Northian language
| Northian | |
|---|---|
| lowatungus (tongue of the people) | |
| Native to | Northern States |
Native speakers | 17,420,000 (2010) |
Indo-European | |
Early forms |
|
| Official status | |
Official language in | Northern States |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
Northian or Northian language is an Indo-European language in the Germanic sub-family. The language is attested first in several forms of Epic Northian, through the corpus of ancient Northian poetry, parts of which date to as early as the 8th century BCE, by some authorities.
Genealogy
The majority view is that the Northian languages form the Peripheral-Germanic branch within the Germanic family of languages, while all other Germanic languages are considered to form the Central-Germanic or True-Germanic branch. This classification is based on the observation that many texts in the oldest stratum of Epic Northian show features that are "quite wayward" compared to the innovations common to the other Germanic languages, such as the absence of Grimm's law and Verner's law and retention of vowels dropped in them. However, Northian languages of all strata are affected by Cogwill's law, which confirms its place within the Germanic family and establishes a lower limit for the differentiation of Northian from other Germanic languages.
Other authorities do not agree that Northian should be classified as a primary branch of the language family, and in their view Northian is a branch of the (attested) Acrean language instead. They forward that most texts outside of formulaic spells and verse do show a native (that is not introduced through loanwords) influence of Grimm's and Verner's law and that words which do not should be considered archaicisms protected by poetic meter or are subsequent restorations after these sound laws have already affected ordinary speech. The analysis of such diagnostic lemmas is complicated by their often divergent and strenuous interpretations and poor, if not unique, attestation.
Forms and stages of development
Writing system
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
Grammar
Northian inherited a highly synthetic grammar from its parent language Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European, though the evolution from these hypothesized ancestral languages have seen the merger of grammatical categories due to analogy or deflexion by way of periphrasis. Such processes continue after the earliest stage of the language, Epic Northian. Compared to its sister languages, Northian retains some archaicisms by way of its more conservative vowel phonology, wherein evolution has tended to the loss of grammatical forms in sister languages.
Northian retains a visible system of Indo-European ablaut, or vowel variations depending on grammatical form. Ablaut is connected to accent, but their precise interrelationships are actively debated. In general, a given syllable will exhibit a vowel when accented, called full-grade, while the same syllable in unaccented positions will not have a vowel, called zero-grade. Where no vowel is present, a class of sounds known as sonants (*r, *l, *n, *m, and *h in the Proto-Indo-European parent language) functions like vowels. In nouns, the direct cases (nominative, accusative, vocative, and locative) will tend to have full-grade in the root and zero-grade in the ending, and vice versa in the oblique cases. In verbs, the distinction lies between singular and plural numbers. Northian ablaut has considerably degraded via analogy and sound shift and rarely presents a coherent, predictable system.
Nouns
Nouns in Northian are divided into three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and are marked for three numbers (singular, dual, and plural) and seven cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, and instrumental). Adjectives agree with the nouns they modify, and pronouns with the nouns they represent, in gender, number, and case. The genders of most nouns are lexical (i.e. arbitrary), but in some cases they reflect biological gender.
| Singular | Dual | Plural | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Masc.-Fem. | Neut. | Masc.-Fem. | Neut. | Masc.-Fem. | Neut. | |
| Nominative | -s / -Ø | -Ø | -о̄ / -a / long | -ī | -es | -ā / long |
| Vocative | -Ø | |||||
| Accusative | -m / -um | -ns / -uns | ||||
| Locative | -i | -āo | -su | |||
| Genitive | -s / -os | -s | -ās | -om | ||
| Dative | -i / -ei | -i | -mā | -mus | ||
| Instrumental | -t | |||||
| Singular | Dual | Plural | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | -os | -о̄ | -о̄s |
| Vocative | -e | -о̄s | |
| Accusative | -om | -ons | |
| Locative | |||
| Genitive | -о̄s | -о̄m | |
| Dative | -о̄i | -omos | |
| Instrumental | -ot | - |