Khmaaian an IE lang

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Omzinesý
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Khmaaian an IE lang

Post by Omzinesý »

Khmaaian an IE lang

I don't know if this lang has anything new but I started it anyways.

The name of the language is a bad derivation from the native word Xmaa ‘person’. That word is of course cognate with Latin homo.
Its most natural location is somewhere by the Black Sea, I think. Maybe it’s an island in the sea or maybe this is one of the many conlangs positioned on the Crimean Peninsula.
Its native script is Cyrillic, but because I’m lazy, I usually use romanization.

Features
- Rounded front vowels /y/ and /ø/ (they are both written with izhica https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%B4, the Cyrillic upsilon, <v>, which is identical with Latin <v> in the native Cyrillic script.
- Its sibilants /ts, s, z/ have just one POA, no postalveolar series.
- Its grammar is conservative: It preserves many PIE cases (NOM, ACC, DAT, VOC, maybe ABL) and the system of three tense-aspects (present, imperfect, aorist) and many of them are formed with ablaut.
- I want to add an essive case (the case of copular complements) to all my langs.

Sound changes
Consonants
The history of its consonants resembles that of Greek.
(BTW, is find the standard analyses of the thee PIE consonant series strange but let’s still call them with those names.)
- PIE voiceless stops are preserved *p *t *k *kʷ -> p t k k
- PIE voiced aspirated stops become voiceless fricatives (probably through voiceless aspirated stops) *bh *dh *gh *gʷh -> f s x x
- PIE voiced stops become voiced fricatives (*b) *d *g *gʷ -> (v) z ɣ ɣ
(The labialized velars thus behave like the non-bialized ones, but they can affect nearby vowels.)
Other
- Word-initial *s is lost. /ø:ta/ ‘sister’
- Word-initial ɣ is lost.
- PIE *w is usually lost. It often affects adjacent consonants, which is one of the sour sources of the rounded front vowels.
- f -> ʋ in most contexts.

- t͡s is a result of some kind of palatalization or *t or *k, I haven't thought about it much.

Vowels
I haven’t thought too much about the vowels yet. I think the PIE triplet *a *e *o can be preserved intact. Some PIE diphthongs create rounded front vowels.

Phonology
I want to reuse the same phoneme inventories again and again.
p t t͡s k <p t c k> <п т ц к>
s x <s x> <с х>
z ɣ <z g> <з г>
m n ŋ <m n ng> <м н ҥ>
l ɾ <l r> <л р>
ʋ j <v j> <в j>

y i u <y i u> <v и у>
yø ie uo <yø ie uo> <vo ие уо>
ø e o <ø e o> <v е о>
ä <a> <а>

Phonotactics (still copying from my messages in the Random Phonemic Inventory Thread)
Allowed onset clusters: obstruent + nasal/liquid: {p t t͡s k s x z ɣ v} + {m n ŋ l ɾ}
Allowed coda clusters: any consonant + sibilant
See that a voiced sibilant voices a preceding voiceless consonant, kot [kot] ‘a cat’ – kotz [kodz] ‘cats’.

Geminates may appear on syllable boundaries in careful speech, but the basic principle is that they are not a feature of Xmaaian.

Vowels
All vowels can appear short or long without remarkable quality changes in stressed syllables.
Long stressed syllables have two contrastive tones, a flat or slightly lowering one and a rising one. Historically the rising tone derives from a shift of the stress from a following syllable.

Stress
Khmaaian stress works quite much like that of Germanic. It is positioned on the first syllable of the main root but some unstressed prefixes appear. Some loan words also have atypical stress.

A short example.

Маз хмани емтут vлис и онсанцис.
Maa-z xmaan-i eémtu-t øøl-i-s i onsanc-i-s.
All-NOM.PL human-NOM.PL be_born.AOR-PL3 free-PL-ESS and equal-PL-ESS.
‘All humans are born free and equal.’
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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