old Moca with a Kheldre substrate. For instance the phonology of Kheldre was superimposed over Old Moca such that each vowel was different although they all corresponded to those in Old Moca. Many substrate words such as those relating to family or everyday life for the Kionc survived.

Vowel Correspondence with Old Moca
Any vowels not mentioned mean that they are identical to the Old Moca equivalent.

=Phonology= Phonemes that occur only in Kheldre substrate words are marked in bold.

Consonants
The Old Moca consonants /tʰ dʰ kʷ kw/ are /t͡s d͡z kx kx/ in Early Kionc.

=Substrate Vocabulary=

Since Early Kionc is identical grammatically (although morphemes may have different shapes which will be explicitly mentioned here) to Old Moca beyond the phonology, the only thing worth noting on this page is the substrate vocabulary from Kheldre.

Nature

 * jạrut ("beast, creature, monster") < jerun ("wolf")

Pronouns and Determiners
Singular Pronouns

Plural Pronouns

Zero-Grade Nouns
Zero-Grade nouns is another feature taken right from Kheldre rather than Old Moca. Early Kheldre zero-grade nouns are nouns which have syllabic consonants. When inflected, the first vowel of the suffix will be reduplicated before the sonorant, causing it to become non-syllabic. As such the vowel in the stem will change depending on the case and number. How this gradiation occurs differs depending on the gender of the noun.

Buzzard gender zero-grade nouns
Buzzard gender zero-grade nouns have a syllabic consonant in the final syllable, quite often they have no vowels at all. In the buzzard gender, the vowel of the suffix is reduplicated before the syllabic sonorant in every case. If there are two adjacent syllables with syllabic consonants then the vowel will be reduplicated in both. Do note that other phonotactics will apply after gradiation when appropriate, such as the fronting of rounded back vowels before /r/ and /l/.


 * vŕŕt ("melody") → verrte ("melodies")
 * spɫ ("cricket") → spẹlau ("cricket-")
 * dŕjś ("heron") → dạrjạsạs ("heron-")

Deer gender zero-grade nouns
Deer gender zero-grade nouns always end in a vowel, as such they are not truly zero grade but they do show the pre-syllabic epenthesis gradiation in a similar way to buzzard gender zero-grade nouns. Typically in deer gender zero-grades, the penultimate syllable contains the syllabic sonorants but it isn't unheard of for the syllabic sonorants to appear in syllables further to the left. In deer gender zero-grades the vowel is only reduplicated if the vowel of the suffix replaces the final vowel of the root. As phonotactics dictate that when a vowel of a suffix comes into contact with a vowel of a stem that the vowel of the stem is dropped and the vowel of the suffix is lengthened, the reduplicated vowel will also be long. This only happens when the suffix begins in a vowel, when the suffix begins in a consonant then the vowel of the stem is not lost and so the vowel is not reduplicated.


 * pŕtnạ ("hedgehog") → pērnnē ("hedgehogs")
 * bòtḿjò ("minnow") → bòtẹ̄mjẹ̄ ("minnow-")
 * stɫgu ("stalk") → stɫgusa ("stalk-")

=Infinitive= Early Kionc did not use the Old Moca infinitive -en, rather it used the Kheldre infinitive -ạt although both are ultimately form Old Sumrë -en.

=Copula=