Primitive Branjish

Primitive Branjish vocabulary

Changes from Misiuri

 * The loss of umlaut: Both the umlaut inherited from Late Proto-Sumric and the one innovated by Misiuri /i/. The changes caused by these within stems remain but affixes no longer cause any umlaut.
 * M ("coin") -  ("coins") > PB verkas, verkasmi.
 * M ("to worry") -  ("you- worry") > PB mene, mene (Vowel harmony caused the i of the suffix to lower to e).
 * Innovation of the progressive aspect: Primitive Branjish innovated the progressive aspect by the supine verb in the comitative case and placing it after an inflected copula. Tense is marked in how the copula is inflected:

êve sne-sa

be.1sg SUP/swim-COM

"I am swimming"
 * Innovation of the andative preposition: The supine of the verb sôve ("to travel"), su became a preposition marking movement away from a point of reference and to a specific place. This even made the allative case redundant in many cases, leaving the case only to mark its secondary uses. In such constructions the direct object is put in the nominative case:

meöse ko-sa verkas su īkrov

be.1sg.pst SUP/sell-COM coin to guest

"I was selling a coin to the guest"
 * The consecutive conjunction āutripu: To form "and then, then" Primitive Branjish derived āutripu from Misiuri ("VP-and") +  ("it was"):

verpa āutripu tro-â

write.1S and_then relax-1S

"I write and then I relax"
 * come > venitive/hither/to here
 * The preposition ōs: Primitive Branjish derived the preposition ōs ("about, regarding, concerning") from the Misiuri supine of the verb ("to call, to name, to refer to").

=Phonology=

Phonotactics

 * Word finally and between vowels /v/ is [w]:
 * mevothe [mewoθe] ("rewarding")
 * movo [mowo] ("mammoth")
 * trove [tɾowe] ("to remember")
 * Overlong vowels may only occur in open syllables:
 * puâtot ("like, similar to")
 * sîsato ("old age, elderly")
 * When in word initial clusters, or when the second element of a word final cluster, the consonants /m n s l r/ are syllabic:
 * īkr ['iː.kr̩] ("party")

Vowel Harmony
Primitive Branjish innovated a height based vowel harmony in which vowels must be of the same height as the first vowel in a word. Each vowel has two forms based on whether the preceding vowel is mid or high.


 * Misiuri ("girl") > PB iri
 * Misiuri ("brother") > PB mömje
 * Misiuri ("old") > PB sere
 * Misiuri ("to make") > PB terögôte

This harmony also applies across morpheme boundaries, giving each suffix two forms, one that harmonises with mid vowels and the other with high vowels. For example the comitive suffix may be -{v,m}e or -{v,m}i: arnöve ("with father"), rjinmi ("with forest").

The only vowel that doesn't change or trigger harmony is /a/. When /a/ comes after a vowel, no vowel following /a/ will harmonise with any vowels before /a/. Essentially /a/ blocks any harmony from taking place: puâtot ("like, similar to"), sîsato ("old age, elderly").

Prosody
Unlike most other Sumric languages, Primitive Branjish turned its pitch accent into a stress accent in which the stress falls on the first syllable on monosyllabic and bisyllabic words but on the second syllable on longer words.

Phonological History
aː a ã→∅/#_

m, n, s, l, r→m̩, n̩, s̩, l̩, r̩/#_C,#C_

Vː→Vːː/open syllables

V1V2→V1ː

sʷ t͡ʃ >si/_C

sʷ t͡ʃ→sj

Ṽ>V̄

ai oi {øi ei} > e o i

V>Ø/#_sC

aː a>oː o/_C[+labial]

i e>e a/_CC

C>Ø/_CC

n nʷ>r rʷ/C_,_C!C=r

aːː aː a>Ø/_#

Cʷi>Co

i iː y yː u uː > e eː øː o oː/V[+mid]..._!V[+mid]...a..._

e eː ø o oː >i iː y yː u uː/V[+high]..._!V[+high]...a..._

ɾ>r

=Noun Phrase= =Case= Primitive Branjish has 7 noun cases which inflect for gender and number. The 7 cases are:


 * Nominative: marks the subject
 * Accusative: marks the direct object
 * Genitive: marks possession
 * Illative: movement into, inside
 * Allative: marks the indirect object
 * Comitative: in company with, with, beside. through or along, by way of, instrumental
 * Delative: movement down from a surface, from

Additional use of cases Along with their main uses, several cases are also used for finer constructions. Here is a list of each case and it's alternative uses:


 * Accusative
 * extent of space


 * Genitive
 * has X quality

island grass-GEN

"Island of grass"
 * Allative
 * Benfective

fish-ALL for

"for the fish"


 * Change or transition into
 * Patient of experiential verb
 * Until
 * Temporal
 * Subessive
 * Cause (because of, therefore, since, as - triggers the passive mood)
 * Comitative
 * Duration
 * Similes
 * made of X material
 * Composed of or containing X object
 * concerning, about
 * Delative
 * Paritive, some of, a bit of

Common Nouns
When a buzzard noun takes on any inflection it first must add the connecting suffix -m or -v. This is due to Misiuri’s history of having dropped word final consonants. In the nom.sg these word final consonants were dropped but were retained when suffixes where added, rendering it non-final. For a short time after these resurfacing consonants were reanalysed as connective suffixes and they began to be affected by analogy heavily. For many obscure words the connecting consonant just because -m because that is the consonant typically associated with the buzzard gender. Eventually -m gained more traction and became the only connecting suffix for all buzzard nouns. When lenition came about the /VmV/ sequences became [ṼwV] which then became Primitive Branjish [VːwV] so when the following suffix began in a vowel this change was triggered, along with the merger of various nasal vowels and then lengthening and denasalization of nasal vowel. As such when before the connecting suffix -v the vowels i y ö u correspond to the vowels ē/ê ō/ô (mid) or ī/î ū/û (high).


 * ôho (“wasp”) > ôhōvo (“wasp-gen”)

Some buzzard nouns however do have word final consonants. These are when the final consonant used to be a geminate or simply that the word was loaned from South Middle Mangeodge into Misiuri. In such case the -m still resurfaces due to how strong the analogy was:
 * verkas (“coin”) > verkasmo (“coin-gen”)

Some nouns have irregular nominative plural, accusative and genitive forms. These typically descend from Middle Sumri nouns that ended in Vr Vl Vn Vs:
 * reh (“bear”) > rere (“bear-nom.pl”), rârau (“bear-acc”), râr (“bear-gen”).
 * muath (“buzzard”) > muati (“buzzard-nom.pl), muatau (“buzzard-acc”), muat (buzzard-gen”)

Collective and Singulative nouns
Nouns can take on collective forms meaning "X in general" or "many X". This is achieved by reduplicating the final CV or VC sequence of a noun. Lenited consonants ph, bh, phʷ, bhʷ, th, thʷ, h, gh hʷ, ghʷ will unlenite to p b pʷ bʷ t tʷ g k g kʷ gʷ if made next to another consonant:
 * rethe ("flame") > rethethe ("flame-col''")
 * sibh ("flower") > sibhibh ("flower-col''")
 * ne ("letter") > nene ("letter-col''")

Some irregular collectives are:
 * raho ("tree") > rahotk ("tree-coll''")

Non-reduplicated-collectives
There are, of course, nouns which are inherently collective. These nouns usually refer to liquids (water, saliva, blood), liquid-like solids (mud, sand), gases or gas-like substances (air, steam, clouds), solids which can have smaller chunks carved or sliced from (meat, ice, wax, fat, wood) or insects which live in colonies. These nouns were once derived via a productive method in Old Sumrë but in Primitive Branjish these words are mere fossils of that fact:
 * e ("blood") > eno ("drop of blood")
 * râ ("ice") > râno ("block of ice")

Middle Sumri had a number on nouns which were inherently collective and had singulative nouns derived from them. Misiuri reanalysed these nouns, making the singulative nouns become singular and the collective nouns become full lexical items denoting a collection of said noun. The two stems became fully different nouns at this point. Here are those nouns:


 * tiphiu ("tool box") > tiphiuran ("bolas")
 * uni ("accessory box") > unir ("a pair of snow goggles")
 * ōppjöe ("canopy") > ōpjoj ("hawk")
 * îhi ("forest") > îhîv ("oak tree")
 * yviu ("land covered in ferns") > yviukr ("fern")
 * ōrsar ("field") > ōrsarâvo ("bulb")
 * nûnu ("flock of giant eagles") > nûmûvu ("bird smaller than a giant eagle")
 * īkr ("party, gathering, event") > īkrôv ("guest")
 * tuâsunnu ("willow forest") > tuâsunnur ("willow tree")
 * nêphospp ("pond") > nêphosppōsa ("newt")