Carrick/History

Common Brittonic

Carrick inherited the following consonant inventory from Common Brittonic:

Inherited Consonant Inventory of 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:

Vowel Inventory of Common Brittonic 1C

	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