Omzinesý's Germanic Lang

[Omzinesý]

I have been developing this lang in my Metathread viewtopic.php?p=311868#p311868 but I think I could make a new one for it.

This is a West-Germanic lang and spoken somewhere in Northern Germany.
It's probably closest related to Frisian, but I think listing isoglosses is more fruitful between partially mutually intelligible langs than trying to define which is its closest relative.

Features

- Lack of voiced stops
- A Danish-style creaky voice as a distinctive feature

- s-genitive (sometimes co-appearing with umlaut: /fu:t - fy:tɛs/ 'foot - feet')

- Two noun cases: Nominative and Accusative (mostly realizing in articles)
- Double object
- idaafa-stule genitive construction

[Omzinesý]

Phoneme inventory

Consonants
p t t͡s k
m n ŋ
f s x-χ
ʋ z ɣ-ʁ
l ɾ j

Vowels
y: i: u:
ʏ ɪ ʊ
ø: e: o:
œ œ: ɛ ɛ: ɔ ɔ:
ä ɑ:
(+ creaky voice)

The vowel inventory is much like that of Standard Germany, but the long mid-low vowels are more common, not just a curiosity in some plural forms.


Changes of consonants
PG voiceless stops are preserved quite intact. They are, however, not aspirated, which is the norm in languages with only one series of stops.
*p *t *k *kw => p t k kʋ (where /kʋ/ is a consonant cluster, not a phoneme)
However
t => t͡s _j
k => t͡s /_j
(Sporadically that also happens before /i/.)

PG voiced stops undergo more changes.
*b => p / #_ (word-initially)
*b => ʋ / elsewhere

*d => t / #_ and _. (word-initially and in coda)
*d => ɾ / elsewhere

*g => x-χ / everywhere

However *r, which usually is /ɣ-ʁ/, is voiceless before PG *voiceless stops and voiced before PG *voiced stops. It is probably caused by aspiration that existed in an earlier stage of the language.

/tʁɪŋk/ <=drink
/tχäp/ <= trapp


Sibilants

PG *s => z / when not in coda or geminated
PH *θ => s

/zɪŋ/ 'sing'
/sɪŋ/ '(some)thing'

[Ælfwine]

For a language in northern germany those sound changes are very southern

Looks good otherwise. For some crazy ideas you can look up German dialects such as Chemnitz

[Omzinesý]

For a language in northern germany those sound changes are very southern

Looks good otherwise. For some crazy ideas you can look up German dialects such as Chemnitz

Positioning it in the North is based on discussion on my ideas some time ago. I had the same problem that it would be more southern, but idk.
Chemnitz looks interesting. I've to have a closer look anyways, pharyngealization especially.

That would make it fairly typical for a continental Germanic language near the North Sea, and then it just takes the shift of the voiced plosives to voiced fricatives a couple of steps further (Proto-Germanic already conditionally saw variation between the two sets, and this seems to have continued through to Old Dutch as well, so that "Stage 7" doesn't even have to be one step, it could just be the last step in a number of conditional changes that had been going on for centuries)

[Ælfwine]

Ah I saw devoicing and fricativization and jumped to the conclusion it should have been Southern. (Well maybe not necessarily Southern, but more southern.)

But devoicing of plosives is actually fairly typologically common for Germanic languages, Icelandic does it, and so does my Crimean Gothic (based on evidence from the letters.)

Come to think about it Chemnitz only has /p t k/ too, with no contrast in voicing at all. It also has /ʋ/ and as you said a full set of pharyngeal vowels. This is actually giving me some inspiration rn too.

Also its k~t merger before l is spicy!

[Nortaneous]

Come to think about it Chemnitz only has /p t k/ too, with no contrast in voicing at all.

and /kʰ/, but no **/pʰ tʰ/

Also its k~t merger before l is spicy!

this happened in certain dialects of English - <cl gl> [tl dl] was even listed as a regular pronunciation rule in an early version of Webster's dictionary, although it's receded to extinction in the US. see here - and apparently there were even tendencies toward a merger of /kr gr/ > /tr dr/

and as you said a full set of pharyngeal vowels

American English almost has this - /ʌw u uw/ [əʉ̈ ɵ ʏʉ], /ʌwl ul uwl/ [oˤ(ɫ) ɫ̩ʷ~ʊˤ(ɫ) uˤ(ɫ)] - with [oˤ] developing irregularly from /ʌw/ without following /l/ for some speakers in certain words (e.g. 'both', sometimes misspelled 'bolth' in places like Twitter, and 'social'). some speakers also have a [ɤ] or [o̜] allophone in some environments, I think around labials, e.g. 'provolone' [pɹɤvəɫɤn]. I'm not sure how large the differences are in low or front vowels, although æ ɒ > ɔ oː / _l is old and standard, and IMD there's some confusion between ʌ and ɑ before /l/ ("dulcimer" can have either the vowel of "dull" or the vowel of "doll", usually the latter)

[Omzinesý]

But devoicing of plosives is actually fairly typologically common for Germanic languages, Icelandic does it, and so does my Crimean Gothic (based on evidence from the letters.)

My understanding is that Germanic languages realize the distinction between tense and lax consonants either as voiceless and voiced (Dutch, Swedish dialects here near Helsinki) or unaspirated and aspirated (some(?) German, Icelandic). But Chemnitz is new to me cos it merges them word-initially too.

I'm also considering /d/ -> /r/ word-initially too, but it's probably that common typologically in that position.

--

Stød often results from vowel reduction and movement of syllable boundaries.
a.na => a.n => aˤn

I think many Germans pronouns the word-initial glottal stop as a kind of creaky voice. Dropping the initial /h/ could make it phonemic.

[Omzinesý]

Declension

Nouns are simple. Articles have more morphology.
Nouns have two numbers (Singular and Plural) and two cases (Nominative and Accusative).

"Normal" declension
Singular is unmarked.
Plural suffix is
-ɛs in words with stem-final stress. Usually, they are monosyllabic.
-s in words with non-stem-final stress. Usually, they are polysyllabic.
Unlaut may also appear.

Cases have different articles but the noun does not code case.

Code: Select all

'man' 
    Sg    Pl
Nom /män/ /mɛnɛs/
Acc /män/ /mɛnɛs/

Code: Select all

'house' 
    Sg    Pl
Nom /o:s/ /o:zɛs/
Acc /o:s/ /o:zɛs/

n-declension
N-declension has suffix -(e)n in SgAcc and PlNom and suffix -(e)m in PlAcc. Plurals can also have umlaut.

Code: Select all

'eye' 
    Sg    Pl
Nom /o̰:ʁɛ/ /ø̰:ʁɛn/
Acc /o̰:ʁɛn/ /ø̰:ʁɛn/ 

[Omzinesý]

Verb

/lḭ:v.n/ <liv'n> 'to love'

present
/lḭf/ <liv'>
/li:fst/ <livst>
/li:f/ <liv>
/li:v.n/ <li:vn>
/li:v.n/ <li:vn>
/li:v.n/ <li:vn>

past
/ɑ̰:f li:ft/ <av' livt>
/äst li:ft/ <ast livt>
/li:ft/ <livt>
/äv.n li:ft/ <avn livt>
/äv.n li:ft/ <avn livt>
/li:ft/ <livt>

Those forms that have lost a final vowel reasently have replased it with a stød feature. (I would like to keep the infinitive and the plural present forms distinct but I don't know how realistic it is that they have lost the vowel at different times.)
"The perfect" is used as the typical past tense. Like Czech, the auxiliary is usually dropped in third person.