Northian language

Northian
lowatungus (tongue of the people)
Native to	Northern States
Native speakers	17,420,000 (2010)
Language family	Erani-Eracuran
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.

Northian is remarkable in the reconstruction of Proto-Erani-Eracuran, the hypothesized, unattested ancestral language to many major families of languages, as it preserves with "stunning accuracy" archaic formations of many nouns, which have clarified reconstructions of PEE ablaut and accent. Its verbal system is generally thought to be secondarily evolved to a great extent from the ancestral language and is of little value in its reconstruction, though it is nevertheless informative of the development of the EE verbal system in the Nordic family.

It was the prevailing belief in the mid-19th century that Northian was a Baltic or Slavic language, on the basis of similarity with the Satemized phonology of those languages and the proximity of Silua, which spoke a Baltic language. This was strengthened by the sentiment in the Northern States that they were a distinct people from the Nordics. However, it was noted as early as 1870 by Sir Kilby Tapper that real cognates between Northian and Siluan are impossible to find, and he proposed Northian to be an independent branch of the Erani-Eracura family. Northian's affinity with the Nordic languages was not discovered in part because they were considered united through Grimm's law, which Northian did not exhibit. As reconstruction of Proto-Erani-Eracuran advanced, it was realized that a number of sound changes must have occurred prior to Grimm's law, which, according to Mme. Caron's widely accepted 1903 thesis, identify Northian with Nordic languages.

Forms and stages of development

• Galic Northian (c. 1500 – 500 BCE)—survives as "gales" (spells and ritualistic songs) interspersed in Epic poetry, rarely longer than a few lines, but set phrases often appear as quotations in younger texts. The upper bound Galic Northian is hard to set down because it would represent the speech of bronze-age migrants to the west, and their speech may or may not have been significantly different from that of other bronze-age communities in what is now Acrea. The corpus of Galic verse is small, at about 6,000 words, but it is currently the oldest attested Nordic language. Galic verse, noticeably different from the Epic language, is considered an important source for the reconstruction of Proto-Erani-Eracuran, because it possesses such features as a complete dual declension that have been lost in other EE languages. Galic Northian is not the direct predecessor of Epic Northian, but a close relative or dialect; despite its age, Galic is not in all cases the more conservative cousin.
• Epic Northian (c. 500 – 200 BCE)—exists primarily in poetic works that describes the actions of heroes. Epic poetry is of variable length but often thousands of lines. Epics are always set in the distant past but may obliquely reflect the poet's own times through direct or indirect references to places and events. The identities of individual Epic poets have never been discovered, and it is most likely that Epics were composed by multiple poets, adapted for audiences, and continually evolving as bodies of literature. Nevertheless, scholars consider that some Epics may have been composed by the same poetic schools based on similarities in diction and theme. The Epics are probably an oral tradition prior to their codification around 200 BCE, when Acrean scholars interested in Northian legends committed them to writing. The corpus of Epic poetry is large, with over 50 titles and 350,000 lines.
• Runic Northian (300 BCE – 200 CE)—this is the category of the earliest prose writings left by the Northians in their own language, in the Runic alphabet.

Writing system

Runes

The very earliest records of Northian words occur in writings done by Celtic and Syaran travellers who encountered the Northian tribes in the 8th or 7th centuries BCE, though these are typically no longer than a few words, and then most are personal and place names. The corpus of early but complete writings in Northian are done in Old Acrean Runes, which is an Alphabet of 24 letters. The phonetic values of the Northian Runes, however, are at variance with those used in the Acrean language, because the languages' phonologies are different. It is possible that they were subsequently regularized at a later date, since the earliest surviving manuscripts do not predate the 3rd century.

Rune	ᚠ	ᚢ	ᚦ	ᚨ	ᚱ	ᚲ	ᚷ	ᚹ	ᚺ	ᚾ	ᛁ	ᛃ	ᛈ	ᛇ	ᛉ	ᛊ	ᛏ	ᛒ	ᛖ	ᛗ	ᛚ	ᛜ	ᛞ	ᛟ
Transcription	xͮ	u ū	θ	a ā ə ə̄ å	r	k	g ɣ ġ	u̯ v	h ḫ	n	i ī ị	i̯	p	ć	z	s š	t	b v	e ē	m	l	ṇ	d	o ō å
Phoneme	hʷ	u uː	ð	a aː ə əː aʔa	r	k	g ɣ s	w	h s	n	i iː iʔi	j	p	t	s	s š	t	b v	e eː	m	l	ŋ	d	o oː aʔa

The Runic orthography of Northian presents several challenges to understanding of the text, as the alphabet was not designed for Northian phonology. <ᚨ> represents anything of five vowel phonemes, while the sound usually written as <å> in modern editions was, in manuscripts, interchangeable between <ᛟ ~ ᚨ>. The phonetic value of <å> is still debated, and according to some authorities it represented a trimoraic or suspended /ɑ ~ ɒ/. The rune in metre <ᛁ> can occupy three morae instead of two, where it is given the symbol <ị>; this is also interpreted as a suspended /iːʔi/ that corresponds with a dropped reflex of a laryngeal consonant. Trimoraic /o/ also exists, but as a free variant of bimoraic /o/ and not as a reflex of a dropped laryngeal. /s/ in final position has several conditioned allophones: after /i u/ and their long variants it surfaces as <š> which, later, has a different development, and the combination *-ms > <ṇġ>.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Mid	Back
Close	i ī í		u ū ů
Mid	e ē	ə ə̄	o ō
Open	a ā å ā̊

Galic Northian possessed six phonemic vowels; in the most common interpretation, they were distributed symmetrically and contrasted closedness and backness. All six vowels could be either long or short, the long version being held for twice as long as the short and assumed to be qualitatively identical.

In Runic orthography, quantity of neither vowel nor consonant is distinguished. The vowel /ə/ is written <a ~ e> across manuscripts, but /ə̄/ is almost always written as <a>. /å ā̊/, once recognized as trimoraic and tetramoraic /a/ alternated between <a ~ o>. Trimoraic /u/ was written alternately with <o>. Trimoraic /i/ was always written <i>.

The vowels /i/ and /u/ were capable of "overlong" duration, i.e. being held for three times as long as a short vowel. It was for a time held that /a/ was also capable of trimoraic or even tetramoraic length, but in more recent analyses all instances of overlong /a/ are actually two adjacent vowels, typically not of the same qualify, separated by hiatus. This is evidenced through a more careful reading of Galic verse, where "overlong" /a/ are more often than not better scanned as two syllables; however, there are still instances where "overlong" /a/ is crammed into a single syllable.

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 four numbers (singular, dual, plural, and collective) and eight cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, locative, genitive, ablative, dative, 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.  Morphological shape is associated with gender but does not exactly predict it.

The singular number denotes a single member of a countable entity, and the dual number, two of them. Plural number denotes three or more of members or instances of a countable entity, and collective number the category of an uncountable entity. In general, nouns formed either plural or collective forms, but a small group of nouns are capable of forming both plural and collective forms, with contrasting meanings. The plural and collective forms of all neuter nouns agree with singular modifiers and verbs.

The nominative case was used for the subject of sentences, while the vocative served for direct address. Where the nominative had a lengthened strong stem, the vocative had the short stem; where the former ended or once ended in -s, the vocative lacked -s. The accusative represents the direct object of most verbs. These three cases were called the direct cases. The locative case was used to denote location at, the genitive the possessor, the ablative the source or location from, the dative the indirect object, beneficiary, or location to, and the instrumental the means whereby. These five cases are the oblique cases.

As an inherited feature from the proto-language, Northian nouns could usually be analyzed into a root, suffix, and ending, the two former composing the noun-stem. Since the suffix and ending usually evolve together, nouns are pedagogically classified by their stem. These are grouped into four major declensions. The first declension descended from PEE nouns ending in *-eh₂ > -ā; the second, from nouns in *-os > -ō. Both these types were totally non-ablauting and are called "thematic" nouns in Northian context. The third declension ended in obstruents, -m, -mn, -n, -r, and non-neuter nouns in -s; these had suffix ablaut and a characteristic genitive ending in -ō. The fourth declension consisted of neuter nouns in -s, short and long -i and -u stems, and the heteroclitics; these had both root and suffix ablaut and a genitive ending in -s.

For the most part, the Epic language of around 650 BCE has eliminated all but one ablaut pattern associated with each stem class, with a small number of "irregular" nouns that do not conform (though diachronically they are for the most part regular). For most stems, this would be the oxytone type (OX) in Galic terms, but for the vowel-stems, neuter s-stems, and heteroclitics, the paroxytone (PX) endings were regularlized. Proparoxytone accent (PP) is considered irregular in the Epic language. Principal part I is the nom. sing., part II the acc. sing., and part III the gen. sing.

	I	II	III						IV
Stem	-ā	-o	-C	-m	-mn	-n	-r	-s	-os	-i	-u	-ī	-ū	-r/n
Gender	F	M/N	All	F	All	M/F	M/F	M/F	N	All	All	M/F	M/F	N
Pt. I	-ā	-ō -õ	-C-s	-mō	-mō -men	-ō -ēn	-ōr -ēr	-h-ōs	-ō	-i-s -i	-u-s -u	-īs -ī	-ūs -ū	-ar -or
Pt. II	-ām	-õ	-C-um	-ém-um	-mén-um	-ón-um	-er-um	-ei̯-um		-oi̯-um	-ō-m	-īi̯-um	-um
Pt. III	-ās	-oi̯hō	-C-ō	-m̄-ō	-mn-ō	-n-ō	-r-ō	-s̄-ō	-ei̯-ō	-ī-s	-ō-s	-i̯ōs	-u̯ōs	-n-ō

Pronouns

First person

	Singular		Dual		Plural
	Stressed	Enclitic	Stressed	Enclitic	Stressed	Enclitic
Nominative	éɣōn	ig	wḗ	nā	wḗ	nōs
Accusative	mé	mi	unawé		ummé
Genitive	méme	moi	nā́		unsér, unsriḗ
Dative	méɣio	moi	nanā́		ummḗ

Second person

	Singular		Dual		Plural
	Stressed	Enclitic	Stressed	Enclitic	Stressed	Enclitic
Nominative	tū́	ti	yṓ	wā́	yṓs	wōs
Accusative	θβé	te	ūwé		usmé
Genitive	téβe	toi	wā́		yuser, yusriḗ
Dative	téβio	toi	wanā́		usmḗ

Demonstrative

	Singular			Dual			Plural
	Masc.	Neut.	Fem.	Masc.	Neut.	Fem.	Masc.	Neut.	Fem.
Nominative	so	tod	sē	tṓ	tēī	tēī	toi	tē	tēi
Accusative	tom		tēm				tṓm		tā́s
Locative	tosmi		tēsiēi	tṓmōā			toisu		tēsu
Genitive	tosio		tēsiēs	tṓmōǘs			toiom		tēom
Dative	tosmoi		tēsiēē	tṓsemā			toiomus		tēmus
Instrumental	toi		tēsiēi

Adjectives

Numerals

Cardinal numbers one through four are declinable as athematic adjectives of various declensional patterns, agreeing with the nouns (explicit or implicit) they modify in gender, case, and number. Of course, "one" is only inflected in the singular, "two" in the dual, and "three" and "four" in the plural. Numbers five and above are indeclinable.

	"one"			"two"			"three"			"four"
	Masc.	Neut.	Fem.	Masc.	Neut.	Fem.	Masc.	Neut.	Fem.	Masc.	Neut.	Fem.
Nominative	sṓm	som	semei	θβā́	duī	θβóī	trḗis	trī́	trisrés	kweθβóres	kwetūra	kwetusres
Vocative	som		semei
Accusative	sémum		semīm				trī́n		trisérūn	kweθβórūn		kwetusérūn
Locative	sémi		smiēi	duā́		duēi	trēsu		trisersu	kweθβerru		kwetuserru
Genitive	smos		smiēs	duōs		duēs	triom		trisrom	kweturóm		kwetusrom
Dative	smē		smiēi	dumā́		duēi	trimus		trisurmus	kweturmus		kwetusurmus
Instrumental	smed		smiēd			duēd			trisūr			kwetusūr

The nominative of "one" is endingless and shows o-grade in the masculine. The e-grade and zero-grade appear elsewhere. Its declension is otherwise quite regular. In "two", the masculine and feminine forms have spirantized initials, leading to the induction that the pre-form must have had consonantal *-w-, likely *dwo-; if this is true, the neuter may be interpreted as a zero-grade *du-. The neuter nominative shows the regular i-stem ending. The stem in du- appear elsewhere. In "three", the masculine nominative is from PEE *tréyes, regularly > *trḗes > trḗis with the raising of the final unstressed *-e-.

Vocabulary

Northian shares an ancestor with Nordic languages, and much of their vocabulary is cognate. Nevertheless, owing to the time depth of the separation of the two branches, such cognates are difficult for language learners to recognize, and in many cases true cognates may have developed different meanings. The situation is further clouded by the borrowing of Nordic vocabulary on a massive scale and from multiple sources, creating many doublets and triplets of words that have differing meanings.

• Manuš (cognate to Nordic Mens, Mann, man etc.) means "human", of all sexes; a male person is a nā (gen. drō) in Northian. While some u-stem nouns have feminine forms ending in -ō or -wī, manuš is invariant and always grammatically masculine in gender.
• Arɣiš (cognate to Nordic argr etc.) means sexual action forbidden on moral or religious grounds; a sacrilege; incest. However, arɣiš does not connote homosexuality and most often implies a forbidden heterosexual action, because during the Epic age there were far more taboos associated with heterosexual acts than homosexual ones.

See also

• Northern States
• Northian grammar