Proto-Atosanic

Proto-Atosanic (also known as Djakhetian ) was the proto-language of all the Atosanic languages, and the de facto official language of the Djakhetian Empire. It is one of the rare cases of a proto-language attested in written form, although only for its middle and later stages. Djakhetian, as it is generally known, was widespread throughout in the Atosanic river valley that served as the core of the Djakhetian civilization. Following the decline and collpase of Djakhet, and the subsequent migration of its inhabitants, the Djakhetian language spread throughout most of the continent of Atosan. It is the ancestor language of many of Arteran's languages, including Aidisese, Cedarinian, Genaisese, Yerosese, and Zajiang.

Djakhetian was a lightly aggluntinating and inflecting language, with some isolating elements. While the earliest attested written records date to c. 1200 BAY, it is highly probable that Djakhetian was spoken for at least a millennium or two before that. By the era of late Djakhetian, c. 300 AY, the language had diverged considerably, with numerous loanwords and borrowings from Proto-Itholian.

Phonology
Characters in bold in the following tables note the transcription used.

Vowel inventory
Notes:
 * [e] is in free variation with [ɛ]
 * [a] might have been [ɐ] or even [ɑ]

Consonant inventory
Notes
 * 1) [ɬ] is in free variation with [ʃ]
 * [m, n, ɹ, ʕ] can occur syllabically
 * 1) [ɴ] may have been in free variation with [ʁ]
 * 2) [ɲ] is written  in the onset of a syllable and  in the coda
 * 3) [ɴ] is written in the onset of a syllable and in the coda
 * 4) [h] is in free variation with [ħ]
 * 5) [ʕ] is an allophone of [ʔ] near [a] and diphthongs.

Consonant Clusters
Djakhetian allowed for a few final and initial clusters. These final clusters included [ɓt pt kt], and the initial clusters included [fɹ sɹ xɹ].

Diphthongs
Djakhetian allowed for only three diphthongs. These were [aə iə uə]. The later two probably evolved from [iy] and [uw], respectively.

Syllable structure
Djakhetian vowels took the following form:

(C)V(C)

Stress
Stress fell on the final syllable.

Structure
Affixes on Djakhetian verbs came in the following order:

{root}{agreement}{tense}{aspect}{mood}

Tense and Aspect
Djakhetian had four different tenses, although by the late stage this was reduced to three. The tenses are: Mythic Past was used for events that occured at least several decades or centuries before, and was usually reserved for historical or mythological events.
 * Mythic Past: -kek
 * Past: -kay
 * Present: Ø
 * Future: -hjata

Djakhetian also had seven suffixes for aspects. These are:
 * Perfect: -kuy
 * Progressive: -(h)er
 * Inceptive: -(h)abu
 * Cessative: -the’snankh
 * Repetitive: -(‘)iti
 * Habitual: -dun
 * Gnomic: -(h)ud

Negation
Djakhetian formed negative verbs through the way particle, which was placed before the verb.

Adjectives
Originally, “adjectives” in Djakhetian are usually, in fact, verbs, sort of like in Japanese. For instance, Dayhu meant “to be immortal” or “is immortal” and not “immortal”, while Khentah meant “to be important” or “is important” and not “important”, even though their Aidisese equivalents Daio and Hena do mean “immortal” and “important”.

Djakhetian did have a very small number of adjectives, however. What adjectives that did exist formed a closed class of words (sort of like in Bantu), and they acted similarly to determiners. However, during the late stages of Djakhetian, adjectives gradually became an open class of words, and a small but noticeable number of adjectives were adopted from other language families, particularly that of the Itholians. Most of Djakhetian’s descendants would borrow more adjectives from the indigenous languages they supplanted. The only branches of Djakhetian that still keep (more or less) a closed class of adjectives are the Quinshenian languages and the (most conservative daughter family) Qicui languages.

There were four types of close adjectives: color, locative, time, and irregular.

Color adjectives were used for colors.

Locative adjectives were used in place of most location adpositions which Djakhetian did not possess. For instead, “on his head” would be “his on head” while “near the city” would be “the near city”. Most descendants would turn these into proper adpositions.

Time adjectives are those like “monthly” and “yearly”, but also as the equivalents for adpositions that expressed time.

Irregular adjectives were a small number of other adjectives that originally were not of foreign origin (including “great”, “male”, “female”, “big”, and so forth), but adjectives borrowed from foreign words were soon included in this category.