Wiktionary:About Proto-Algic
Proto-Algic is the ancestor of the Algic languages: Wiyot, Yurok, and Proto-Algonquian (whence the Algonquian languages). It is a second-level proto-language, a proto-language whose reconstruction depends upon data from another proto-language.
Proto-Algic was spoken about 7 000 years ago[1] in the American Northwest, somewhere around the Columbia Plateau.[2]
Vowels edit
Proto-Algic had four basic vowels, which could be either long or short:
- long: *i·, *e·, *a·, *o·
- short: *i, *e, *a, *o
Consonants edit
Proto-Algic had a large inventory of consonants (see Wikipedia). The identity of the phoneme which is customarily reconstructed as ɬ /ɬ/ is uncertain; in Proto-Algonquian, which has the same phoneme, it is sometimes alternatively reconstructed as θ /θ/ (see WT:AALG#Consonants). As in Proto-Algonquian, it is unclear if č /tʃ/ was an independent phoneme or only an allophone of c and/or t.
See also edit
References edit
- Paul Proulx, Proto-Algic I: Phonological Sketch, in the International Journal of American Linguistics, volume 50, number 2 (April 1984)
- Paul Proulx, Algic Color Terms, in Anthropological Linguistics, volume 30, number 2 (Summer 1988)
- Paul Proulx, Proto-Algic IV: Nouns, in Studies in Native American Languages VII, volume 17, number 2 (1992)
- Paul Proulx, Proto-Algic VI: Conditioned Yurok reflexes of Proto-Algic vowels, Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics 27:124–138 (2004)