Proto-Riphic

Proto-Riphic (native name firmištarifjē irštinē) is a descendant of Late PIE with a Proto-Germanic, Proto-Balto-Slavic and Old Prussian hybrid aesthetic.

Phonology

Consonants

Thee evolution of consonants from PIE to Proto-Riphic involves various sound changes, including one similar to Grimm's law. In addition, Riphean developed a tone system with five tones from the interplay between PIE stop phonation and stress accent, analogous to Verner's law.

Stop phonation shifts initially result in a Xhosa-like outcome: voiceless -> voiceless aspirated and voiced -> voiced breathy while glottalized consonants are ejective (as in early PIE) with implosive allophones after unstressed vowels. Riphean is notable for having Grassmann's law apply to voiceless stops, so a PIE root like *tep- turns into /tepʰ-/, later reinterpreted as /t'epʰ-/. Riphean is a satem language, which means the labiovelars delabialized, and the palatovelars turned into alveolar affricates /tsʰ ts' dz/.

The "voiced" consonants of Proto-Riphic are actually half-voiced with the following vowel realized breathy. The development is somewhat parallel to the development of voiced PIE stops in Italic, Greek and Indo-Iranian. In South Riphic, including Mixolydian, these stayed distinct from the glottalized series, whereas North Riphic merged them and transferred the contrast to tone on the following vowel.

Subsequently both Riphic branches underwent Grimm's law, where aspirated stops /ph th tsh kh/ turned into spirants /f θ s x/, with the reflex of /tsh/ merging with that of PIE *s.