Lámeyi languages: Difference between revisions

===Khad languages===

By far the largest group within the Lámeyi family are the Khad languages. Since most of them are spoken in the western part of Lá, they are also called Western, opposed to Thad, which are Eastern. Languages of the Lámeyi family used to be classified as either Khad or Thad languages according to how the velar and uvular consonants (mainly *kʷ, *kʷʰ, *kʲ, *kʲʰ, xʷ, *q and *qʷ) developed. In Thad languages labialisation is lost, while palatalised velars become true palatals, while Khad languages typically retain labialisation (at least in their early stage of development), while palatalised velars become palato-alveolar affricates /t͡ɕ/ and /t͡ɕʰ/. However, some Khad languages preserve original palatalised velars (as Thad languages), while also keeping uvular plosives and residual labialisation (as Khad languages), and one language, called Las, only changes its palatalised velars to affricates, while keeping *tʲ, and *tʲʰ which become affricates in both Thad and Khad groups. Later a new classification was developed, which makes a distinction between '''Central''' (or '''True''') '''Khad''' (''Kyem-Khad'') and '''Peripheral Khad''' (''Meblam Khad'') languages. The latter is a [[w:Paraphyly|paraphyletic]] group, unlike the former, which shares common innovations and sound changes. Many of the smallest Khad languages (having very few native speakers) are poorly documented. The Las language is viewed as separate from both Khad and Thad, as it had likely diverged from Common Lámeyi before the Khad-Thad split formed. Many Central Khad languages lost almost all inflectional morphology inherited from Common Lámeyi, becoming fairly [[w:Analytic language|analytic]], while a branch, called Kryalpomg ([ʂɑʊ.ˈpôɣ]), exhibits a templatic verbal morphology with noun incorporation and a rich enclitic case system and coronal harmony.

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===Las language===

The smallest group, consisting of a single languages – '''Las''' – is the most conservative branch, preserving many old feature. It used to be classified as a distant Peripheral Khad language, because it palatalises both ''*kʲ'' and ''*tʲ'', which it shares with the Khad languages. It merges both sounds into a single phoneme /c/ (which some Peripheral Khad languages do). A unique feature of Las is lack of a phoneme /p/ and word-initial [[w:Fortition|fortition]] and a simple [[w:Pitch accent language|pitch-accent system]] not unlike the pitch accent in the Thadpalmé language. There are two pitches: "high" or "marked" and "low" or "unmarked". For example: ''kwhó'' [kʷʰóː] “fire”, ''akwho'' [ɑ.kʷʰo] “find it”. There are two dialects of Las that are mutually intelligible with one another, typically called the '''R-dialect''' and the '''L-dialect''', since the reflex of *l (and its coarticulated variations) in Proto-Lámeyi is used for their classification (the L-dialect only has [l], while the R-dialect only has [ɾ]). Transitional dialects tend to have [ɺ] instead. For instance: the word for “land” is ''qala'' in the L-dialect, ''qara'' in the R-dialect and in the transitional areas it is [ˈqɑ.ɺɑ] or [ˈqɔɺɔ].