Proto-Dené–Caucasian language

Proto-Dené–Caucasian is the reconstructed hypothetical common ancestor of the Dené–Caucasian languages, a proposed language superfamily to which Basque, North Caucasian, Burushaski, Sino-Tibetan, Yeniseian, Na-Dené and possibly also other language families may belong.

Reconstructed phonology

As with Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic, linguists working on reconstructions of the Proto-Dené–Caucasian language usually do not use the IPA. To facilitate comparisons with the literature, Starostin's transcription (largely identical to Bengtson's) is used in this section, followed by the IPA equivalents between slashes (for phonemes) or brackets (for actual phones). It differs from the IPA especially in the affricates, each of which is written with a single character, and the laterals. This convention strongly resembles the APA.

As in all reconstructions of proto-languages, every value in the tables below is a hypothesis and may change as more work is done.

Consonants

• ¹ As in today's Caucasian languages, all plosives and affricates (except /ʡ/ and /ʔ/) were seemingly either voiced, ejective, or aspirated. Because aspiration alone was not phonemic, it is not shown in the phonemic transcription of Proto-Dené–Caucasian, Caucasian languages, or Na-Dené languages in this article.
• ² These sounds were probably not separate phonemes, but allophones of their voiceless counterparts.

Vowels

The reconstruction of vowels is rather tentative. Both long and short vowels are reconstructed, but it is as yet uncertain whether the distinction was phonemic or not. It was, however, crucial for phonological developments in the daughter languages.

The Proto-Dené–Caucasian root

Root Structure

The most basic root structure in Proto-Dené–Caucasian is reconstructed as follows:

• Nominal and verbal roots:
  • */C₁VC₂V/
  • */C₁VC₂VC₃V/
• Verbal and adjectival roots may be preceded by class prefixes and have the following structure (/=/ denotes the position of a class marker):
  • */=VC₁V/
  • */=VC₁VC₂/
• Pronominal roots may be monosyllabic:
  • */CV/

Prosodical features

The evidence from Sino-Tibetan, Yenisian and North Caucasian appears to support the existence of dynamic accent (marked with an acute above the vowel):

• Stress on the penultimate syllable:
  • */C₁V́C₂V/
  • */C₁VC₂V́C₃V/
• Stress on the final syllable:
  • */C₁VC₂V́/
  • */C₁VC₂VC₃V́/

Regular Correspondences

Suprasegmental

The stressed penultimate syllables in PDC give rise to the morpheme-wide tenseness in PNC. As only fricatives and affricates can be tense in PNC, their absence makes tense morphemes indistinguishable from the lax ones. The loss of the slot-3 glottal stop after long vowels in PY is another problem for the clear determination of stress in PDC. In the following table, P represents a PNC stop consonant, whereas F a fricative or an affricate.

Segmental

Consonants

§1 Stops

Note: Na-Dené languages have three series of stops usually realized as voiceless lenes, aspirated fortes, and ejective fortes, respectively. These are most often transcribed as /t tʰ tʼ/ (emphasizing the aspiration contrast and the fact that all three series are usually voiceless). In the following table, they are transcribed as /d t tʼ/ to make comparison to the other Dené–Caucasian language families (and to the orthographies of the Na-Dené languages) easier.

Sound correspondences

The following table depicts how the phonemes of Proto-Dené–Caucasian are hypothesized to have changed into the phonemes of its descendants. Starostin's transcription is used for Proto-Dené–Caucasian, the Basque orthography is used for Basque; IPA is given for all. (Burushaski does not have a fixed orthography.) The Na-Dené correspondences are rather tentative and come exclusively from Bengtson (2008). Hyphens indicate that a phoneme evolved in different ways depending on its position in a word, for example at the beginning or the end. "0" indicates disappearance without a trace. The exact identity of the Proto-Yeniseian phoneme "r₁" is unclear. The derivatives of Proto-Dené–Caucasian consonant clusters are not shown when their constituent phonemes evolved independently.

Note: Na-Dené languages have three series of stops usually realized as voiceless lenes, aspirated fortes, and ejective fortes, respectively. These are most often transcribed as /t tʰ tʼ/ (emphasizing the aspiration contrast and the fact that all three series are usually voiceless). In the following table, they are transcribed as /d t tʼ/ to make comparison to the other Dené–Caucasian language families (and to the orthographies of the Na-Dené languages) easier.

• ¹ /h/ has disappeared in the southern dialects of Basque in historical times.
• ² /ɦ/ is reconstructed (*) for earlier stages of Basque; it has become /h/ in two northern dialects and disappeared in all others (the remaining northern one and the southern ones).
• ³ Next to /o/ and /u/.
• ⁴ Lengthening of the preceding vowel.
• ⁵ Nasalization of the preceding vowel.
• ⁶ In PNC, the prosodic feature of morpheme-wide tenseness is marked by presence of one or more long (tense) consonants in a morpheme. Starostin also uses a superscript ^T to mark a tense morpheme and a superscript ^L to mark a lax one, i.e. PNC *(...)Cː(...) = *(...)C(...)^T and *(...)C(...) = *(...)C(...)^L.
• ⁷ Or rather, when the stress was on the last syllable and the second consonant was a liquid (/CVˈRV/), the word became /CRV/ instead of the otherwise expected /CVR/.
• ⁸ At the third position of the first (or only) syllable (/CVʔC/), unless that syllable is long (/CVːC/).

Footnotes

Bibliography