Proto-Norlokian language

The Proto-Norlokian language - also known as Old Gnomish - was the common ancestor of all Old Dwarven and Old Halfling.

Phonology and phonotactics
In Proto-Norlokian, the acceptable syllable structures were and. Vowel clusters were forbidden, all syllables have to begin with a consonant. Word-initial and word-final consonant clusters were forbidden. Because of the accepted syllable structures, each consonant cluster could only consist of two consonants. When a syllable begins with a consonant that is identical to the one the previous syllable ends with, the result is gemination by assimilation. This even applies when one of the consonants is slender and the other is broad.

The Proto-Norlokian language had a rather complex phonology - the language had seven phonemic monophthongs and four diphthongs  - it is not known if they were coloured and mutated by surrounding consonants like in the successor languages. Consonants came in opposing pairs of slender (palatalized) and broad (velarized, pharyngealized or uvularized). The only peculiarity is the case of the pair, with the broad equivalent of the palatal approximant being the glottal stop (or slender equivalent of the glottal stop being the palatal approximant).


 * The pronounciation of the broad consonants was ambiguous:
 * The broad non-dorsal consnants could have been velarized, uvularized  or pharyngealized . Alternatively, it could have varied from dialect to dialect. For simplicity's sake, they will be marked as velarized.
 * The broad dorsal stops were either velar  or uvular, or it could have varied between dialects. For simplicity's sake, they will be marked as velar.
 * Alternatively, the voiceless broad stops could have also been ejectives, at least at an earlier stage of the language's history. The only evidence to support this was the fact that Lizardmen transliterated proto-Norlokian voiceless broad stops as if they were aspirated (possibly having misheard ejectives for aspirated stops).
 * This theory raises more questions than it answers. If it is true, what about their voiced equivalents? Were implosives ? If so, what about ? Maybe they were all murmured.
 * It is more than certain that the affricates were fronted denti-alveolar or lamino-alveolar, while the fricatives  were most certainly retracted apico-alveolar . This is evidenced the earlier's deaffrication to regular sibilants  and the latter's shift towards postalveolar shibilants  in Old Dwarven.

Grammar
Proto-Norlokian mixed concatenative and nonconcatenative morphology (roots and templates) - words were largerly made out of two components: a consonantal root (usually triconsonantal), and a (mostly) vocalic template (though templates could also contain consonants), but conjugations were often added to before or after the words (the conjugations could be also interpreted as parts of the templates). When combining a root and a template together, we'd get a whole word. One such example is combining the root (iron) with the templates  (person) and  (people), which results in   (dwarf) and   (dwarves). Most roots in Proto-Norlokian were triconsonantal, but some more primitive concepts were expressed through biconsonantal roots, while some more abstract concepts required quadliteral roots.

Just like Proto-Elven and the various early Elven languages, word order was flexible, because of the conjugations the language relied on to mark the proper place of nouns, verbs and adjectives in sentences - nevertheless, the preferred word order was SVO.

Nouns
In Proto-Norlokian, each noun had only three cases: nominative (makes the noun the subject of the sentence) and accusative (makes the noun the object of the sentence) and genitive (makes the noun the owner of a preceding noun). For most words, the nominative case is unmarked, and the accusative and genitive cases is indicated by a postposition (which could be also interpreted as part of the template). Most nouns also have plural forms.

Since Proto-Norlokian words were made out of combining roots and templates, it is not possible to simply state how plurals and cases were marked, because each noun-forming template had its own six variants (nominative singular, accusative singular, genitive singular, nominative plural, accusative plural, genitive plural).

One would think that this system inevitably results in heavy irregularity and difficulty with learning Proto-Norlokian nouns, in truth, it is far more benign: for the majority of noun templates, if the accusative singular form's template has a schwa in the last syllable, it is replaced by a long, otherwise the template is concatenated with a - if the template ends with a vowel, the template is concatenated with  instead, creating a diphthong. Of course, there are exceptions.

For the majority of nouns, the accusative and genitive cases consist in taking the accusative case, and concatenating it with  or  for accusative,  or  for the genitive.

In their default state, all nouns are assumated to have an indefinite article - the definite article is marked by adding an or  before the noun, depending on the initial consonantal sound.

Verbs
Proto-Norlokian verbs had past and non-past forms, with the present and future not being distinct as far as the grammar system was concerned - if one had to unambigiously specify the future, they could do so by adding a phrase like "in the future" or specifying time after the verb; similarly, unambigiously present could be specified by adding "now" after the verb. Alternatively, unambigious future can also be specified with an auxiliary verb.

In addition to the past versus non-past distinction, verbs also had these forms:
 * Form I: To do (to commit the action specified in the verb)
 * Form II: Causative, to make someone do (to make someone commit the action specified in the verb)
 * Form III: Imperative / prohibitive (direct request or prohibition to make someone commit the action specified in the verb)
 * Unlike all the other forms, Form III only works in non-past. Every other form has a past and non-past variant.
 * Form IV: To turn, to become. This is limited to colours, physical defects and some other states.

Not all verbs have all four forms. Several verbs - especially the auxiliary verbs - only have Form I. As an alternative to using imperatives, a more polite way to order someone to do something was to use indicative future: which is to statate "you will do X".

Adjectives and adverbs
Proto-Norlokian did not treat adjectives truly separately from nouns - all adjectives could be also treated like nouns (meaning that the word for "big" could also be interpreted as "(the) big one", the word for "handsome" could also be interpreted as "(the) handsome one"), and otherwise, adjectives had to conform to the nouns they were attached to - each adjective (when used purely as an adjective, not as a noun) had a plural and a singular form, which were identical to the nominative forms used when the adjective is interpreted as a noun. Typically, adjectives came after the nouns they were attached to.

Adverbs were formed from adjectives, by concatenating them with or, depending on whether the adjective ends with a consonant or a vowel. They could be put after or before a verb, though after was preferred.