Minhast/Dialectology: Difference between revisions

Academics criticize grouping the dialects under two branches as problematic. The most obvious problem is that of the Stone Speaker dialect, which not only has a large number of loans from Golahat and Peshpeg that far exceed those in the rest of the Lower Minhast dialects, but appears to be in the early stages of developing from a canonical SOV language into a non-configurational one. Arguments for classifying the Stone Speaker dialect as a separate language have been gaining momentum, the most vocal and convincing proponent being Dr. Napayshni Tashunka of the University of the Lakota Nation at Three Pipes. A new branch has been proposed for the Elk and Seal Speaker dialects, which realize ''-ūy'' with the voiced labio-velar approximant /w/, as in ''-ūwe'' and ''-ūwi'' respectively, in contrast with the voiced palatal consonant /j/ found in the rest of the Upper Minhast dialects.  The Gull Speaker dialect presents its own problems. When the ''uyyi min kirim'' test is applied, the results are inconclusive: the dialect can be classified as a member of either the Upper or Lower Minhast branches, as both  ''-we'' and ''-ia'' are found.  Moreover, the ''-we'' form and other features point towards a relationship with the Elk and Seal Speakers, which are grouped with the Upper Minhast dialects, yet the Gull Speakers do not share a contiguous border with them, so dialectal mixing has been ruled out at this point.  The Palatization Test is also inconclusive, primarily due to dialect mixing with their Salmon Speaker and Dog Speaker neighbors, which belong to the northern dialects, and their Osprey Speaker and Egret Speaker neighbors, which belong to the southern dialects.

== Shortcomings of the Traditional Model ==

<small>¹ ''Also known as the'' Šarmakandast ''dialect, spoken on Šarmakaned Island.  The dialect has been replaced by the Gull Speaker dialect.''</small>

In his seminal work, ''Minhast: A Diachronic and Theoretical Study of a North Pacific Paleosiberian Language'', Dr. Tashunka remarked, "The traditional division of the Minhast dialects depicts a simple phylogeny.  With the exception of the Salmonic dialects, which diverged from a common dialect after the Salmon Speaker-Horse Speaker War of 1472, no additional forks extend beyond each of the two main branches: each dialect within each branch is a sibling of each other.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The current classification scheme does not account for the the discrepancies of the Gull Speaker data from that of the of the other Lower Minhast dialects with which it is grouped.  The Horse Speaker data show that the dialect is much more conservative than has been previously thought, in some ways more so than the Salmonic dialects.  Justification for placing the Elk and Seal Speaker dialects under the Upper Minhast branch lacks supporting data; although the Elk and Seal Speaker dialects are said to be more conservative than the dialects grouped under the traditional Lower Minhast dialects, the data indicate if anything that this characterization is at best overstated.  Moreover, the evidence indicates that Classical Minhast, as it shares more in common with the dialects that have been traditionally classified as Upper Minhast, is not the ancestor of the Minhast dialects, but instead is an archaic dialect that diverged from one of the sub-branches of the northern dialects¹.  Specifically, Classical Minhast shares more features with the Salmonic and Plateau dialects than with the other dialects; extreme conservatism by the Salmonic and Horse Speaker dialects cannot explain why they share these features with the classical language while all the other dialects do not exhibit at any point in time in their written history that they ever had these features.  Only a close relationship, within a shared dialectal grouping, could account for these discrepencies.²  Moreover, rather than attempting to account for both the extinct and new dialects, the traditional classification scheme conveniently ignores them.  Clearly, the evidence indicates a more complex picture of the Minhast dialects, but the current system is based on biased sources ultimately derived from both Minhast literary tradition and historical regional politics: twelve pre-eminent Speakers, thus twelve dialects." ³ To address these issues, Dr. Tashunka has proposed a new phylogenetic tree ''(dashes indicate conjectural relationships)'':

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