Language scratchpad/Altlangs/Alternate reconstructions/Proto-Japonic scratchpad/Descendants

This page compares some of the descendant conlangs of Proto-Japonic. So far, three languages are featured here: Namari (namaikotoba), New Kudara (ftārafča) and Tanmuran (tammurakotoba). Of the three, Namari is the one I've developed the most. In the Innocence Seekers setting, New Kudara (spoken in Kudara province in Namari) is the only surviving Peninsular Japonic language, while both Namari (spoken in Namari and Likkra) and Tanmuran (spoken on Jeju island in Korea and on Tsushima and Kyushu in Japan) are Insular Japonic languages.

Disclaimer: The entirety of this article's contents is to be considered science fiction. They are not, in any way, verified and accepted reconstructions of real-life proto-languages, even if they are largely based on accepted reconstructions.

Vowels
Namari has by far the most vowels of any Japonic language in the Innocence Seekers setting, with between nine and eleven phonemic vowels depending on dialect (the most in any real-life Japonic language I know of is seven). On the other hand, Tanmuran only has five phonemic vowels (like Japanese), and New Kudara has six. New Kudara also has vowel harmony based on vowel height, with /a/, /e/ and /o/ forming one group and /ə/, /i/ and /u/ forming the other group.

The following table lists the reflexes of each Proto-Japonic vowel and vowel sequence:

Consonants
As few as nine consonants are reconstructed for Proto-Japonic. Voicing was likely allophonic, with obstruents voiced intervocally (this behaviour is still retained in Yonaguni, although the voiced consonants have become phonemic). What became the "muddy" consonants in Japanese (in most dialects, these consonants are plain voiced) were descended from prenasalised consonants, and the intervocalic obstruents lost their voicing (in most dialects; Tōhoku dialects do still retain intervocalic voicing).

If the prenasalised consonants are considered their own phonemes, this means that Proto-Japonic had thirteen consonant phonemes. The outcome of each consonant in the three languages featured is as followed:

While intervocalic */p/ is retained in New Kudara, both Namari and Tanmuran eventually lose it in most environments. In Namari, most instances of intervocalic */p/ became first */ɸ/, then /h/ in Middle Namari. The only exceptions were if they occurred after /u/, in which case the expected reflex is /w/. By the Modern Namari period, almost all /h/ were lost (the only exception being the topic marker), while instances of /w/ before /e/ and /i/ were subject to monophthongisation if they occurred after /u/; only /w/ before /a/ and after /u/ was retained.

Tanmuran underwent a development similar to that of Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages, namely, the unconditional change of intervocalic */p/ to /w/. This /w/ was eventually lost before all vowels except /a/.

Namari has the following consonant inventory:

Tanmuran has a similar consonant inventory, except that its /θ/ is an aspirated stop [tʰ] instead, and that it has a phonemic /h/ and /t͡s/. The difference between /t/ and /θ/ in Tanmuran is neutralised word-initially, with both being realised as [tʰ]. Namari /ɸ/ and /x/ and Tanmuran /θ/ and /x/ are primarily found in Sinitic loanwords.

New Kudara has the following consonant inventory:

The distinction between the tenuis and aspirated voiceless obstruents is only made word-initially (in the orthography, the tenuis obstruents are indicated by a preceding &lt;f&gt;). In other environments, the distinction is neutralised.

When a word-initial cluster is created as a result of the loss of */i/ and */u/, the following vowel is always lengthened. Additionally, some word-initial clusters undergo their own sound changes: Voiced obstruents (with the exception of /v/ after an unvoiced sibilant) lose their voicing when in a cluster with an unvoiced obstruent. Additionally, all sibilant clusters assimilate into a single sibilant (the first sibilant determines whether the resulting consonant is a fricative or an affricate, while if either sibilant is palatalised, the resulting sibilant is also palatalised), and /j/ after any consonant unconditionally induces palatalisation. Any /w/ occurring after a labial is lost, while /w/ after /k/ and /g/ assimilate to form /f/ and /v/ respectively. Finally, /t͡s/ (and its voiced counterpart /z/) assimilate into any following stop, /f/, /v/, /x/ or /ɣ/, forming a geminate (this occurs after devoicing, so /z/ + /k/ becomes /sk/ instead of */gː/).

Among word-initial clusters, stops (unless followed by /ɾ/ or /l/), /ɾ/, /l/, /j/ and /w/ cannot occur as the first consonant. An epenthetic /a/ or /ə/ (dependent on vowel harmony) is inserted after stops, /ɾ/ and /l/, while the glides /j/ and /w/ are converted into their vocalic counterparts (/e/ and /i/ for /j/, /o/ and /u/ for /w/).

Phonotactics
Proto-Japonic has been hypothesised to have had a strict CV(j,w?)(N) syllable structure, where V could either be short or long. The only place V and VN syllables could occur was word-initially; all non-word-initial syllables must begin with a consonant. What is not clear is whether Proto-Japonic allowed word-final consonants.

Both Namari and Tanmuran have a slightly looser syllable structure, namely (C)(j)V(j,w)(N), where V can either be short or long. Namari also allows overlong (trimoraic) vowels. Note that this syllable structure in Namari only applies to the phonemic description of the language; phonetically, dialects (including the standard Yaezora dialect) may allow additional consonant clusters that do not fit into the nominal syllable structure.

In comparison, New Kudara has the syllable structure (C)(C)V(j,w)(C), where V can either be short or long. The more complex phonotactics in New Kudara is the consequence of the elision of */i/ and */u/. While words ending in stops are rare in native words, they are common in loanwords.

Numbers
In New Kudara, numerals less than one hundred have their own forms (in comparison, Namari only has unique forms for eleven and twelve). They are listed below:

Classifiers
The history of classifiers in the Japonic languages has been fairly obscured by Chinese influence, but I can reconstruct three classifiers that do not resemble the nouns they describe: From Old Japanese evidence, in particular from prose, it is apparent that classifiers were in limited use, typically used to refer to elevated objects and deities. In most cases, count forms of nouns are combined directly with numerals. Hence I believe that numerals in Proto-Japonic behaved the same way as adjectives: they were bound forms that directly attached to a noun.
 * *-tu, the general classifier
 * *-(ta)ri, the classifier for people
 * *-uka, the classifier for days

The following table lists the forms of each numeral-classifier compound and their descendants:

The word *pe ("a division", whence Old Japanese -pe1; derivatives include *pen-tatay- "to separate") was likely a standalone noun in Proto-Japonic (and is, in some cases, still used as such in Japanese), but in all three featured languages has evolved into an additional classifier. The various forms are listed below:

While numeral-classifier compounds are nouns in Namari and Tanmuran, they are verbal adjectives in New Kudara. Tanmuran and some Namari dialects allow numeral-classifier compounds to occur after the noun they modify.

Derivative forms
I reconstruct an ordinal suffix *-me? (which may be *-may instead; I have yet to determine which reconstruction is correct). This is reflected in Namari -me, New Kudara -me/-mi, and Tanmuran -me. All three languages also show a reflex of *patu ("first") which is the only ordinal I can reconstruct for Proto-Japonic (Namari: patu, New Kudara: pac, Tanmuran: hatsu).

Time
In general, the following prefixes are used:

Months
So far, I can only reconstruct the names of two months for Proto-Japonic:
 * *simə-tuk[u,o]y, for the eleventh month
 * *si-pasu, for the twelfth month

For the Innocence Seekers setting, I've used the Japanese names and extended them to the other Japonic languages. They are listed below:

Note that all New Kudara forms are feminine ("yin"), even though "moon" itself is masculine ("yang").

Days of the week
Obviously, these cannot be reconstructed for Proto-Japonic, as the ancient Japonic speakers never had a concept of "week". However, the three languages featured do have the days of the week derived from words with similar meaning.

Cardinal directions
The cardinal directions are in general unreconstructible for Proto-Japonic. The only words I can reconstruct with confidence are *nisi and *paye. Reflecting this, the three languages featured have some divergent forms.

Conjugation
Being Insular Japonic languages, Namari and Tanmuran share a great deal of conjugational forms, while New Kudara, being Peninsular Japonic, is somewhat divergent.

The following compares conjugated forms of *ar- (inanimate existential) between languages: The copula is derived from *ar- (Namari ya from *i ar-, New Kudara tom from *tə ar-, Tanmuran nyan from *ni ar-). The negative of *ar- is only used in copular forms (Namari yān from *i pa ar-an- via earlier yayan, New Kudara taran from *tə pa ar-an-, Tanmuran nyaran from *ni pa ar-an-).

The following compares conjugated forms of *wor- (animate existential) between languages:

The following compares conjugated forms of *kə- ("to come") between languages:

The following compares conjugated forms of *as- ("to do") between languages:

The following compares conjugated forms of *-n- (negative suffix) between languages:

The regular conjugational classes, beginning with forms of *ankay- ("to rise"), forming the lower vowel-stem class:

Forms of *sunkoy- ("to exceed, to surpass"), forming the upper vowel-stem class:

Forms of *kak- ("to scratch, to write"), forming the k-stem class:

Forms of *əyənk- ("to swim"), forming the g-stem class:

Forms of *pəs- ("to dry"), forming the s-stem class:

Forms of *mat- ("to wait"), forming the t-stem class:

Forms of *sin- ("to die"), forming the n-stem class:

Forms of *warap- ("to laugh"), forming the p-stem class:

Forms of *təmp- ("to fly"), forming the b-stem class:

Forms of *yəm- ("to read"), forming the m-stem class:

Forms of *kir- ("to cut"), forming the r-stem class:

Principal parts and base stems
Like most inflected languages, verbs in the three languages featured can be described using a number of principal parts. This is not to be confused with the concept of a "base stem", whose form can in some cases be determined entirely by the forms of other base stems.

Namari has the following base stems, using kaku and agu as examples:

New Kudara has the following base stems, using kafam and ageram as examples:

Tanmuran has the following base stems, using kakun and agerun as examples:

Tense and aspect
For Proto-Japonic, I can confidently reconstruct five aspects, the aorist, the stative, the progressive, the preparative and the experiential, as well as a possible perfect form. In all three languages featured, this perfect evolved into a simple past, and the aspects are retained. All of these forms are based on the participle *-tay.

The reflexes of each different form in the daughter languages are as follows:

In Namari, the reflex of the stative and its progressive force ergative-absolutive alignment for nonpronominal subjects. Similarly, the New Kudara reflex uses a nominative/intransitive direct object in conjunction with an ergative subject. This behaviour is identical to the effect of the potential in these two languages. The Tanmuran reflex of the stative has passive semantics, and thus does not take a direct object.

All three languages featured also have a perfective-imperfective distinction, derived from the exact same construction (*-i wor-). Conventionally, the unmarked (aorist) aspect is the perfective, with the imperfective being marked. The forms are listed below:
 * Namari: -yoi (derived from polite stem; conjugates identically to oi)
 * New Kudara: -om/-um (attached to infinitive; conjugates identically to um)
 * Tanmuran: -yon (attached to stem; conjugates identically to on)

I cannot reconstruct a past tense for Proto-Japonic. Classical Japanese had a preterite -ki (attributive -si) separate from the perfect -tari, but it appears that it is unique to Japanese; I cannot find any trace of this preterite in the Ryukyuan languages. Regardless, the languages featured do have tense. In addition to the past, Namari and New Kudara have a marked future, with the same etymology. The tenses and their Proto-Japonic origins are listed below:

Mood
In general, mood in Japonic can be represented using three different strategies: Only the imperative, prohibitive and volitional use basic inflection, which are listed in the forms given above. The other moods use either word-final suffixes or particles, or auxillary verbs.
 * Basic inflection
 * Word-final suffix or particle
 * Auxillary verb

Word-final suffixes and particles
It is important to note that word-final suffixes do not exclusively denote mood (in all three languages, the gerund is formed by a word-final suffix, for example). Hence this section will only list the modal suffixes.

I can reconstruct an indicative suffix *-m(u) for Proto-Ryukyuan, but not Proto-Japonic (if it did exist in Proto-Japonic, then Japanese must have lost it). I cannot reconstruct any other word-final suffixes or particles representing mood.

The three languages use the following suffixes to mark mood: While Namari has lost the polar/informative interrogative distinction, the other two languages featured still distinguish them. New Kudara uses the pair -ro/-ru for polar questions, and -ga/-gə for information questions. Similarly, Tanmuran uses -mi and -ka respectively in their roles.

In both New Kudara and Tanmuran, the unmarked mood is the subjunctive (however, the lemma uses the indicative), while in Namari it is the indicative (the inflected subjunctive is in very limited use and represented by an auxillary, although the unmarked subjunctive still affects agreement). Included are the indirect evidential suffixes; the inferential represents the realis indirect evidential (although semantically all indirect evidentials are irrealis, the inferential specifically indicates that the speaker has determined from indirect evidence that his/her utterance is true), while the epistemic (which would be called "potential", but this label is already used) is used for irrealis indirect evidentials.

The Namari and Tanmuran inferential suffix is actually a nominalising suffix; it must be suffixed by a form of the copula if used predicatively.

In all three languages, invocation of kakari-musubi (via the use of a focus marker) eliminates the word-final mood suffix outside of the interrogative. The existence of a declarative or exclamative focus marker (but not an interrogative focus marker) indicates that the verb is in the indicative.

Modal verbs
In addition to word-final suffixes and particles, modal verbs may be used to denote mood.

The desiderative mood I reconstruct as using the auxillary *pəsi- ("to want"), which is actually an adjective. It attaches to the infinitive.

Modal forms in all three languages are listed below:

Unique to Namari is the negative volitional auxillary -makai, which attaches to the attributive. The other two languages use the standard negated form of the volitional form of the negative as their negative volitional (a similar form also exists in Namari).

All three languages feature a periphrastic form of the desiderative, derived from *-i-tay pəsi- (Namari -te poshi, New Kudara -te pošam/-ti pušəm, Tanmuran -te foshī). In this construction, the sentence "X wants Y to [do] Z", where "[do]" is any transitive verb, argument X is in the genitive in Namari, ergative in New Kudara and nominative in Tanmuran, while Y is in the nominative in Namari, intransitive/nominative in New Kudara and nominative in Tanmuran. Z remains in the accusative in all three languages.

Voice
I reconstruct a causative *-(s)as- and a passive *-(r)aryay-, both of which attach directly to the stem. There reflexes are as follows:

The potential can be considered a voice in Namari, due to its split-ergative nature, and also possesses passive properties in other Japonic languages. However, the three languages featured do feature a potential descended from the same Proto-Japonic form. In all three languages, the potential of "to do" is suppletive (Namari deku, New Kudara dečram, Tanmuran dekerun).

Even though New Kudara is tripartite, there is no antipassive. Instead, if the ergative argument is omitted, then marking the patient using the accusative case is optional.

Agreement
In general, the Japonic languages lack agreement between the verb and its arguments. However, many Japonic languages do have optional "directionality" agreement, using various forms of "to give" attached to the participle as auxillaries.

Directionality in Japonic is based on the person of the subject and the person of the beneficiary (not necessarily the direct object). If the person of the beneficiary is lower than that of the subject (e.g. first person beneficiary and third person subject), then the marked form is used. The "passive" forms listed below are used when the subject is omitted; this form is typically used for first person beneficiaries. The forms used are listed below:

The marked forms are the basis of polite requests:
 * Namari: -te kueyo, from *-tay kuray-ryə; -te kuyäbē, from *-tay kuray pampi-ar-ryə; -te kudasae, borrowed from Japanese
 * New Kudara: -te frejo/-ti friju, from *-tay kuray-ryə; -te frebelo/-ti fribilu, from *-tay kuray pampi-ar-ryə
 * Tanmuran: -te kure, from *-tay kuray-ryə; -te kurebere, from *-tay kuray pampi-ar-ryə; -te kudasai, borrowed from Japanese

Note: the form *kuryay- is my conjecture on the etymology of Okinawan kwiyun, which would have had a preform *kuye-.

Only Namari shows proper subject-verb agreement. In this case, most of the suffixes are borrowed from non-Japonic languages, and as such I will not mention them here.

Verbal adjectives
Unlike normal verbs, verbal adjectives do not conjugate for aspect or voice. They also have additional forms unique to adjectives:

Only Namari and New Kudara possess comparative forms for adjectives; Tanmuran generally leaves comparatives unmarked. This form is derived from *-ku mə ar-, giving Namari -kumoi and New Kudara -(a)fmoram or -(ə)fmurəm. All three languages have superlative forms for adjectives, but they are derived differently:
 * Namari: from *-ku mə taka-, whence -kumotakakai
 * New Kudara: from *-ku mage-, whence -(a)fmagesam or -(ə)fməgisəm.
 * Tanmuran: from *-ku-tay əpə-, whence -kutōi

Negatives are formed differently from normal verbs, and as usual, they conjugate for "tense":

New Kudara, unlike the other Japonic languages in Innocence Seekers (except certain dialects of Namari), has gender, and this is reflected in the form of verbal (and nominal) adjectives used. Verbal adjectives (but not verbs) have different forms in the conclusive and attributive depending on gender. The "yin" gender, or feminine, is the default in New Kudara, and is used for the lemma.

Note that negative and comparative forms of verbal adjectives do not have gendered forms.

Number
All languages featured have singular and plural number, while Namari also has a dual. Both Namari and Tanmuran also feature a collective separate from the plural, while New Kudara combines the two.

In all cases, number is not marked if the noun is explicitly modified by a numeral. The New Kudara plural suffix is -tta/-ttə after a noun ending in a vowel, and -ta/-tə after nouns ending in a non-coronal or non-obstruent consonant. However, if the word-final consonant is a coronal obstruent (/t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /ɕ/, /ʑ/, /t͡s/, /t͡ɕ/), the /t/ assimilates to this consonant, forming a geminate.

Case
The three languages featured have a variable number of cases. Namari has thirteen cases, New Kudara eleven, and Tanmuran ten. However, they vary slightly.

The following table lists the cases and their possible Proto-Japonic markers:

Note that the "ergative" is simply a label corresponding to its role in New Kudara; I am actually unsure of the morphosyntactic alignment of Proto-Japonic (New Kudara is tripartite). Not listed above is the pronominal nominative suffix *-re?, which is realised as -e in Namari, -re/-ri in New Kudara and -re in Tanmuran.

In all three languages, which genitive to use is determined by the animacy of the noun. Typically, animates use the reflex of *nka, while inanimates use the reflex of *nə. The marker *na is vestigial in all three languages.

Namari has three declensional classes, and is unique in that its nouns can alternate between /i/-suffixed and bound forms in declension (this is the basis of the Namari second declension). Namari has a few irregular nouns, which retain things such as irregular genitives or diphthongal pronunciation in the dative.

New Kudara does not have declensional classes per se, but there are rules that need to be followed when declining for case:
 * The lemma is the intransitive case.
 * The ergative case uses -e or -i when the noun stem ends in a consonant.
 * Likewise, the accusative case uses -o or -u in the same environment.
 * If the noun stem ends in a vowel, the ablative suffix begins with -j-; otherwise it is omitted.
 * If the noun ends in a consonant, the dative, instrumental and locative have an epenthetic /a/ or /ə/ added.
 * If the noun ends in -a or -ə, they are replaced by long variants of the ergative and accusative suffixes.
 * If the noun ends in -e or -i, they become nonsyllabic -j- before the accusative -o or -u.
 * If the noun ends in -o or -u, the ergative is simply -j.
 * If the noun ends in a long vowel, hiatus is always inserted between the stem and the ergative/accusative.
 * The allative suffix always inserts a hiatus after a vowel.
 * Vowel harmony must be observed.

Tanmuran nouns do not properly decline; they are generally invariant with respect to case markers. However, there are exceptions (e.g. kami becomes kanna and mezu becomes mina in the genitive).

Pronouns work differently from nouns. A comparison of forms between the languages is listed below (using the first person singular pronoun):

The other personal pronouns decline identically. The demonstrative ka- declines similarly, except in the genitive, where the form depends on animacy (and in the New Kudara accusative, whose form is kaw).

The demonstrative ko-, which is more regular, declines as follows:

The same applies to the other /o/ demonstratives and the interrogative (although vowel harmony applies in New Kudara).

The New Kudara pronoun šrī ("she") declines as follows:

New Kudara is the only featured language to have gendered third-person pronouns; Namari shie is used regardless of gender or animacy, while Tanmuran kare applies to both males and females (inanimates use the general demonstrative sore; a word kanojo meaning "she" does exist in Tanmuran, but it is borrowed from Japanese and rarely used). The New Kudara gendered pronouns are kare ("he"), šrī ("she") and suri ("it").

Nominal adjectives
All three languages featured have nominal adjectives whose properties are separate from nouns. In all languages, nominal adjectives must be paired with the copula in order to act predicatively. When acting adnominally, they take the genitive. However, the form of the genitive does not necessarily match that of a normal noun, and varies between languages:
 * Namari nominal adjectives have their genitives influenced by a limited vowel harmony rule, with -na used when the word has /a/, /u/ or their derivatives, and -no otherwise.
 * New Kudara nominal adjectives have their genitives vary depending on the gender of the noun it modifies. The default is -na/-nə for the feminine, with the masculine being -ga/-gə and the neuter being -no/-nu.
 * Tanmuran nominal adjectives generally have their genitives in -na.

All nominal adjectives form their degree forms the same way as their verbal counterparts, and use the dative as adverbial forms. The comparative and superlative forms of the nominal adjectives are listed below:

Other markers
All three languages feature a topic marker and a focus marker. The topic marker is *pa in Proto-Japonic, which is reflected in Namari -(h)a, New Kudara -a/-ə and Tanmuran -wa. I tentatively reconstruct the focus particle as *sə, and this is reflected in Namari -zu and -koso, New Kudara -zo/-zu and -koso/-kusu, and Tanmuran -zo and -koso. I cannot reconstruct any other focus markers at the moment, although additional markers do exist.

The focus marker has the property of changing the inflection of the main verb. In a normal declarative sentence, the main verb is in its conclusive form. However, the existence of a focus marker forces the main verb to take a different conjugation instead (in the case of -zo/-zu, it is the attributive, and in the case of -koso/-kusu, it is an emphatic form).

The New Kudara topic marker has special forms when combined with case markers (except the genitive, which cannot combine with the topic marker): The pronominal nominative -re/-ri becomes -la/-lə when topicalised.

The New Kudara pronoun šrī ("she") has special topicalised forms: