Northian language

Northian
lowatungus (tongue of the people)
Native to	Northern States
Native speakers	17,420,000 (2010)
Language family	Indo-European
Early forms	Proto-Indo-European Proto-Gothic
Official status
Official language in	Northern States
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

Northian or Northian language is an Indo-European language in the Gothic sub-family. The language is attested first in several forms of Epic Northian, through the corpus of ancient Northian cultic formulae, parts of which date to as early as the 20th century BCE, by some authorities.

Genealogy

The majority view is that the Northian languages form the Peripheral-Gothic branch within the Gothic family of languages, while all other Gothic languages are considered to form the Central-Gothic or True-Gothic 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 Gothic 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 the same epenthesis of /u/ to syllabic resonants and laryngeal evolution, which confirms it as a Gothic language and establishes a lower limit for the differentiation of Northian from other Gothic 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

• Arcane Northian (c. 2000 – 800 BCE)—survives as spells and incantation material interspersed between younger texts, rarely longer than a few lines, but set phrases often appear as quotations in younger texts. The upper bound Arcane Northian is hard to set down because it would represent the speech of Acrean communities ancestral to first-wave migrants to the west, datable to only 1500 BCE, and their speech may or may not have been significantly different from that of other Acreans. In the words of linguist Bremmer, "the oldest Arcane Northian may be the same language as the Acrean of that time."
• Epic Northian (800 – 300 BCE)—exists primarily in poetic works that describes the actions of priests and heroes.
• Imperial Northian (300 BCE – 200 CE)

Grammar

Northian inherited a highly synthetic grammar from its parent language Proto-Gothic 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 Indo-European proto-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.

Also characteristic of PIE morphology is the theme vowel, which interposes between stem and ending and requires a special set of endings in some cases. Because stem and ending tend to blur and fuse over time, the presence of the theme vowel generates new surface-forms even when it merely separates familiar, underlying forms. In Northian, a slightly unusual situation has occurred where endings used without the theme vowel—called "athematic"—have displayed those with, whereas the opposite development is commoner in other Indo-European languages.

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.

The underlying endings of the athematic declension are generally reconstructed as follows. Some forms may be insecurely attested or disputed.

	Singular		Dual		Plural
	Masc.-Fem.	Neut.	Masc.	F.-N.	Masc.-Fem.	Neut.
Nominative	-s / -Ø	-Ø	-a / -e / long	-ī	-es	-a / long
Vocative	-Ø
Accusative	-m / -um				-as / -ūn
Locative	-i		-āo		-su
Genitive	-s / -os / -as	-s	-о̄us / -ūs		-om / -am
Dative	-i / -ē	-i	-mā		-mus
Instrumental	-t / -a

In the singular, nominatives may or may not have an -s ending. In the -i and -u stems, nouns which have -s are always masculine or feminine, while those without, always neuter. In other stems, the presence of the final -s does not predict gender. Where the stem ends in a resonant, a final -s triggered Hock's law, which causes the -s to disappear and the preceding vowel to lengthen. The vocative form never has -s but is otherwise identical to the nominative. The accusative form shows -m where the stem is vocalic, and -um where consonantal. The dative and locative forms are similar to each other: in the paroxytone class, they are identical, but in the oxytone class, the accent is on the ultima in the dative and the penultima in the locative, the former therefore full-grade -ē < *-ey. The forms of the genitive are to be explained in terms similar to those of the dative, where -os represents full-grade and applies to oxytone words, and -s the zero-grade, to paroxytone words. Where the ultima anomalously takes the full-grade in the genitive in paroxytone words, the ending syllable is regularly weakened to -as prehistorically.

The dual is particularly difficult to describe exactly because it was not obligatory for most nouns. Only natural pairs (eyes, the sun and moon, etc.) are reliably inflected as duals, and even then only when so spoken, e.g. guβōm tās koinimūn θβā́ "two (du.) legs (pl.) of beeves (pl.)". The basic nominative ending in PIE was *-h₁, which is reflected after consonants as -a, yet this is often conflated with the thematic ending in -ā < *o-h₁. Where the ending requires a full-grade, -e < *-h₁e appears. Stems in -i and -u are lengthened to -ī and -ū due to *-h₁. The neuter nouns in consonant stems apparently take -ī < *ih₁ as an ending, but only sometimes in neuter nouns in -i and -u: both genuī and genū "two knees" is attested, but nothing remains of a putative dual in *i-ī, instead dēawā sokoī unōǘs "two luminous companions [sun-boat and moon-boat]". The feminine nouns in -e- follow the neuter nouns in the nominative. The accusative and vocative syncretize with the nominative.

The dual genitive like the singular has different proto-forms depending on the accent of the stem. In oxytone words, the full-grade ending was -ōus < *Hows; in paroxytone, it stood in zero-grade as -ūs < *Hus. After consonant stems the situation is complicated by analogical substitutions, but after vowel stems phonotactic contractions obscure underlying forms to no small extent. The full-grade genitive ending amounts to three morae, and it is generally thought that metrical limitations prohibit the consecutive appearance of four or more consecutive vowel morae without an intervening consonant. Additionally, similar vowels contract with each other. Such is the case in patrṓüs "of the two uncles" < *patrow-ūs and dunguṓs "of the two tongues" < *dungu-ōus.

Forms of the thematic declension, with the theme vowel written as part of the ending, follow.

	Singular		Dual		Plural
	Masc.-Fem.	Neut.	Masc.-Fem.	Neut.	Masc.-Fem.	Neut.
Nominative	-os / -as	-om / -am	-ā	-о̄ī	-о̄s	-ā
Vocative	-e / -i
Accusative	-om / -am				-о̄n
Locative	-oi		-о̄o		-osu
Genitive	-о̄s		-о̄ās		-om / -am
Dative	-о̄i		-о̄mā		-omus
Instrumental	-od / -о̄d

See also

• Northern States