Future Spanish: update

Here are the latest developments in Future Spanish
(tentative name: _Ispan'ol_ [1hp@'n^ol]).

Phonology: I'm having trouble deciding which sounds are
phonemes and which are just allophones of others. In any
case I have the following phones:

Stops:  p b  t d  t^ d^  k g
Nasal:    m    n     n^    N
Frics:  f    s    s^     x    h
Frics:*   B   D z    z^    G
Apprx:   w          j w^   3

^ marks palatalization.

*These are, in principle, allophonic; [B D G] appear only as
allophones of [b d g], as in present-day Spanish. [z] appears
as the voiced version of [s] after a nasal. [z^] is the palatal
counterpart of [G].

Stops: unvoiced stops become voiced after a nasal.

Nasal: most syllable-final nasals shift to the PoA of the following
consonant; word-final nasals usually don't follow this rule.

Frics: [s^] appears from [s] becoming palatal before a front vowel,
and from present-day Spanish [S] (written <ll>, <y>). [h] is usually
an allophone of syllable-final [s].

Apprx: [w^] is [j<rnd>]; it derives from final [B] when a front final
vowel has been elided. [3] is a velar approximant, deriving from
final [G] when a central or back vowel was elided.


Grammar: there'll be a lot of vowel alternation due to the law of
palatal spread, by which=20
        (i) a front vowel palatalizes the previous consonant, if it's
        one of [t d D l n s z x G].
        (ii) a vowel that is followed by a palatal consonant is
        fronted.
        (iii) rule (i) and (ii) are cyclically applied.

I'm seriously thinking of having a 'construct state' developing from
noun + _de_ 'of'. _De_ is already clitic in present-day Spanish, and
the /d/ is often elided. In Ispan'ol, nouns ending in a vowel will
change it to a diphthong in the construct state. The diphthong will
be reduced to a pure front vowel, which will sometimes palatalize the
previous consonant, which will... etc.

I'm toying with some very heavy influence from Japanese (from a Japanese
colony in the Patagonia, settled around the year 2060), including a
shift to SOV order and postpositions... But that seems very unlikely.
Do you know of any natlang that has changed pre- to postpositions in
historical times? Another influence I was thinking about was a calque
of the Japanese _heya no naka_, _ki no ue_, etc. (noun + genitive +
location noun), which has a near parallel in Spanish shift from
prepositions like _tras_ to phrases like _atr=E1s de_. What do you think
of all this?


--Pablo Flores