Language scratchpad/Altlangs/Alternate reconstructions

This subarticle lists alternate reconstructions of proto-languages in the Innocence Seekers setting.

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.

Alternate Proto-Germanic
Note: Many forms are taken from Proto-Germanic grammar.

Nouns
Here I suppose the existence of the locative (attested very marginally in early (runic) Old English as -i), as well as a nominal dual (unattested in any Germanic language in real life).

Strong verbs
Strong verbs in the Germanic languages generally display ablaut, and originate from Proto-Indo-European.

The reconstruction of the passive voice poses a major problem. Even within the Innocence Seekers setting, which has many more Germanic and Para-Germanic languages available to scholars, the full reconstruction of passive forms remains elusive. In real life, only Gothic retains an inherited passive, and this passive shows significant syncretism, with one form for the first and third person singular, and a single form for all dual and plural forms. Other Germanic languages only preserve the passive in fossilisations (e.g. Proto-Norse haite "I am called"). In Innocence Seekers, the bulk of the information regarding the Germanic passive comes from the Blylandic languages, and even then, most Blylandic languages remodelled the passive.

Copula
The reconstruction of the present indicative of the copula presents significant challenges. While the third person plural can be confidently reconstructed as *sindi (German sind, Old English sind(on), Gothic sind), and to a lesser extent the third person singular as *isti (German ist, English is, Early Old Norse es, Gothic ist), the other forms are less certain without reference to Proto-Indo-European. Most of the West Germanic languages take forms from beuną (e.g. German bin, bist; Dutch ben), while Old English has the forms eart ("art") and earon ("are"), which derive from a separate and now-lost preterite-present verb. The etymologies of Old English am, eam and eom ("am") are not certain, as they are not regular derivations from *immi.

Of the other Germanic languages in real life, only Gothic retains both the first and second person singular forms (as im and is). While Old Norse retains the first person singular form (as em), the rest of the present indicative conjugation is remodelled as a preterite-present verb (ert, er, erum, eruð, eru), and Icelandic and Faroese have levelled the first person singular to er (most of the other North Germanic languages have lost person and number conjugations). Gothic has also remodelled the non-singular forms, using a stem sij- also used for the subjunctive.

The present subjunctive, on the other hand, is more securely reconstructible. While Gothic remodelled the subjunctive based on the singular forms, the other Germanic languages retain the sī- stem in one form or another (although Old Norse lowers the vowel to /eː/), and generalise it to the singuar (partially in the case of Early Old Norse, which retains the first person singular sjá). Unfortunately, the singular forms cannot be reliably reconstructed without reference to Proto-Indo-European; Proto-Germanic *sijǭ is only inherited in Early Old Norse, and possibly West Saxon Old English sīe (where if *sī- was used the form would be **sī); Gothic imports the standard subjunctive endings. The other singular forms are levelled in all Germanic languages, again except possibly West Saxon Old English.