Verse:Chlouvānem Inquisition/Līlasuṃghāṇa: Difference between revisions

The vernacular language, spoken by about 70% of the inhabitants (a good number of residents come from other areas of the country), is part of the Jade Coast dialect continuum and has traits of both coastal Nanašīrami dialects to the east and Lanamilūki Valley ones to the south. A noticeable characteristic in two thousand years of evolution from [[Chlouvānem]] is the restructuring of the vowel system. Original Chlouvānem vowels all diverged in quality (often through diphthongization) and vowel length has later become phonemic based on syllable structure.  

* Various early consonant mergers: palatalized dentoalveolars first merged with the palatals, while /mʲ/ and /ɴ̆ʲ/ shifted to /mj ɴ̆j/ and /ʀʲ/ to /ʑ/. /f/ was also probably shifted to */hʷ/ before merging with /ɦ/ into /h/ (the intermediate */hʷ/ stage explains some other changes explained below); /ɦ/ however had the tendency of aspirating an unaspirated ''voiced'' stop earlier in the word, as long as only vowels or sonorants came in between; grammatically, ''-h'' was also generalized as a case ending in the direct case to '''all''' "h-class nouns" (this will have a major phonological impact later on). The glottal stop disappeared, leaving vowels in hiatus.

* The first syllable of the main root (the head, in compounds) always took fixed primary stress. If a root has four syllables or more, the second-to-last also takes secondary stress.

* The first of many vowel changes started with the disappearance of breathy-voiced vowels. They mostly merged with the vowels of the same quality but long (but '''ą''' was retracted; note that the same quality of ''ę'' is the one of ''æ'', not ''e''), often leaving however their trace by aspirating an immediately following or preceding stop.

* The so-called (first) "Southern Vowel Shift" took place - ultimately adding many new phonemic vowel qualities but eliminating phonemic length; its changes were many but can be resumed this way:

** a → '''a''', but '''å''' /ɔ/ before either '''r''' or '''l''' and a stop;

** ā → '''å''' /ɔ/

*** both short and long /a/ became, however, '''ø''' /œ/ in a close syllable before a nasal; long /a/ also underwent this change before /j/.

** i became /e̝/ while ī remained as a normal /i/; note that /ji/ became, however, /i/.

** u was fronted to /y/, while ū was only shortened to /u/

** o became (or remained?) /o/, while å was monophthongized to /ɔ/

** æ was lowered to /a/; ǣ (including from earlier ''ę'') remained the same, but shortened

** ai, au also gave '''æ''' /ɛ/

* A new, at first allophonic, length contrast arose: stressed vowels in an open syllable became allophonically long, the others remained short.

* Syncope of all absolutely word-final unstressed vowels, as well as unstressed pretonic vowels (except if preceded by two consonants; if there are two consecutive syllables between two different stresses, then the first is syncopated if the first syllable's consonant is a sonorant and the other isn't), were deleted. Deleted /e̝/, /i/ umlauted a preceding vowel by raising it; /u/ by backing it. Long vowels became phonemic because of this.

* /h/ and /hʷ/ were deleted in all positions except before /e/, /a/, and /ɔ/; /ɴ̆/ was also deleted when preceding a consonant that is not a stop or /s/. This made stød phonemic, moreover becoming a distinct feature of "h-nouns".

* Vowel quality for non-mid vowels and their length were tied, with /eː e̝ː/ becoming /eː/ and their short counterparts becoming /e̝/; the same happened with /o/ which was raised to /u̝/.

* Stød is lost if there's another vowel with stød later in the word; this does not apply to compound words, except those that had already become full lexical units.

* Some more consonant changes resulted in the disappearance of unvoiced aspirated stops (which merged with the plain ones, except for '''th''' → /θ/), /gʱ/ > /h/, and merger of /s/ into /ʂ/; /ɕ/, meanwhile, was backed and labialized to /xʷ/. '''v''' was also hardened to /b/ between vowels if pretonic.

 

Some examples of changes in common words:

* ''lila'' "person" > *lyílah > *líːlah > *liːˤla > *liːˤl > ''lil'' /ɴ̆iːˤ/

* ''marta'' "city" > *mártah > *mårtah > *måˤrta > *måˤrt > ''mårs'' /mɔˤʌs/

* ''chlǣvānem'' "Chlouvānem" > *chlɛvånem > *chlɛvåːŋm > *šlɛwåːm > *šlɛbåːm > ''ɧæbåm'' /xʷɛˈbɔːm/

* ''līlasuṃghāṇa'' > *lyīlasugghāṇah > *lílasyˌghåṇah > *liːlasyghåːṇah > liːˤlasyghåːˤṇa > liːlsyghåːn > ''lilsuhåln'' /ˈɴ̆iːɴ̆ʂyˌhɔːˤŋ/