GENETIC AND MORPHONOLOGICAL FEATURES OF CONJUNCTIONS-ETYMONS IN PROTO-LANGUAGES

Abstract

The proposed article outlines the morphological and phonological features of conjunctions of coordinate and subordinate syntactic connection as etymons or etymological constructs in Proto-Nostratic, Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic languages, taking into account the historical and genetic linguistic modification of the mentioned proto-languages. It has been specified that the Indo-European language family, including the group of Germanic languages, in particular, belongs to the branch of the West-Nostratic languages of the Nostratic Macrofamily, which has one hypothetical ancestor – the oldest pre-written Indo-European language – the Nostratic Proto-language. While Proto-Indo-European is the great-grandparent of all Indo-European languages, with Proto-Germanic as the ancestor of Germanic languages. It has been proven that the genesis of Old Germanic languages originates from the ancestral language of the Nostratic Macrofamily – Nostratic Proto-language, which is the great-grandparent of the Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic languages. It has been determined that the terminal date of the disintegration and spread of the Indo-European languages falls on the first millennium BC, which is a trigger for the appearance of their distinctive morphonological features, with the preservation of common root and / or inflectional proto-forms. There have been singled out etymological constructs of Proto-Nostratic, Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic conjunctions of, respectively: 1) coordinate connection – *ħary-; *ħher- [~ *ħhar-] / *ħhr-; *auke (or, with, and, but); 2) subordinate connection – *kwhay- / *kwhi- [~ *kwhe-] / *kwha- [~ *kwhǝ-]; *kwhay-, *kwo-r [~ *kwo-r] / *kwor [~ *kwor]; *hwilo- [~ *hwilo-], *hwar- / [~ *hwar-] (when, where, as, though, while). It has been brought to light that the etymological constructs of coordinate and subordinate conjunctions in protolanguages of the Indo-European family demonstrate common morphonological processes as: 1) a common root protoform with alternation or reduction of consonant and vowel phonemes; 2) the shift of the Proto-Nostratic proto-morphemic root-base of the corresponding conjunction-etymon – from the Proto-Indo-European base to the Proto-Germanic base; 3) three- and four-element consonant-vocal structure of open and closed syllables. It has been identified that the etymological constructions of coordinate and subordinate conjunctions in the studied proto-languages of the Indo-European family reveal distinctive morphonological processes as: 1) pre-formants and post-formants as proto-submorphs; 2) two- and five-element consonant-vocal structure of an open syllable. The common and distinctive morphonological features of the mentioned conjunctions-etymons signal about the historical-genetic connection between the investigated proto-languages, with the forthcoming development of linguistic genetics in Old Germanic languages.