Iberian West Germanic / Kastixex - WIP

[felipesnark]

Kastixex /kas’tiʃeʃ/ from “Castilish” from Old Spanish Castiella

This new project is based on an alt-history in which a group of mostly Old English speakers ended up on the Iberian peninsula and then their language underwent sound changes similar to those that led to the development of Spanish and Galician. I would imagine that there may also be influences from Portuguese, Asturian, Basque, Gothic (from the Visigoths and Vandals) and Arabic. This is very much a work in progress and I’m not sure I have finalized the sound changes I want to use.

Here is the preliminary phonology:

Consonants

Stops: /p t k b d g/ <p t k b d g>
Affricates: /tʃ/ <ch>
Nasals: /m n ɲ/ <m n ñ/
Fricatives / f v s θ ʃ/ <f v s z x>
Liquids: /ɾ r l/ <r r/rr l>
Glides: /j w/ <y/i w/u>
Glottal: /h/ <h>

/ɾ r/ only contrast medially, where the former is <r> and the latter is <rr>.
<y w> are used word initially and word finally.

Vowels

/a e i o u/ <a e i o u>

Stress is usually on the root syllable.

A bit on nouns

There are three grammatical genders, masculine, feminine and neuter; two numbers, singular and plural; three cases, nominative, genitive and dative.

Example strong nouns
hond m. dog

Code: Select all

	Sg.	pl.
Nom.	hond	hondas
Gen.	hondes	honda
Dat.	honde	hondon

xep n. ship

Code: Select all

    
	Sg.	pl.
Nom.	xep	xebo
Gen.	xebes	xeba
Dat.	xebe	xebon

dun f. hill, dune

Code: Select all

	Sg.	pl.
Nom.	dun	duna
Gen.	dunes	duna
Dat.	dun(e)	dunon

Example sentences:

Ech beyeñe on nive yeyod.
/et͡ʃ be'jeɲe on 'ni.ve je'jod/
I’m beginning a new language.

Ech yaf her on xep.
/et͡ʃ jaf her on ʃep/
I gave her a ship.

[All4Ɇn]

Looking forward to more of this! Only question I have so far is what you mean exactly by dun's dative singular form being dun(e).

[felipesnark]

Looking forward to more of this! Only question I have so far is what you mean exactly by dun's dative singular form being dun(e).

Thanks! When I wrote it, I wasn't sure if the -e would be there, as it would have been lost by sound changes. I have since decided that it will be dune with the -e added back by analogy.

My next step has been to work on personal pronouns. Although Old English had lost its reflexive pronoun, Kastixex redeveloped one from borrowing from a local Iberian Germanic language.

<i> is a glide before other vowels, so hio, for example, is /hjo/.

I have also worked on a general paradigm for weak nouns and have come up with the following:


And here is the inflection of a sample weak noun, zenaba /θeˈna.ba/ guy, dude (cf. Old English cnapa):

[felipesnark]

A bit more on personal pronouns

Kastixex includes a set of third person pronouns that are just for inanimate antecedents.


Also, Kastixex developed a couple of pairs of additional plural pronouns, made from suffixing -yalo (cf. OE eall) or -odro (cf. OE óþer, cf. Spanish nosotros, vosotros, ModE y'all) to the plural pronouns. In the first person plural forms, the -yalo form is an inclusive 1PL and the -odro form is 1PL exclusive. These forms are not mandatory, and are used for clarification or emphasis.


Adjective Inflection
Like many other Germanic languages, Kastixex adjectives have a weak declension and a strong declension. The weak declension is used in the presence of a definite article, determiner or possessive adjective and the strong form is used elsewhere.

[All4Ɇn]

What is the distinction between het and tet exactly?

[felipesnark]

Het has developed into an animate pronoun, used for people, sentient beings, animals, deities, etc. belonging to the neuter grammatical gender. Tet is used for inanimate antecedents in the neuter grammatical gender, like plants, rocks, abstract ideas, things, etc.

[All4Ɇn]

Het has developed into an animate pronoun, used for people, sentient beings, animals, deities, etc. belonging to the neuter grammatical gender. Tet is used for inanimate antecedents in the neuter grammatical gender, like plants, rocks, abstract ideas, things, etc.

Interesting. So is there a significant number of animate nouns that occur in the neuter gender?

[felipesnark]

Het has developed into an animate pronoun, used for people, sentient beings, animals, deities, etc. belonging to the neuter grammatical gender. Tet is used for inanimate antecedents in the neuter grammatical gender, like plants, rocks, abstract ideas, things, etc.

Interesting. So is there a significant number of animate nouns that occur in the neuter gender?

Well honestly, I haven't explored enough Old English nouns to guess. But I imagine that Kastixex speakers would have started making a distinction between a non-specified animate and inanimate antecedents, much like English speakers often do so with they/it. The distinction in pronoun animacy would have happened with the masculine and feminine pronouns first, and spread to the neuter one by analogy.

Edited to add: I myself am not completely satisfied with this system although I like the idea of an animacy distinction in the third person pronouns, at least in the singular. Maybe instead het would continue to refer to objects and another pronoun could arise for animate antecedents.

[All4Ɇn]

Edited to add: I myself am not completely satisfied with this system although I like the idea of an animacy distinction in the third person pronouns, at least in the singular. Maybe instead het would continue to refer to objects and another pronoun could arise for animate antecedents.

I will say that I also like the idea of an animacy distinction

[felipesnark]

I'm not ready for a full post on verbs yet, they are still very much a work in progress. I do have a number of ideas...

• Most of the contracted forms of the some 2sg and 3sg present indicative of some West Saxon verbs disappeared except for some common verbs

• Some new stem alternative arise from /i/ or /j/ in Class II weak verbs

Here are my notes as I am developing the verb forms:

Spoiler:

For the strong verbs, there is a good amount of reorganizing and analogy among the classes, though they remain mostly distinct.

OE wesan and beon coalesce into one verb, bion, with the finite forms in b- developing to a synthetic future form. It is the only synthetic future form in the language.

bion to be

Spoiler:

[felipesnark]

I tweaked the personal pronouns. The main changes being a bit of leveling due to analogy in the inanimate pronouns, changing the 3PL animate pronoun from hie to hi in the nominative/accusative form, and realizing that I hadn't run the forms of OE eall through my sound changes when making the alternative plural pronouns.

Spoiler:

[felipesnark]

I decided to make a small tweak to the phonology: /h/ will instead be /x/ and will be realized as [ç] syllable finally after a front vowel /i e/ and the cluster /xj/ is realized as [ç]. In a syllable onset before a vowel, it may be realized as [h] or [x]. Elsewhere, it is [x].

I have also worked a bit on interrogative pronouns. I believe they will also be used to form subordinate clauses, but not relative ones.

Code: Select all

Kastixex	IPA		English		Old English
huo		/xwo/		who		hwá
huet		/xwet/		what		hwæt
hues		/xwes/		whose		hwæs
huon		/xwon/	to/for whom/what	hwám
hui		/xwi/		why		hwý
huer		/xwer/		where		hwæːr
hu		/xu/		how		hú
hueñe		/xweɲe/		when		hwænne
huanon		/xwanon/	whence		hwanon
hueder		/xweder/	whither		hwæde

[felipesnark]

I'm tweaking Kastixex's 3rd person personal pronouns. For this latest draft...
3rd person animate M/F: based on OE personal pronouns for M/F
3rd person inanimate M/F: based on OE word for the/that with leveling by analogy
3rd person inanimate N: based on OE neuter person pronouns
3rd person animate N: developed from OE distal pronoun ġeon (> jon) and then initial consonant changed by analogy to h- (jon > hon).