Proto-Caro-Valdic split into five branches based on five distinct phonological and grammatical changes. The largest of these subfamilies, Caric, saw the complete collapse of slack vowels and the grammaticalisation of verbal auxiliaries to create rich polypersonal verb inflections, as well as labialisation in consonants. Urlexic-Valdic languages lost all voicing distinctions in consonants, but developed /p/ and lateral consonants from palatalisation in plain vowels before /ɰ/. The Quiconian languages, one of the oldest subfamilies to split off from PCV, features one of the most lopsided vowel-to-consonant inventories among Caro-Valdic languages, having retained an extensive vowel system, but lost all fricative consonants through fortition. Sirphinian and Zochynean are two isolate branches within the PCV family, with each having fewer than 100,000 speakers in specific regions.
