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==History== | |||
:''See also: [[Proto-Rttirrian]] and [[Proto-North-Rttirrian]]'' | |||
Zoki is a member of the Rttirrian language family, whose languages are spoken across the nation of [[Verse:Rttirria|Rttirria]] as well as in adjoining areas of Myanmar and Thailand. It is part of the North Rttirrian branch of the family; the dialects of [[Proto-North-Rttirrian]] that would become Rttirri split off from those that would become other languages around the 2rd to 4th century CE, probably in central Myanmar. | |||
Zoki is considered one of the most [[w:conservative (language)|innovative]] Rttirrian languages, having undergone considerable changes in grammar and phonology over the millennia. The main changes from Proto-North-Rttirrian to Gaju are summarized here: | |||
* The two verb forms (roughly equivalent to transitive and intransitive) evolved into seven (all of which can be transitive or intransitive in certain contexts), aided by a rigorous pattern of ablaut of verb prefixes, some reduplication, and reappropriation of the Old Zoki word ''shikh'' ("to do") into a verbal affix. | |||
:* The verb-pattern system also became more accepting of loaned morphemes, which inflected regularly (cf. Arabic ''kuub'' "cup", ''akwaab'' "cups"). | |||
:* Because of the system's growing flexibility, auxiliary verbs began to be used less. | |||
* The verb-affixation system was hugely simplified, changing from one that encoded person, number, and tense to a very vestigial system. | |||
* The possessive, plural, and diminutive noun affixes became separate clitic-like words. | |||
* Many of the pronouns were simplified to some degree. | |||
* A chain shift took place from the retroflex series of consonants, to the alveolar series, to a new dental series. | |||
* In verbs and gerunds, word-initial */β/ became a new /w/. | |||
* Also in verbs and gerunds, but not in most loanwords, intervocalic and final */j/ became /d͡ʒ/. This resulted in a phonemic split. | |||
* Outside verbs and gerunds, */d/ palatalized to /d͡ʒ/ before front vowels. | |||
* In sequences involving /j/ and /w/, vowels were lengthened; they were also lengthened in certain positions verbs to more clearly distinguish between the various verb forms. | |||
* Outside verbs and gerunds, in coda position, there was a chain shift from /k/ to /g/ to a new /ŋ/, which became phonemic when Zoki imported numerous words containing /ŋ/ from other languages in Southeast Asia. | |||
* In some dialects of late Old Zoki, the voiced and voiceless stops (velar, alveolar, and bilabial) chain-shifted universally to voiceless and voiceless aspirated under areal influence, e.g. */b/ > /p/ > /pʰ/. Dialect mixing caused these dialects to re-import the more conservative pronunciations in certain consonantal roots, but not others, and these hybrid pronunciations then spread, leading to new phonemic distinctions between all three series of stops. | |||
* The dental stop series disappeared: | |||
:*/n̪/ palatalized to /ɲ/. | |||
:*/t̪/ and /d̪/ palatalized and affricated to /tɕ/ and /dʑ/. | |||
:*/t̪ʰ/ and /d̪ʰ/ fricativized to /θ/ and /ð/. | |||
* /d͡ʒ/ merged into this new /dʑ/. | |||
* Initial /x/ became /h/, while coda /x/ became a re-introduced coda /k/. | |||
* A sweeping vowel shift caused the following effects: | |||
:* /iː/, /uː/, /eː/, and a /oː/ lost their length but took a schwa offglide. | |||
:* /ɔː/ lowered and unrounded to /ɑ/, lost its length, and took a schwa offglide, although many speakers now pronounce it simply as /ɑ/. | |||
:* /i/ and /e/ chain-shifted to /e/ and /ɛ/. Likewise, /u/, /o/, and /ɔ/ became /o/, /ɔ/, and /ɑ/. | |||
:* /ä/ raised to /ə/. | |||
* In onset, /ɸ/ and /β/ labiodentalized to /f/ and /v/; elsewhere, they caused various effects on the vowels: | |||
:* /iː/ and /uː/ avoided the expected diphthongization, leading to phonemic splits between /i/ and /iə/ and between /u/ and /uə/. | |||
:* However, every other vowel became newly diphthongized with a schwa offglide. | |||
* Some old /iːCV/ and /uːCV/ sequences simplified to /i/ and /u/. | |||
==Phonology== | ==Phonology== | ||
===Consonants=== | ===Consonants=== | ||
| Line 119: | Line 154: | ||
|- | |- | ||
! Nominative<br>(emphatic) | ! Nominative<br>(emphatic) | ||
| '' | | ''nûg'' | ||
| ''mo'' | | ''mo'' | ||
| ''a'' | | ''a'' | ||
| '' | | ''sûg'' | ||
| ''tù'' | | ''tù'' | ||
| ''âk'' | | ''âk'' | ||
| Line 183: | Line 218: | ||
| — | | — | ||
| — | | — | ||
| '' | | ''ji-'' | ||
| — | | — | ||
| '' | | ''ji-'' | ||
|} | |} | ||