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tma to take preserved the consonant until after the dialectal unrounding of o to õ which prevented the change from affecting it compare finnish ottaa veps otta where it did apply as there was no unrounding in those dialects phonology edit the sounds of proto finnic can be reconstructed through the comparative method transcription edit reconstructed proto finnic is traditionally transcribed using the uralic phonetic alphabet the following upa and related conventions are adopted in this article for transcribing proto finnic forms front vowels æ ø y are denoted with a diaeresis as in the estonian orthography ä ö ü the affricate t͡s is written as c the voiceless velar fricative x is written as h long consonants and vowels are written doubled aa ee ii pp tt kk cc etc half long consonants are written with a following apostrophe p t k c the labial semivowel ʋ w is written as v diphthongs are written with two vowel letters when a consonant follows au ai not av aj consonants edit the proto finnic consonant inventory had relatively few phonemic fricatives much like that of the modern finnic languages voicing was not phonemically contrastive but the language did possess voiced allophones of certain voiceless consonants the table below lists the consonantal phonemes of late proto finnic 17 18 phones written in parentheses represent allophones and are not independent phonemes proto finnic consonants labial dental alveolar palatal velar nasals m m n n ŋ plosives voiceless p p t t k k voiced b d ɡ affricate c t͡s fricatives voiceless s s h x voiced β ð ɣ trill r r approximant v w j j lateral l l h had evolved fairly late from the middle proto finnic postalveolar sibilant š it may have been realised as h before another consonant v was perhaps realised as labiodental ʋ when a vowel followed rather than a true bilabial ŋ was an allophone of n before k the original proto uralic phoneme ŋ had been lost and changed into other sounds except in this position b β d ð and ɡ ɣ were allophones of p t and k respectively and developed as a result of consonant gradation final k was probably unreleased k̚ due to its loss in many daughter languages citation needed proto finnic possessed two phonemic levels of consonant duration short and long geminate the contrast itself had been inherited from proto uralic but was considerably expanded all consonants except r h j and w could be short or long the three plosives and the affricate c ts also possessed a half long duration pˑ tˑ kˑ and tsˑ but these appear to have been in complementary allophonic distribution with fully long consonants and therefore are not thought to have been phonemic they appeared in predictable positions as a result of consonant gradation like the voiced fricatives consonant gradation edit consonant gradation was a process of lenition that affected the obstruents short plosives became voiced fricatives while long plosives became half long strong grade weak grade p b β b t d ð d k g ɣ ɡ s h x pp p pˑ tt t tˑ kk k kˑ cc tt͡s c t͡sˑ voiced plosives occurred after nasals mb nd ŋg voiced fricatives in all other weak grade environments it is unclear if single c gradated and if so into what no finnic language has consonant gradation for former c both grades result in the same outcome mostly s gradation occurred in two different environments and can therefore be split into two types radical gradation affected consonants that appeared at the beginning of a closed syllable a syllable that ended in a consonant it affected consonants preceded by a vowel or sonorant but not those preceded by another obstruent suffixal gradation affected consonants that appeared at the beginning of a non initial odd numbered syllable it only affected consonants preceded by a vowel and did not affect the geminates clarification needed it is unclear whether consonant gradation was a finnic innovation or a retention of an old uralic feature that was lost in most other uralic branches it is likely that it was inherited from an earlier stage that was also the ancestor of the sami languages which have gradation that is very similar to that found in the finnic languages however it was still productive after certain sound changes specific to finnic such as the apocope of final i so it was probably present as a phonetic post processing rule a surface filter over a long period of time it is no longer fully productive in any finnic language but most languages still retain large amounts of words preserving the earlier alternations vowels edit the proto finnic vowel inventory is reconstructed to a great similarity to that of modern finnish although the distribution of the sounds was different the following table lists the monophthong vowels reconstructable for proto finnic 17 19 proto finnic monophthongs front neutral front back close i ii i iː ü üü y yː u uu u uː mid e ee e eː ö öö ø øː o oo ë o oː ɤ open ä ää æ æː a aa ɑ ɑː all vowels could occur both short and long in proto uralic rounded vowels u y o u ü o did not occur in non initial syllables but because of sound changes they emerged in proto finnic the short unrounded mid back vowel ë was not an independent vowel but appeared as the counterpart of the front vowel e in the system of harmony it merged with e in northern finnic see below under vowel harmony for more details the status of short ö is unclear it was not present in ancestral proto uralic and many instances of ö found in modern finnic languages have only developed after proto finnic due to various sound changes for example finnish has öy from eü löytä to find köysi rope proto finnic leütä keüci while estonian has unrounded the diphthong instead giving leida and köis short ö was also generally added to the system by researchers for reasons of symmetry to complete the system of vowel harmony see below this happened in finnish näkö sight proto finnic näko but not in votic näko the existence of öö is clear as this sound had regularly evolved from other combinations of sounds in words of uralic origin e g söö to eat proto uralic sewi diphthongs edit proto finnic also possessed diphthongs which were formed by combinations of a short vowel with the vowels i y and u or equivalently with the semivowels j and w proto finnic diphthongs 19 front i front ü front u back i back u close üi yi iü iy iu iu ui ui mid to close ei öi ei øi eü ey eu ëu eu ɤu oi oi ou ou open to close äi æi äü æy ai ɑi au ɑu no length contrast occurred in diphthongs a long vowel followed by a close vowel as a suffix was shortened e g the imperfect forms of saa to receive söö to eat were sai söi this process is the only reconstructible source of öi üi vowel harmony edit proto finnic is reconstructed with a system of vowel harmony that is very similar to the one found in modern finnish vowels in non initial syllables had either a front or a back vowel depending on the quality of the vowel of the first syllable if the first syllable contained a front vowel non initial syllables would contain front vowels as well while back vowels in the first syllable would be matched with back vowels in the other syllables thus all inflectional and derivational suffixes came in two forms a front harmonic and a back harmonic form phonotactics edit stress was not contrastive words were stressed in a trochaic pattern with primary stress on the first syllable of a word and secondary stress on every following odd numbered syllable the occurrence of two vowel sequences was much more restricted in non initial syllables than in initial syllables long vowels were absent and some diphthongs only occurred as a result of the late contraction of disyllabic vji to diphthongal vi but were otherwise absent some modern finnic languages have redeveloped long vowels and additional diphthongs in non initial syllables as a result of the loss of certain consonants generally d g and h root words included at least two moras and generally followed the structure cvcv cvccv cvvcv rarer root types included monosyllabic roots cvv with either a long vowel e g maa land earth puu tree wood or a diphthong e g täi louse käü däk to walk roots with three syllables cvcvcv e g petägä pine vasara hammer or cvccvcv e g kattila kettle and roots with a long vowel in a closed syllable cvvccv e g mëëkka sword a syllable could begin and end with at most one consonant any consonant phoneme could begin or end a syllable but word finally only the alveolar consonants l n t r s and perhaps c and the velars k and h occurred final k and h were often lost in the later finnic languages but occasionally left traces of their former presence word internal consonant clusters were limited to two elements originally however the widespread syncope of e detailed above could cause a cluster to come into contact with a third consonant when such innovative large clusters appeared the result was the deletion of one or more elements in the cluster usually the first likewise the apocope of i after two or more syllables could create word final clusters which were also simplified this led to alternations that are still seen though unproductive in e g finnish laps i child nominative ta las ta partitive with medial simplification pst st stem tuhant thousand tuhat nominative with final simplification nt t tuhatta partitive with medial simplification ntt tt stem kolmant third kolmas nominative with final simplification but note assibilation t s so this reflects earlier nci before apocope kolmatta partitive with medial simplification ntt tt as assibilation shows that this had a stem final vowel originally this reflects earlier ntet before syncope root kansi kante lid causative t ta kattaa to cover with medial simplification ntt tt note in the examples of tuhatta and kolmatta that proto finnic did not initially tolerate clusters of a sonorant plus a geminate consonant i e clusters like ntt through loanwords analogy and further syncope these have only later become permissible in the finnic languages traditionally a single three consonant cluster str has been reconstructed for a small group of words showing tr in southern finnic and in eastern finnish sr in karelian and veps and hr in western finnish this has recently been suggested to be reinterpreted as a two consonant cluster cr with an affricate as the initial member 20 grammar edit all inflectional and derivational endings containing a or u also had front vowel variants with ä and ü which matched the vowels in the word stem following the rules of vowel harmony o did not follow this rule as noted above endings which closed the final syllable of a word triggered radical gradation on that syllable an ending could also open a previously closed syllable which would undo the gradation suffixal gradation affected the endings themselves for example partitive ta would appear as da when added to a two syllable word ending in a vowel e g kala kalada fish but as ta after a third syllable or a consonant veci vettä water nouns and adjectives edit cases edit proto finnic nouns declined in at least 13 cases adjectives did not originally decline but adjective noun agreement was innovated in proto finnic the plural of the nominative and accusative was marked with the ending t while the plural of the other cases used i the genitive and accusative singular were originally distinct genitive n accusative m but had fallen together when final m became n through regular sound change some pronouns had a different accusative ending which distinguished them the following cases were present 17 21 case singular ending plural ending meaning use nominative t subject object of imperative accusative n also t t complete telic object genitive n ten den iden possession relation partitive ta da ita ida partial object indefinite amount locative cases inessive ssa issa being inside elative sta ista motion out of illative sen hen ihen motion into adessive lla illa being on at ablative lta ilta motion off from allative len lek ilen ilek motion onto towards other cases essive na ina being acting as translative ksi iksi becoming turning into abessive tta k itta k without lacking comitative nek inek with in company of instructive n in with by means of the genitive plural was formed in two different ways the western type was formed by adding the singular ending n to the nominative plural t with an additional fill vowel t en this then became den in most cases through consonant gradation the eastern type was formed by adding the above suffix to the plural stem i den both types are still found in finnish although unevenly distributed in the western type the regular loss of d after an unstressed even numbered syllable has created forms such as ain a den which are now archaic or dialectal locative cases edit the reconstructed locative cases of proto finnic can be classified according to a three way contrast to in and from a state in each of the two series of locative cases inner s inside and outer l outside upon and other grammaticalized functions to denote possessor instrument etc to give the following system of six locative cases system entering residing exiting inner svn into illative ssa s na in inessive sta from in elative outer len lek onto allative lla l na on adessive lta from on ablative in the above a stands for either a or ä depending on vowel harmony and v for an epenthetic vowel note that na is reconstructible as the proto finno ugric locative marker the ancestor of the finnic essive case ta the separative from ancestor of the partitive case and n s or k the lative to this system is probably a finnic innovation although the s and l cases have corresponding forms in some other uralic languages sami and volgaic and permian respectively 17 adjective comparison edit adjectives formed comparatives using the suffix mpa 17 this suffix survives in all finnic languages although in several the nominative has been replaced with mpi for unclear reasons only the northernmost finnic languages have a distinct superlative suffix like finnish in impa the suffix was possibly originally a consonantal stem im e which was modified to resemble the comparative more closely in finnish its consonantal nature is apparent in an older now obsolete essive case form of the superlative in finnish which ended in inna im na ime na with syncope possessive suffixes edit proto finnic had a series of possessive suffixes for nominals which acted partly as genitives these have been lost from productive use in all southern languages traces remain in e g folk poetry the system given below may therefore represent proto northern finnic rather than proto finnic proper possessor single possessed plural possessed first person singular mi nni second person singular ci ti nci third person singular ha sa hvn svn nsa nsvn first person plural mvn mvk nnvn mmvn nnvk second person plural tvn tvk ndvn ndvk third person plural hvk svk nsvk the original vowels in the plural possessor endings are not settled evidence exists for both a that is a ä and e laakso 2001 recognizes ...