Re: First Post and Proto-Conlang rough sketch

>I suppose it all depends on two things: how much like PIE you want it to
>be, and how much work you want to put in on the background.  If I were
>making "a creole from the ancient past" that had changed "giving rise to
>this e/o/0 gradation", I would just make the creole, then put it through
>sound changes to get the gradation.  It'll look a lot more realistic
>that way!
The problem is that while I know more about historical linguistics than your
average layman, I'm by no means a linguist. I would have NO clue how to give
rise to such a gradiation system as precise as the one I have here from an
almost completely isolating creole (of the ancient past ;-) ).

On the other hand, I realized that because all of my final voiced consonants
are followed by an obligatory schwa, it hints (I think?) at an earlier stage
in which there was another vowel there that was degraded. It seems to me
that an even earlier stage could have had a CVC and CVCV (with only
voiceless consonants), where intervocalic Cs became voiced. That doesn't
however, explain how there got to be initial Voiced Cs, if there were only
voiceless Cs . . .

As far as "looking like PIE" I don't want it to look TOO much like PIE, per
se (obviously, the richer variety of fricatives, as well as an entire series
of palatalized (well, to an extent) and labialized consonants, rather than
only pala. and labi. velars, gives it a strongly different feel. I just
happen to really like PIE's ablaut system, as well as the way it went from
Active/Stative to having genders in its daughters.

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