Nakarian Diachronics

[gestaltist]

Nakarian is my longest running. conlang. I've been working on it on and off since mid 2017, and it's been through some major revisions since. I've never been completely satisfied with it. Right now, I'm in the middle of another major revision, starting with phonology. Things are looking rather promising so I decided to finally start a thread. This thread will show you the steps from proto-Nakarian all the way to Classical Nakarian, and some directions descendant language may take.

I hope for some audience and feedback, of course, but this thread is mainly there to force me to order my thoughts and become more aware of the effects of each step.

[gestaltist]

Proto-Nakarian Phonology

Hiding the below under a spoiler as it's out of date.

Spoiler:

Proto-Nakarian had the common five-vowel system with an additional suprasegmental distinction of breathy voice. Thus, the possible vowel qualities are:
/a e i o u/
/a̤ e̤ i̤ o̤ ṳ/

Nothing too exciting. There are no diphthongs but vowel hiatus is allowed.

The consonant inventory warrants a few more words:


One thing to note is that the velars are described as pre-velar since they are slightly palatalized. They are definitely more front than their labialized counterparts.

The retroflex series in the absence of a postalveolar or otherwise palatalized series is an oddity, but it can be perhaps somewhat justified by the frontness of the velar series. In any case, it quickly gets obliterated by diachronics, as you will see.

Otherwise, nothing too strange, although the presence of both labial-velars and labiovelars may be a bit atypical.

The syllable shape is (C)V(C). In onset, any consonant is allowed, except /ŋ/ cannot occur word-initially. In coda, only non-labial consonants are allowed.

That's it for a start. When I next have some time, we'll start moving through sound change.

[DesEsseintes]

Yay, my favourite Gigilang!

[gestaltist]

Hiding the below under a spoiler as it's out of date.

Spoiler:

I still have some time today so let's move one step ahead.

First, a minor point which isn't a productive process anymore but may be of interest in historical compounds: cluster reinterpretation. Namely, clusters /kp gb ŋm/ got reinterpreted as labial-velars. Clusters of prevelars with /w ɸ/ got reinterpreted as labiovelars. /qw/ also got reinterpreted as the labiovelar /kʷ/.

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e.g.: 
*kax-ɸa -> kaxʷa

Now, onto something juicier: a nascent vowel harmony.

In the first step, front vowels /e i/ got centralized in the vicinity of retroflexes and the uvular /q/. Initially, they were probably realized as [ǝ ɨ] but ultimately backed further to [ʌ ɯ]. Per convention, I will transcribe these vowels as /ǝ ɯ/ going forward.

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e.g.:
*siʈa -> sɯʈa
but:
*sitaʈa -> sitaʈa (no direct vicinity)

In the second step, all front vowels within a word containing at least one of /ǝ ɯ/ got centralized, creating the foundation of modern Nakarian vowel harmony. This process also extends to glides /j w/ which both become /ɰ/ in back-harmony words.

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e.g.:
*jiteqa -> ɰɯtǝqa

Finally, the retroflex series merges with the alveolar series, and true vowel harmony is born, since the environment triggering it is mostly gone (with /q/ still remaining but not for long.)

This lands us with the following:

[gestaltist]

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[gestaltist]

I apologize for the radio silence. I realized I didn't like where the project was going and made significant adjustments. I also included way more diachronic work on grammar this time around. I will come back here as soon as I'm confident I won't be making any more changes to the baseline.

[Salmoneus]

I apologize for the radio silence. I realized I didn't like where the project was going and made significant adjustments. I also included way more diachronic work on grammar this time around. I will come back here as soon as I'm confident I won't be making any more changes to the baseline.

Now this post truly reflects the nature of the hobby!

...that's pretty much what I'm usually thinking about a day after posting anything.