Re: backwards conlanging

>Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>> I have a stupid boring /i/ /e/ /a/ /o/ /u/ vowel system, with two
>> diphthongs.  I guess I'll have to figure out something more complicated
>> that could've simplified down to the 5-vowel system.>
Harrumph.  Some of my favorite languages have 5-vowel systems.  Kash, for
instance.  ;-)

Nik Taylor wrote:
>Or something simpler that could have been elaborated into a 5-vowel
>system.  Perhaps an earlier stage had /i a u/, and /i/ and /u/ split
>under certain conditions, open/closed syllables is one way.  Quechua has
>[e] and [o] as allophones of /i/ and /u/ when adjacent to a uvular
>sound.  Or, perhaps earlier /aj/ and /aw/ became /e/ and /o/, and the
>diphthongs in the modern language came from a later source, perhaps lost
>consonants (e.g., /ahi/ -> /aj/)>
That's all quite similar to developments in the Austronesian family; of
course they're all quite common changes.  The protolang. had just 4 vowels,
*i a u @; *i a u tend to be remarkably stable, though i/u often lower
sporadically to e/o.  But *@ goes all over the map:  retained in Malay,
Javanese, Buginese et al.; /a/ in many, /i/ in Tagalog, /u/ in Bisayan; /o/
in Batak and all Oceanic; /e/ or /o/ in various Moluccan langs.  Sequences
with one of the so-called laryngeals tend to simplify, *aqu > o or O; *aqi >
e or E (the open varieties often when there was a final C). Similarly for
the original diphthongs *aj, aw (only occurred word-final).  In well-known
langs. like Malay and Jav., contrastive /e/ and /o/ were fairly clearly
introduced by borrowing from Indic languages, and later Portuguese-- Port.
even introduced a marginal /e:E/ and /o:O/ contrast into Malay:  pEsta
'party', bonEka 'doll'; rOda 'wheel'.

An interesting situation in some Moluccan langs. I've been studying:  *@ >
e, but higher [e] if the next V is i/u, lower [E] if it's a (far more
common)-- but then there are minimal pairs, with ...E-i and ...e-a-- where
do they come from?  Sloppy informants? Careless investigator?  Loanwords?
(Probably.) A marginal, vanishing contrast?  What may have happened in the
70-plus years since the description was written?


ObConlang:  Kash has /i e a u o/, and I'm in the same fix as Yoon-Ha-- no
proto-language, and very few dialects to compare-- but I've made a start.
The present variety of Kash has quite a symmetrical sound system:
    Voicless stops/afficate:   p t c[tS] k
    Voiced  ditto:                 b d j      g (phonetically mb, nd, ndZ,
Ng)
    Fricatives:                       f  s  S    x
    Nasals:                           m n ñ    (N only in final position)
    Other:                            v  r l y

Basically, vl.stops < original vl.stops; the vd/prenas. series < merger of
original *mp/mb, nt/nd, Nk/Ng.  Modern /s/ probably < *T. (Was there also
*s? Perhaps apical, the source of /S/?)  The affricates/palatals were
probably not present in the proto-lang.  Original *b > v,  *-d- and -d > r;
*g > undecided......
The nearest dialect has contrastive /N/ in all positions; phonetically, the
voiced stops are not prenasalized, and /x/ is uvular, not velar, and will
probably created lowered allophones of /i u/.