Meskangela: Difference between revisions

The typical Proto-Meskangela root syllable consisted of the following structural elements: an onset consisting of a root initial consonant '''C_i''', optionally followed by a liquid '''L''' or semivowel glide '''G''' (either "j" or "w"); and a vocalic nucleus consisting minimally of a simple vowel '''V''', followed by a final consonant '''C_f'''. The semivowels could also occur postvocalically, forming falling diphthongs in  "-w"  and "-j", thus belonging to the inventory of '''C_f'''. Unlike word roots, prefixes and suffixes followed a different pattern, consisting of a single consonant followed by a vowel '''PV_p''' or '''SV_s''' (in case of prefixes and suffixes respectively). Only root vowels could carry vowel length (:) and tone ('''t'''), the latter being a consonantal feature at the Proto-Meskangela stage. There was no contrast between zero-initial  *VC  and glottal-initial  *ʔVC, in such cases the second variant is reconstructed with '''C_i''' being an obligatory element. of the root syllable. Two non-syllabic suffixes are reconstructible for Proto-Meskangela, *-s and *-n. When added they could have resulted in a forbidden postvocalic sequence of two consonants ( e.g. -C_fs or C_fn). For these specific instances the suffixes are instead reconstructed as '''ə_sS''' with "ə" being a short semi-syllabic element that disappeared in Classical Meskangela and later dialects. In other cases, where a single final consonant suffix is expected, a "hollow" consonant is reconstructed (which in some cases gives rise to tone H_t, or disappear without a trace H₀), as in  *rjaH₀ən  “to laugh”. In Classical Meskangela the suffix became phonetically identical the C_f, becoming a part of the root ( e.g. ''gësata'' ← ''*gasaH₀t-ʔa''  “he/she kills”. Thus a potential fully inflected word consists of the following elements: