Carrick/History
< Carrick
Common Brittonic
Carrick inherited the following consonant inventory from Common Brittonic:
| Bilabial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | k | g | ||||
| Fricative | ɸ | (β, μ) | s | (ð) | x | (ɣ) | (h) | |||
| Nasal | m | n | (ŋ) | |||||||
| Approximant | w | l | j | |||||||
| Trill | r |
The process of lenition weakened intervocalic consonants, including those at the beginning and end of a word in continuous speech, creating a chain shift of voiceless stop > voiced stop > voiced fricative, plus m > μ (a voiced bilabial nasalised fricative), s > h and probably ɸ > Ø. Meanwhile, geminate stops and ss were shortened to fill the gap created by the lenited allophones (e.g. katus "battle" > kaduh but kattā > katā).
The Brittonic vowel inventory had already undergone changes, creating long monophthongs from old diphthongs. It consisted of five short and seven long vowels, plus triphthongs consisting of ijV:
| Short | Long | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Back | Front | Back | |
| Close | i | u | iː | uː |
| Close-Mid | eː (< ei) |
oː (< oi) | ||
| Open-Mid | ɛ | ɔ | ɛː (< ai) |
ɔː (< ou, eu) |
| Open | a | aː (< aː, au) |
Proto-Carrick
- Changes to unstressed word-final sounds:
- short -a, -e, -o are lost, along with any preceding j, w (e.g. donjo- > don)
- final -n is lost and a preceding vowel nasalised (e.g. kanton > kantõ)
- Vowel changes:
- unstressed short e > i (e.g. imbed > imbid)
- short o > a, long aː > ɔː (e.g. don > dan, laːμaː > lɔːμɔː)
- I-Mutation 1: a > æ, e > i, o > œ, u > y before i, iː, j in next syllable (e.g. dani > dæni).
- Short word-final vowels are deleted in words of 3 syllables or more (e.g. riːɣænĩ > riːɣæn)
- A-Mutation: u lowers to o before a, æ, ɔː (e.g. tumbã > tombã)
- Vowel Changes:
- final-syllable oː > u, ɛː > e (e.g. kadoː > kadu, tundɛː > tunde)
- unstressed eː > i
- all other final-syllable long vowels shorten
- non-final ɛː > aː (e.g. kɛːd > kaːd)
- x < earlier xs and in the combination xt is lost, lengthening preceding vowel (e.g. oxtu > ɔːtu)
- Lenition 2 of intervocalic and final consonants:
- previously lenited stops lenite again: b > β, d > ð, g > ɣ,
- p, t, k from earlier pp, tt / xt, kk become b, d, g (ɔːtu > ɔːdu)
- s (from ss) > h, earlier h (< s) is lost (sanes > saneh, brisk > brihk
- Final consonants are devoiced: (e.g. kaːð > kaːθ)
- I-Mutation 2:
- Short vowels: a > æ, e > i, o > ø, u > y
- Long vowels: aː > æː, eː > iː, ɔː > øː, o > œː, uː > yː