In its modern form, NisseLang is a highly synthetic OVS language with head-initial tendencies.
In its proto-forms, NisseLang was VSO and more isolating. I mapped out the journey from its earliest stages to modern forms in seven major stages, using the sentence “I threw a rock” to demonstrate the grammatical evolution. The modern from of the clause is Àtínnút’aa’ó. Here is its journey.
Stage 1: VSO, more isolating: *Nut ko tik. “Throw I rock.”
In this earliest stage, stress falls on the initial syllable and is marked with higher pitch and longer vowels.
Stage 2: VSO, suffixing inflections: *Nut-ko-çax ko tik. “Throw-I-it I rock.”
Inflections began developing in this stage, and inflections that followed root forms attached as unstressed suffixes. Inflections such as aspectual marking on verbs and plural marking on nouns occurred before root forms and were treated as modifiers carrying their own stress. In this particular example, the only inflections that occur are the polypersonal index suffixes on the verb, which originated from pronoun forms (e.g. notice “ko” as the subject is the same suffix that occurs on the verb to indicate a first-person singular subject).
Stage 3: VSO, pro-drop: *Nut-ko-çax tik. “Throw-I-it rock.”
If “rock” had previously been established in the discourse, it, too, could drop out for a meaningful utterance. During this stage, noun phrases could be used as clausal modifiers to indicate instruments or locations. Clause structures like *throw-I-it rock creek (“I threw the rock into the creek”) trigger another evolutionary shift: marking of noun function through preposition-like elements. The most frequently occurring markers grammaticalized into case markers. Along with that process, inflections occurring before root forms glommed onto the roots, becoming prefixes.
Stage 4: VSO, case-marking: *Nút-ko-çax xàç-tík. “Throw-I-it object-rock.
These newly formed case markers prefixed onto the noun root, which introduced competing stresses—the stress from the case marker and the stress from the noun root. These competing stresses led to a shift where the stress of a grammaticalized prefix was produced at a lower pitch (marked with a grave accent) and the initial syllable of root at a higher pitch (marked with an acute accent). Unstressed syllables are produced with a mid pitch (unmarked). In this stage, vowel length no longer played a role in this pitched-stress system. (And that opened the door to later sound changes that introduce vowel length as a meaningful distinction.)
Stage 5: OVS, object-fronting: *Xàç-tík nút-ko-çax. “Object-rock throw-I-it.”
If you look at the Stage 4 form of our example sentence, you may notice the similarity between the object case-marking prefix *xaç and the third-person-inanimate-indexing suffix *çax. Well, the Nisse noticed that, too. And that mash-up happened frequently, as many direct objects are, in fact, inanimate nouns, and many subjects were already established, allowing subject pro-drop in the clause structure. So the Nisse fronted the object. Problem solved! This fronting of the object took away the pro-drop feature for objects, but subjects were still dropped wherever possible from the clause structure.
Stage 6: OVS, object-incorporation and fusion: *À-tík-nút-koa. “Object-rock-throw-I/it.”
Affixes continued to reduce forms, and unstressed affixes that frequently occurred together (e.g. indexing affixes) fused. The Nisse speakers continued this glommination by pushing together the verb and its arguments into a single phonological unit.
Stage 7: OVS, subject-incorporation: *À-tík-nút-koa-kó. “Object-rock-throw-I/it-I.”
Because the polypersonal index markers fused, many forms were no longer easily distinguishable, which led to a reintroduction of the subject. Entire clausal units are expressed as a single phonological unit.
And then sound changes happened, which led to the modern form of the sentence Àtínnút’aa’ó.
Sound changes are applied to clausal units, so a word like tike “rock” can often occur in forms other than its root tik- form. It appears as -tin- in the example sentence Àtínnút’aa’ó (“I threw a rock”) but as -tiŋ- in Àtíŋŋá’aatíte (“The squirrel pushed a rock”) and -ti’- in Àtí’ósaatíte (“The squirrel hugged the rock [held the rock in its arms]”). Lest you think it never occurs in its root form, it shows up as -tik- in Àtíkkáhaatíte (“The squirrel grasped the rock [held it in its hands]”) and Àtíksíaatíte (“The squirrel tended the rock”).
Because of the diversity in root forms, dictionary entries will be more complex, showing forms roots can take and the environments in which they occur. I say they “will be” more complex because I haven’t yet started the document that will be the actual dictionary. For now, I am keeping a simplified glossary to track the words and proto-forms I’ve created, but I need to finish more affixed forms before beginning the dictionary in earnest. It’s going to be one heck of a document by the time I finish it!