Proto-Antarctican

The Proto-Antarctican language evolved in the generations after the colonisation of the Antarctican continent. Later on, it evolved into the Antarctican language. It was influenced by a large variety of languages spoken in areas where the colonisers hailed from (Spanish and Portuguese from South America, English from Australia, and Japanese, Taiwanese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Khmer, Thai, Burmese and Indonesian from East / SE Asia).

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant inventory is broadly similar to that of Antarctican. The most striking difference is the lack of lateral obstruents, and with a set of palatalised alveolar consonants instead (which indeed did become lateral consonants later). There are no velar and palatal nasals at all, however the pre-stopped nasals are in existence. There are also no ejectives.

Proto-Antarctican Consonants

		Bilabial		Alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Glottal / Placeless
		plain	palatalised	plain	palatalised
Nasals	plain	m	mʲ	n	nʲ
	pre-stopped	pm	pmʲ	tn	tnʲ
Stops
	voiceless	p	pʲ	t	tʲ	c	k	ʔ
	voiced	b	bʲ	d	dʲ	ɟ	g
Fricatives
	voiceless	f	fʲ	s	sʲ	ç	x
	voiced			z	zʲ
Approximants		w	ɥ	ɫ	ʎ	j

Vowels

Proto-Antarctican has a simpler inventory of vowels than Antarctican. It is worth noting here that, as yet, the language has no phonation distinctions on vowels.

Monophthongs

	Front		Central		Back
	Short	Long	Short	Long	Short	Long
High	i	iː			u	uː
Mid	(e)	(eː)		əː	o	oː
Low			a	aː

The vowel /i/ can only be followed by palatal or palatalised consonants. The vowel /e/ can never be followed by these consonants. Thus it could be said that they are allophones.

Diphthongs

Proto-Antarctican also had 8 short diphthongs /ei ai oi ui iu eu au ou/ and 6 long diphthongs /eːi aːi oːi eːu aːu oː/.

Nasal Vowels

All monophthongs and diphthongs in Proto-Antarctican had an phonemic contrast between oral vowels and nasal vowels.

Phonotactics

In contrast to the smaller amount of phonemes of Proto-Antarctican compared to Antarctican, Proto-Antarctican permitted a much larger array of syllable structures.

In general, the range of permitted syllable shapes was C V (O), where O is an obstruent (fricative or oral stop). However, the first syllable of a word could begin with up to two consonants i.e. the range of permitted syllable shapes here was (C) C V (O).

/t/ cannot come before /u/. If a process such as compounding would bring them together, an epenthetic /s/ is inserted.

There were also restrictions on consonant clusters. Not only did they have to be homorganic for voicing (i.e. clusters like /tb/ and /zk/ were not permitted, but /tp/, /db/, /zg/ and /sk/ were), but they also had to be homorganic for palatalisation (i.e. clusters like /spʲ/ were not permitted, but /sʲpʲ/ and /sp/ were).

Also, consonant clusters could only consist of obstruents, not sonorants. So clusters like /nt/ were not permitted.

For the purposes of Proto-Antarctican phonology, pre-stopped nasals count as sonorants and not as obstruents. Hence they could not be part of consonant clusters or form the coda of the last syllable of a word.

Consonant Gemination

There was a phonemic gemination contrast in obstruents. This could occur regardless of whether they were voiced or voiceless. However, there were a few restrictions on where such geminated consonants could occur:

• They either had to occur between two vowels, or at the end of words. So /takː/ and /takːa/ were permitted, but not /tːak/, /takːta/ or /taktːa/.
• They could not occur after a nasal vowel or diphthong, but could occur before them. So /takːã/ and /takːai/ ware permitted, but not /tãkːa/ or /taikːa/.
• They could never occur after a long vowel. So words like /taːkːa/ were not permitted.
• It was quite rare for them to occur before a long vowel either, but not impossible.
• It was rare for a word to have more than one geminated consonant (in contrast to long vowels, where there were many words which contained multiples of them).

Stress

Stress in Proto-Antarctican was predictable, falling on the first heavy syllable of a word (one followed by a geminated consonant or a pre-stopped nasal, or one containing a long vowel, a diphthong, a nasal vowel or a coda consonant). If a word contained no heavy syllables, then stress would fall on the second syllable.

Adaptations of Words from Present-Day Languages

Proto-Antarctican vocabulary is descended from a variety of present day languages. However, many words have undergone sound changes to fit Proto-Antarctican phonology.

English

A very large proportion of Proto-Antarctican vocabulary can be traced back to present day English (mainly Australian English, with some influence from New Zealand and South African English). However, they are sometimes not recognisable as such because, apart from other things, many consonant clusters have been broken up by inserting /u/ (/i/ if after a palatalised consonant, /o/ if after /t/ or /d/).

Vowels

• The diphthong in English "FEAR" has monophthongised, becoming a long vowel /iː/.
• The monophthong in English "SEA" has diphthongised, becoming /ei/.
• The diphthong in "SAY" corresponds to Proto-Antarctican /ai/.
• The diphthong in "SIGH" corresponds to Proto-Antarctican /oi/.
• The diphthong is "SOY" corresponds to Proto-Antarctican /ui/.
• English "dark l" has vocalised, creating new diphthongs ending in /u/ e.g. /iu/, /eu/, /au/, /ou/. The sequence in English "CALL" became a long diphthong /oːu/, while the sequence in English "COAL" became a short diphthong /ou/. After a diphthong, dark l became a separate syllable /ju/ e.g. English "MILE" became /moju/.
• The vowel in "FAIR" corresponds to Proto-Antarctican /eː/.
• The vowel in "ADD" corresponds to Proto-Antarctican /ja/ if word initial, and /ʲa/ with palatalisation on the preceding consonant if not word initial e.g. in "LAD".
• Since the major dialect of English which influenced Proto-Antarctican was Australian English (which has undergone the bad-lad split), the vowel in "ANNE" corresponds to Proto-Antarctican /jaː/ if word initial, and /ʲaː/ if not e.g. in the word "BAD".
• The vowels in English "BARN" and "BURN" have merged to /aː/.
• Short schwa has lowered to /a/.
• The diphthong in "KNOW" has monophthongised to a long schwa /əː/.
• The vowel in "COT" has become /o/.
• The vowel in "COURT" or "CAUGHT" has become /oː/.
• In some words, the vowel in English "TWO" became a diphthong /eu/ (and thus merging with "TELL"). This sound change did not happen consistently across the language. In some cases, the diphthong was lengthened, in other cases it was not, and in some cases the sound change did not happen at all, leaving the vowel as /uː/. Note that it was always blocked after /j/ or before liquid consonants.
• The diphthong in English "SEWER" was usually split into two syllables, becoming /u&#613a;/. However, this was not consistent across the language, sometimes becoming /uwa/, /uː/ or /oː/.

Consonants

• English clusters of fricative + nasal have become prestopped nasals, at the point of articulation of the nasal e.g. English "smart" -> P.A. /pmːt/.
• English nasals at the end of syllables have usually disappeared, nasalising the preceding vowel. Sometimes /m/ has survived by acquiring an epenthetic /u/ after it, becoming /mu/. And sometimes /ŋ/ became /gu/ with nasalisation on the preceding vowel.
• English dental fricatives merged with their alveolar counterparts.
• English light l became /ɫ/ (the same pronunciation as present day English dark l, which vocalised in Proto-Antarctican). The only exception to this was before /i/ or /l/, when it became /ʎ/ instead.
• English /ɹ/ usually merged with light l, and followed the same process as above. However, sometimes it merged with /w/ instead.
• English postalveolar consonants have become palatalised alveolar in Proto-Antarctican.
• English /v/ merged into /b/ (or sometimes /w/), except for the cluster /vj/ (e.g. in "VIEW") which became /ɥ/.
• English /w/ (and sometimes /v/) became /ɥ/ before the "LAD" and "BAD" vowels e.g. English "wag" -> P.A. /ɥaːg/, English "vagabond" -> P.A. /ɥagːabõdo/.
• English /h/ became /x/, except for the cluster /hj/ (e.g. in "HUMAN") which became /ç/.
• If an English stressed short monophthong was immediately followed by an obstruent (with no consonants intervening), and then either a word boundary or another vowel (which could be epenthetic) after that, then that obstruent tended to become geminated e.g. English "book" -> P.A. /bukː/, English "office" -> P.A. /ʔofːʲis/. However this sound change was not consistent across the language e.g. English "brother" -> P.A. /buɫaza/, not /buɫazːa/.
• English /t/ became /ts/ before /u/.