Dictionary:About Proto-Andusian

This page documents the dictionary's practice for Proto-Andusian (code YCP-XX), the reconstructed common ancestor of the Andusian language family. Being a reconstructed language, none of its forms are attested in writing; every entry is an inference, and the conventions below say how that uncertainty is written down.

Entry conventions

• Entries live at plain phonemic titles with no asterisk — the leading * that marks a reconstruction is supplied automatically wherever a form is displayed, by the language registry.
• Definitions are deliberately broad. A reconstructed word is a field of related senses rather than a point: the figurative senses record the extensions the word plausibly carried, and descendant vocabularies may each continue a different part of the field.
• Derived and compound words whose formation is still transparent carry an Etymology section pointing at their parts. A descendant language may inherit such a word whole (with sound change applied to the fossil), or coin it afresh from the inherited parts — the two routes give different results, and neither is more correct.

Phonology

The reconstructed inventory, as it stands in the core vocabulary:

Consonants
Plain stops	p t d b k g q ɢ c ɟ
Implosives	ɓ ɗ
Prenasalized	ᵐb ᵑg
Labiovelars	kp gb
Affricates	ts dz
Fricatives	f v s z x ɣ h
Nasals	m ɲ ŋ
Liquids and glide	r l w

Seven vowels: a e i o u ɛ ɔ. Vowel sequences occur freely (ᵑgao, gɔɛ, zae).

Two gaps appear systematic rather than accidental:

• There is no plain *n — the nasal series is m, ɲ, ŋ only, matching the prenasalized series (ᵐb, ᵑg, never ⁿd). Descendants that show an n will have innovated it.
• *p never begins a word, though it is common elsewhere (rop, qup, sorpe).

Derivation

Proto-Andusian word-building is suffixing, with two prefixes. The reconstructed affixes, each with its own entry:

Affix	Forms	Grounded in
*-uɣ	collectives: a mass or landscape of the base	ciᵐbuɣ “forest”
*-me	result and patient nouns	vutme “name”
*-so	agent nouns	soc “the begetter”
*-ᵐbu	instrument nouns	ᵐbu “hand”
*-oŋ	place nouns	oŋ “at”
*-dzi	diminutives	dziq “small”
*-gɛ	augmentatives	axgɛɣ “big”
*-ɛts	abstract nouns	ɛts “seed”
*-wa	stative adjectives	ɗixwa “full”
*-kɛ	inchoative verbs	kɛ “come, become”
*ᵐbi-	causatives and benefactives	ᵐbi “give”
*sog-	privatives	sog “not”

One bound root is reconstructed: *fiq “covering”, attested only in ciᵐbfiq “bark” and aɓfiq “skin” (and possibly hiding in fi “sky”).

Reduplication

Three reduplication patterns are reconstructed; the third is productive.

1. Nursery reduplication in kinship terms: kaka “grandfather” beside ka “father”; ɓeɓe “grandmother” beside ɓek “woman”. Frozen; not productive.
2. Expressive reduplication in imitative and affective words: ɲiɲi “mosquito”. Marginal.
3. Full reduplication as a live process: on verbs it is intensive–iterative (dzus-dzus “gnaw, keep biting”, from dzus “bite, eat”), and on nouns plausibly distributive (“here and there, of every kind”). Reduplicated forms are predictable and are not given their own entries; descendant languages may lexicalize individual ones.

See also

• Category:Proto-Andusian lemmas
• Andusian