Re: History of Yasaro

> > I suspect /kna/ would initially be more likely break to /k@~na/, but you
> > could then apply nasal spreading to get /k@~na~/ and then elide the /@n/
> > part...
>
>Possibly, but it still seems a little contrived. Maybe if an /N/ were
>involved ... /kna/ > /kNa/ > /k@~N\a/ > /k@~a:/ > /ka~:/ ?
That could make the elision of the nasal more plausible. It doesn't seem to
work after non-velars, however.


> > There's also a phenomenon called "rhinoglottophilia" where glottals or >
>glottalization may spontaneously induce nasality in vowels: /ka?/ > /ka~/
>
>Now that's something I haven't heard of, and maybe I could link Yasaro to
>some older Zireen languages (like Tenai) which have ejective stops (one of
>the sources of tones in Sim�k). Or ejectives / glottalization could
>be an areal feature of otherwise unrelated languages, which would simplify
>things.
According to what I've read, it's mainly final [h ?], sometimes glottalized
(creaky) vowels too, but not really glottal*ized* consonants. But developing
eg. /?t/ > /~t/ or /t_>/ in different daughter languages might be more like
it...


> > Oh, there's a multitude of possibilities for generating /tS/. If you >
>wish to retain /ki/, the next most obvious ones are probably /ti tj kj/. >
>/j/ in clusters has the good side that it can just disappear in the >
>process - no need to jumble vowels afterwards to phonemize the > affricate.
>(Besides, be�ng an "extremity" vowel, regenerating /i/ tends > to
>follow always the same few patterns; not much room for originality.)
>
>/ti/ is at least as common in Yasaro as /ki/ if not more so; /tj/ /kj/ and
>so on are possibilities, but if these existed in the older languages, other
>clusters probably existed as well. Unless /j/ came from /i/, but then /ji/
>seems problematic.
If the /j/ were produced by vowel breaking, it wouldn't be all that
impossible that it would afterwards just disappear, leaving only traces of
palatalization. (Cf. English <ew>, <ue>.)


> > /tr kr tl kl/ could work too (possibly via /ts)`/ or /tK)/), but IMO >
>/pl/ starts to sound a bit far-fetched.
>
>I was thinking of Latin plorare > Portuguese chorar, /pl/ > /S/, which is
>pretty close to /pl/ > /tS/ and could possibly be adapted. But most likely
>/tr/ or /kr/, especially since /r/ is really [z`] in Yasaro. /tK/ is
>another interesting possibility, since /K/ is frequent in Zireen languages
>but absent in Yasaro.
IMO /pl/ > /S/ sounds pretty idiosyncratic... Given those circumstances, /tr
kr/ looks the most likely (to me anyway.)

John Vertical

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