Re: Another Urianian phonology problem.

Den 28. mai. 2008 kl. 18.44 skreiv Edgard Bikelis:
>
>
> First, do you have a home page about your conlang? Google didn't
> help me.
Right. I should get to work on that some time.
Maybe now?

> Anyway, I'm for two years now polishing my PIE conlang, and
> curiously I'm doing the phonology again... yet again. So.
>
>> I thought I had found a clever way to deal with the PIE aspirated
>> labiovelars that gave me a foundation for the vir-vyr-or forms in
>> various parts of the highlands, by assuming that the /gh/ part of
>> the phoneme is lost and only a rounding remains, manifesting
>> itself as a /w/ phoneme, so that for example gwher > wer > vir-vyr-
>> or.
>
> Are you sure you want that much of homophony? vir-vyr-or is...
> gHWer wi:ros...?
Those forms _vir_, _vyr_ and _or_ are written forms from various
places in the highlands. They may be just dialectal variations, or
maybe _vyr_ is rounded by following syllables. The only instance I
have of it is in the name Vyrulum. Then, _or_ occurs mainly as a
final syllable, or before a consonant in another syllable. Wherever
_vir_ occurs before a consonant it seems to belong to the same
syllable. So I thought they could have a common Middle Urianian
origin with different modern reflexes depending on the environment.

>> Now, the unaspirated labiovelars regularly turn into fricatives in
>> an early stage. /gw/ > /j/, /kw/ > /C/. In the lowlands the voiced
>> ones generally lose their voice and merge with the unvoiced ones,
>> and in the highlands they suffer the same voicing changes as the
>> stops, otherwise they are not changed since this early phase.
>
> So gWena and kWoina will sound really close ; ).
No woman no cry? In Old Urianian these become jena and ce:na, with
short final a's. In modern lowland Urianian this becomes cana and
ci:na, but in the highlands they are cyni and ini, respectively.

As for the mentioned problem, I think /gWh/ > /w/ and /gWh/ > /x/
(which is the most likely source for the _ch_, _kh_ representation)
both are possible, and I think I can explain them consistently by
having a /gWh/ > /xWh/ change in Old Urianian, while the highland
dialects preserve the rounding element more and drop the fricative
and the lowland ones drop it while keeping the fricative.

Then the unaspirated labiovelars must keep some rounding too, so I
will make them /gW/ > /jW/ and /kW/ > /CW/ for Old Urianian. This
also is more consistent with the y in the highland word cyni and
several other similar highland words.

Also the PIE to OU change in the voiced aspirated velar is less
direct, I think. Not /gh/ > /h/ as I thought before, but /gh/ > /xh/.
But I think this will quickly collapse to an /h/, so I will continue
writing it with an _h_ in OU text.

LEF