2024/10/04 - Phonology Soup III

I decided to revamp my phonological work, which I will now explain. I decided to change up the phonological developments, and created a SCA² sound change file to fit these. The current changes primarily concern the developments covered in Phonology Soup I. To explain the changes, I can simply say that I tried to rework the mid-sound change phonology into what can be simply described as a recreation of Proto-Trans–New Guinea, though it has the pitch accent that I originally intended for the modern stage of the language. The reason for this is I thought it would be interesting to try and work my idea into a real-world proto-language for the fun of it, and also because my original intended middle stage closely resembled Proto-Trans–New Guinea, albeit unintentionally.

Initial Phonology

Consonants: /m n ɲ ŋ p t c k l j w/
Vowels: /a e o i/
Syllable Structure: (C)V(C)
Stress: presumably penultimate

SCA² Sound Changes from Proto-Language to Mid-Sound Change Language

C=ptckbdɟgmnɲŋsljw
S=mnɲŋljw
O=ptckbdɟgs
N=mnɲŋ
P=ptcks
B=bdɟg
V=aeiou
T=ᴴᴸᴹ

#Syllabification
/./C_C
/./V_CV
#Sound Changes
c/s/_
/ᴴ/VP_[.#]
/ᴸ/V_[.#]
/ᴸ/VC_[.#]
/./_
V/Ṽ/_(T)(.)N
N/B/_V/_Ṽ
Ṽ/V/_
C//_T.
C//_T#
ᴸ/ᴴ/_.(C)Vᴴ
ᴸ/ᴹ/_
ᴹ/ᴸ/ᴴ.(C)V_
ᴹ/ᴸ/ᴸ.(C)V_
ᴹ/ᴴ/ᴹ.(C)V_#
ᴹ/ᴸ/_#
ᴹ/ᴸ/_
ᴸ/ᴴ/_.(C)Vᴴ
ᴴ/ᴸ/#(C)V_(C).CVᴴ
[iu]//V…_T#
e/i/_T#
o/u/_T#
CT/\\/_#
B/N/_#
.//_
ᴸ//ᴸ_
ᴴ//ᴴ_
#Transliteration
b/ᵐb/_
d/ⁿd/_
ɟ/ᶮɟ/_
g/ᵑg/_
ᴸᴴ/̌/_
ᴴᴸ/̂/_
ᴴ/́/_
ᴸ/̀/_

Resulting Phonology

Onset Consonants: /m n ɲ ŋ p t k ᵐb ⁿd ᶮɟ ᵑg s l j w/
Coda Consonants: /m n ɲ ŋ p t k s l j w/
Vowels: /a e o i u/
Syllable Structure: (C)V (initial), CV (medial), CV(C) (final), (C)V(C) (monosyllabic)
Tone: fall-dominant pitch accent, with each word either having the accent on a specific mora, after which the pitch drops, or no accent at all, causing the pitch to rise throughout the word.

Interesting of note about the resulting phonology:

• Pre-nasalised stops and nasals merge in coda position.
• /e o/ do not occur in final syllables.
• Onset nasals cannot occur in the syllable preceding a pitch drop.
• Each word has only a single pitch drop, this forming the accent, as in Tokyo-accented Japanese varieties.
• Unaccented words have their first mora being low tone and all following syllables high tone, with no pitch drop. This makes polysyllabic unaccented words indistinguishable from words with the marked high tone on the last syllable, unless said words are followed by unaccented morphemes (which would show the otherwise unrealised pitch drop).

I will probably make these changes a bit more complex, and potentially have the pitch accent develop later on, and still allow multiple high tones per word at the stage I have presented (this would also lead to accentless words remaining low/mid tone).

Taking the same words I have used before (slightly altered to fit any phonological changes) and running them through the sound change applier gives the following:

*puju → pǔj
*wikaɲuwo → wìkáᶮɟúwú
*luku → lǔk
*jiwi → jǐw
*ɲumjiwma → ɲùjíᵐbá
*kutetpu → kùtêp
*kunjecwipuŋ → kùjéwìp
*jokjanŋici → jójàᵑgìs
*polmi → pǒm
*wukluku → wúlùk
*ticapka → tìsákà

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