Proto-Finnic language
Proto-Finnic or Proto-Baltic-Finnic is the common ancestor of the Finnic languages, which include the national languages Finnish and Estonian. Proto-Finnic is not attested in any texts, but has been reconstructed by linguists. Proto-Finnic is itself descended ultimately from Proto-Uralic.
Background
Three stages of Proto-Finnic are distinguished in literature.
- Late Proto-Finnic, the last common ancestor of Finnish and Estonian. Most other Finnic languages derive from this stage as well. It however appears that the South Estonian language and the Livonian language had already diverged earlier.
- Middle Proto-Finnic, an earlier stage in the development on Finnic, used in Kallio (2007) for the point at which the language had developed its most characteristic differences from Proto-Uralic (mainly: the loss of several consonant phonemes from the segment inventory, including all palatalized consonants).
- Early Proto-Finnic, the last common ancestor of the Finnic languages and its closest external relatives — usually understood to be the Samic languages, though also the Mordvinic languages may derive from this stage (see Finno-Samic languages). This reconstruction state appears to be almost identical to Proto-Uralic.
From Early to Middle Proto-Finnic
From Middle to Late Proto-Finnic
Middle and Late Proto-Finnic shared mostly the same consonant and vowel inventories (cf. on *š → *h below however). The main developments in this period were various conditioned splits.
- *t was assibilated to *c before *i. The change was blocked if another coronal obstruent preceded, i.e. in the consonant clusters *tt, *ct, *st, *št.
- The clusters *kt and *pt were lost. In most of Finnic, these were assimilated to *ht after a stressed syllable, but *tt elsewhere; in South Estonian however, the result was *tt also after a stressed syllable.
- Assimilations *pc, *kc → *cc and *ps, *ks → *ss are also known from South Estonian, and these likely occurred at the same time.
- *j was lost before *i, word-initially also before *e. A loss of *v before *u, *ü, *o may have been contemporary or possibly earlier.
- *š was retracted to *h. The clusters *tš and *kš lost their first component to also become simple *h.
Phonology
The sounds of Proto-Finnic can be reconstructed through the comparative method.
Transcription
Reconstructed Proto-Finnic is traditionally transcribed using the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. The following UPA and related conventions are adopted in this article for transcribing Proto-Finnic forms:
- Front vowels are denoted with a diaeresis, following Estonian and (partly) Finnish orthography: ä ö ü.
- The affricate /t͡s/ is written as c.
- The sound /x/ is written as h.
- Long consonants and vowels are written doubled: aa ee ii pp tt kk cc etc.
- Half-long consonants are written with a following apostrophe: p' t' k' c'.
- The labial semivowel /ʋ ~ w/ is written as v.
- Diphthongs are written with two vowel letters when a consonant follows: au ai (not av aj).
Consonants
The Proto-Finnic consonant inventory had relatively few phonemic fricatives, much like that of the modern Finnic languages. Voicing was not phonemically contrastive, but the language did possess voiced allophones of certain voiceless consonants.
The table below lists the consonantal phonemes of Late Proto-Finnic.[1][2] Phones written in parentheses represent allophones and are not independent phonemes. When a consonant is notated in this article with a symbol distinct from the corresponding IPA symbol, the former is given first, followed by the latter.
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | m | n | ([ŋ]) | ||
| Plosives | Voiceless | p | t | k | |
| Voiced | ([b]) | ([d]) | ([ɡ]) | ||
| Affricate | c /t͡s/ | ||||
| Fricatives | Voiceless | s | h /x/ | ||
| Voiced | (β [β]) | (δ [ð]) | (γ [ɣ]) | ||
| Trill | r | ||||
| Approximant | v /w/ | j | |||
| Lateral | l | ||||
- *h had evolved fairly late from the Middle Proto-Finnic postalveolar sibilant *š ([ʃ]). It may have been realised as [h] before another consonant.
- *v was perhaps realised as labiodental [ʋ] when a vowel followed, rather than a true bilabial
- [ŋ] was an allophone of *n before *k. The original Proto-Uralic phoneme *ŋ had been lost and changed into other sounds, except in this position.
- [b β], [d ð] and [ɡ ɣ] were allophones of *p, *t and *k respectively, and developed as a result of consonant gradation.
- Final *-k was probably unreleased [k̚].
Proto-Finnic possessed two phonemic levels of consonant duration, short and long (geminate). The contrast itself had been inherited from Proto-Uralic, but was considerably expanded: all consonants except *r, *h, *j and *w could be short or long. The three plosives also possessed a half-long duration ([pˑ], [tˑ] and [kˑ]), but these were in complementary (allophonic) distribution with fully long consonants, and therefore were not phonemic. They appeared in predictable positions as a result of consonant gradation, like the voiced fricatives.
Consonant gradation
Consonant gradation was a process of lenition that affected the obstruents. Short plosives became voiced fricatives, while long plosives became half-long:
| Strong grade | Weak grade |
|---|---|
| p | b |
| β | |
| t | d |
| δ [ð] | |
| k | g |
| γ [ɣ] | |
| c [t͡s] | s |
| s | h [x] |
| pp | p' [pˑ] |
| tt | t' [tˑ] |
| kk | k' [kˑ] |
| cc [tt͡s] | c' [t͡sˑ] |
Voiced plosives occurred after nasals (mb nd ŋg), voiced fricatives in all other weak grade environments.
Gradation occurred in two different environments, and can therefore be split into two types:
- Radical gradation affected consonants that appeared at the beginning of a closed syllable (a syllable that ended in a consonant). It affected consonants preceded by a vowel or sonorant, but not those preceded by another obstruent.
- Suffixal gradation affected consonants that appeared at the beginning of a non-initial odd-numbered syllable. It only affected consonants preceded by a vowel and did not affect geminates.
It is unclear whether consonant gradation was a Finnic innovation, or a retention of an old Uralic feature that was lost in most other Uralic branches. It is likely that it was inherited from an earlier stage that was also the ancestor of the Sami languages, which have gradation that is very similar to that found in the Finnic languages.
Vowels
The Proto-Finnic vowel inventory was very similar to that of modern Finnish, although the distribution of the sounds was different. The following table lists the monophthong vowels reconstructable for Proto-Finnic.[1][3]
| Front neutral |
Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i, ii /i/, /iː/ |
ü, üü /ü/, /üː/ |
u, uu /u/, /uː/ |
| Mid | e, ee /e/, /eː/ |
(ö,) öö (/ø/,) /øː/ |
o, oo /o/, /oː/ |
| Open | ä, ää /æ/, /æː/ |
a, aa /ɑ/, /ɑː/ |
All vowels could occur both short and long. In Proto-Uralic, rounded vowels (u, ü, o) could not occur in non-initial syllables, but because of sound changes, they did appear in Proto-Finnic.
Proto-Finnic possessed a system of vowel harmony more or less identical with that of Finnish. Suffixes had two forms (with a front or a back vowel), and the vowel of the first syllable of a word affected which vowels could be present in suffixes. If the first syllable a front vowel, suffixes would contain those vowels as well, while back vowels in the first syllable would be matched with back vowels in the suffixes. The vowels e and i were historically front vowels, but had become neutral vowels in Proto-Finnic and were therefore compatible with either type of vowel, and suffixes containing e or i had only one form. However, a word containing only e and/or i would normally receive suffixes with front vowels.
The status of short ö is unclear. It was not present in ancestral Proto-Uralic, and may have been introduced relatively late in Proto-Finnic to complete the system of vowel harmony. Many instances of ö found in modern Finnic languages have only developed after Proto-Finnic, due to various sound changes. E.g. Finnish löytä- 'to find' ← Proto-Finnic *leütä-, compare Estonian leida-; Finnish näkö 'sight' ← Proto-Finnic *näko, compare Votic näko. The existence of long öö is however clear, as this sound had regularly evolved in certain words of Uralic origin (e.g. *söö 'to eat' ← Proto-Uralic *sewi-)
Proto-Finnic also possessed diphthongs, which were formed by combinations of a short vowel with the vowels /i/, /y/ and /u/, or equivalently with the semivowels /j/ and /w/. Long vowels did not form diphthongs; if they were followed by a (semi)vowel, they were shortened.
| Front + *i | Front + *ü | Front + *u | Back + *i | Back + *u | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | *üi /yi/ | *iü /iy/ | *iu /iu/ | *ui /ui/ | |
| Mid to close | *ei, *öi /ei/, /øi/ | *eü /ey/ | *eu /eu/ | *oi /oi/ | *ou /ou/ |
| Open to close | *äi /æi/ | *äü /æy/ | *ai /ɑi/ | *au /ɑu/ |
Only a subset of the vowels could occur in non-initial syllables: short vowels other than *ö, and diphthongs ending in *i other than *öi.[3]
Phonotactics
Stress was not phonemic. Words were stressed in a trochaic pattern, with primary stress on the first syllable of a word, and secondary stress on every following odd-numbered syllable.
Root words were normally bisyllabic, and generally followed the structure CVCV, CVCCV CVVCV. A word could begin and end with at most one consonant; consonant clusters were permitted only word-internally. Any consonant (as far as allophones allowed) could begin a word, but only the alveolar consonants (n, t, r, s) and the velar k could appear word-finally. Final -k was usually lost in the later Finnic languages, but often left traces of its former presence.
Grammar
All inflectional and derivational endings containing a or u also had front-vowel variants with ä and ü, which matched the vowels in the word stem following the rules of vowel harmony. o did not follow this rule, as noted above.
Endings which closed the final syllable of a word triggered radical gradation on that syllable. An ending could also open a previously closed syllable, which would undo the gradation. Suffixal gradation affected the endings themselves. For example, partitive -ta would appear as -da when added to a two-syllable word ending in a vowel (e.g. *kala, *kalada "fish"), but as -ta after a third syllable or a consonant (*veci, *vettä "water").
Nouns and adjectives
Proto-Finnic nouns declined in at least 13 cases. Adjectives did not originally decline, but adjective-noun agreement was innovated in Proto-Finnic, probably by influence of the nearby Indo-European languages.[citation needed] The plural of the nominative and accusative was marked with the ending -t, while the plural of the other cases used -i-. There was also an alternative accusative plural ending that combined both. The genitive and accusative had originally been distinct (genitive -n, accusative -m), but had fallen together when final -m became -n. Some pronouns had a different accusative ending, which distinguished them.
The following cases were present:[1][4]
| Case | Singular ending |
Plural ending |
Meaning/use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | ∅ | *-t | Subject, object of imperative |
| Accusative | *-n (also -t) | *-ten (-den, -ðen) | Complete (telic) object |
| Genitive | *-n | *-ten (-den, -ðen) | Possession, relation |
| Partitive | *-tA (-ðA) | *-itA (-iða) | Partial object, indefinite amount |
| Locative cases | |||
| Inessive | *-ssA | *-issA | Being inside |
| Elative | *-stA | *-istA | Motion out of |
| Illative | *-sen (-hen) | *-ihin | Motion into |
| Adessive | *-llA | *-illA | Being on/at |
| Ablative | *-ltA | *-iltA | Motion off/from |
| Allative | *-len / *-lek | *-ilen / *-ilek | Motion onto/towards |
| Other cases | |||
| Essive | *-nA | *-inA | Being, acting as |
| Translative | *-ksi | *-iksi | Becoming, turning into |
| Abessive | *-ttAk | *-ittAk | Without, lacking |
| Comitative | *-nek | *-inek | With, in company of |
| Instructive | *-n | *-in | With, by means of |
Proto-Finnic also had special possessive suffixes for nouns, which acted partly as genitives. The following are reconstructable:[1]
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| First person | -ni | -mme / -mma |
| Second person | -si | -nne / -nna |
| Third person | -nsa | -nsa |
Verbs
Proto-Finnic inherited at least the following grammatical moods:[1]
- Indicative mood - suffix: present none (but -k- in the passive), past -i-
- Imperative mood - suffix: -k-
- Conditional mood - suffix: -ksi- or -isi-
- Potential mood - suffix: -ne-
The indicative mood distinguished between present (which also functioned as future) and past tense, while the other moods had no tense distinctions. New "perfect" and "pluperfect" tenses had also been formed, probably by influence of the Indo-European languages. These were created using a form of the copula *oldak "to be" and a participle.
There were six forms for each mood, for three persons and two numbers. In addition, there were two more forms. One was a form that is often called "passive" or "fourth person", and indicated an unspecified person. The second was the "connegative" form, which was used together with the negative verb to form negated sentences.
All moods except the imperative shared more or less the same endings:[1][5]
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| First person | *-n | *-mmek / -mmAk |
| Second person | *-t | *-ttek / *-ttAk |
| Third person | *-pi (-βi), - | *-βAt, - |
| Passive | *-ttA- + (tense/mood suffix) + *-sen (-hen) | |
| Connegative | *-k | |
The variation between forms with *-e- and forms with *-A- in the 1st and 2nd person plural reflects a former distinction between the dual and the plural (respectively), although this has not been attested from any Finnic variety.
The third person forms only had an ending in the present indicative. In all other tenses and moods, there was no ending and the singular and plural were identical.
The 3rd person singular was entirely unmarked in South Estonian: the Late Proto-Finnic ending had evolved from the participle *-pA during the Middle Proto-Finnic stage, and this innovation had not reached the already separated South Estonian.
The imperative had its own set of endings:[1]
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| First person | -kadamme/a / -kademme/a | |
| Second person | -k | -kada / -kade |
| Third person | -kahen, -kohen | -kahen, -kohen |
| Passive | -ttakahen / -ttakohen | |
| Connegative | -kak / -kok | |
In addition, there were also several non-finite forms.[6]
| Infinitive I | *-tAk (-dAk, -ðAk) : *-tA- (-dA-, -ðA-) |
|---|---|
| Infinitive II | *-te- (-de-, -ðe-) |
| Gerund ("Infinitive III") | *-mA |
| Action noun ("Infinitive IV") | *-minen : *-mise- |
| Present active participle | *-pA (-βA) |
| Present passive participle | *-ttApA (-ttAbA) |
| Past active participle | *-nUt |
| Past passive participle | *-ttU |
Notes
References
- Kallio, Petri (2007). "Kantasuomen konsonanttihistoriaa". Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 253.
- Laakso, Johanna (2001). "The Finnic languages". The Circum-Baltic languages volume 1: Past and Present. John Benjamins.
- Lehtinen, Tapani (2007). Kielen vuosituhannet. Tietolipas 215. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. ISBN 978-951-746-896-1.
- Posti, Lauri (1953). "From Pre-Finnic to Late Proto-Finnic". Finnische-Ugrische Forschungen 31.
- Viitso, Tiit-Rein (1998). "Fennic". In Abondolo, Daniel. The Uralic Languages.