Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages. It is purported to have broken up into the Northern (Chukotian) and Southern (Itelmen) branches around 2000 BCE, when western reindeer herders moved into the Chukotko-Kamchatkans' homeland and its inland people adopted the new lifestyle.
A reconstruction is presented by Michael Fortescue in his Comparative Dictionary of Chukotko-Kamchatkan (2005).
According to Fortescue, Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan had the following phonemes, expressed in symbols.
is a true voiceless palatal stop (not the affricate ÃÂ). Note that Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan had only voiceless stops, no voiced stops (such as ). However, there is a series of voiced fricatives, . These have no voiceless counterparts (such as ).
is a voiced labiodental fricative (like v in English). is a voiced velar fricative (like the g in Dutch ogen, modern Greek gamma, Persian qÃÂf, etc.). is a voiced uvular fricative (like r in French).
The entire series is alveolar â i.e. are not dentals.
It is generally accepted that Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan had an eleven-case system for nouns, but Dibella Wdzenczny has hypothesised that these evolved from only six cases in Pre-Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan. Below is the reconstructed case system of Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan.
<sub>1</sub>Note that the (mostly inanimate) nouns of the first declension only marked plurality in the absolutive case.
The protolanguage is thought to have been a nominative-accusative language, with the current Chukotko-Kamchatkan ergative aspects coming later in the (Northern) Chukotian branch, possibly through contact with nearby EskimoâÂÂAleut-speaking peoples. This would explain why Itelmen, spoken further south than any EskimoâÂÂAleut speakers visited, lacks ergative structures. Some linguists, however, maintain that Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan began as an ergative language and lost that feature over time.