Appendix:World/Radic languages

The Radic languages are a subfamily of Laenkean languages. The corresponding proto-language is Proto-Radic.

Genealogy

• North Radic
  • Old Radestrian
    • Middle Radestrian
      • Radestrian
• South Radic
  • Old Ardian
    • Ardian
  • Old Lusetian
    • Lusetian

North versus south

The northern Radic languages are characterised by grammatical conservatism: the case systems tend to remain stable, and many of the inflectional distinctions in the verb system, though not all, continue to be functional, e.g. the habitual conjugations in Radestrian (from the Radic perfective) and the clusivity distinction. Phonologically, the early vowel system alongside the suprasegmental distinction of length is stable overall, with substantial change occurring primarily with consonants.

The southern Radic languages, on the other hand, exhibit a collapse of the original inflectional paradigms: both Ardian and Lusetian exhibit a binary case system, with Ardian's second case, the constructive, being far more restricted than the Lusetian oblique. The personal conjugations in both languages also exhibit a lot of syncretism, with the tense, mood and aspect system reduced from the original Radic distinctions. Both languages, however, have innovated new tenses, such as the Lusetian future and the Ardian imperfect. Southern Radic phonology is characterised by a monophthongal resolution of the short-long vowel distinction in Radic, and in some cases new suprasegmental features, such as re-invented length and pitch accent in Lusetian.