Hỳng
Hỳng | |
Period | c. -200 YP |
Spoken in | west Tuysáfa |
Total speakers | unknown |
Writing system | none |
Classification | Wendoth |
Typology | |
Basic word order | VOS |
Morphology | fusional |
Alignment | NOM-ACC |
Credits | |
Created by | Alces |
The Hỳng language is a descendant of Wendoth spoken in west Tuysáfa, close to the area where Wihəs is spoken. It is noted among the Wendoth languages for its unusual consonant correspondances; for example, Hỳng, which is the self-appelation of the Hỳng speakers, is the reflex of Wendoth sum 'person'. It is also one of the more archaic Wendoth languages, and it is generally supposed that all the Wendoth languages besides Hỳng can be grouped into a sub-family called Nuclear Wendoth.
Historical phonology
- r became palatalised rʲ (or was perhaps inherited with this pronunciation).
- n became dental, and tsʲ and dzʲ became non-palatalised dental affricates tθ and dð respectively.
- Before palatalised consonants, all unstressed lax vowels merged as ɪ, and before unstressed velarised consonants, all lax vowels merged as ʊ.
- ŋ was elided unconditionally, with resulting sequences of non-close vowel + close vowel merging to form diphthongs.
- sˠ and sʲ merged as ʃ before consonants and word boundaries and merged as h elsewhere.
- zˠ and zʲ merged with lˠ and lʲ, respectively.
- Palatalised velar consonants became palatalised alveolars: ŋʲ became 'nʲ, kʲ and gʲ became affricates tsʲ and dzʲ, respectively, and xʲ and ɣʲ became fricatives sʲ and zʲ, respectively.
- Velarised labial consonants became velars: mˠ, pˠ, bˠ, fˠ and vˠ became ŋ, k, g, x and ɣ, respectively.
- tˠ and dˠ became p and b, probably via tʷ and dʷ.
- tθ and dð merged with θ and ð, respectively, before consonants and word boundaries. Elsewhere, they are re-analysed as clusters.
- θ and ð became f and v, respectively.
- rʲ became ʃ.
- j and w fortified to gj and gw, respectively, before stressed vowels.
- After monophthongs, j and w were re-analysed as the off-glides of diphthongs (or deleted after i and u respectively). The vowel sequences ui and iu also became diphthongs ʊi̯ and ɪu̯ when both vowels were unstressed, while the vowel sequences ii and uu became i and u. (these changes propagated from right to left)
- Before palatalised consonants, stressed monophthongs other than ḭ and i̤ acquired a i̯ off-glide.
- nʲ, tʲ, dʲ, tsʲ, dzʲ, sʲ and zʲ lost their palatalisation.
- nd merged with d after consonants and word boundaries.
- ṳ and ṵ became y̰ and y̤, respectively.
- æ̰ and ɑ̤ became a̰ and o̤, respectively.
- All vowels acquired modal voice in unstressed syllables.
- Stressed ə became y̰ before plosives and affricates and y̤ elsewhere.
- Stressed a and o became a̤ and o̰, respectively, unless followed by a close vowel, in which case they made the same shift in quality but took the close vowel's phonation.
- Unstressed i merged into ɪ (although i remained as i as a diphthong off-glide).
- Unstressed y and ə merged as ʏ (although y remained as y as a diphthong off-glide).
- Unstressed o merged into ʊ.
- lˠ and lʲ merged with j and w, respectively.
- w merged with f after voiceless consonants and v after voiced consonants.
- q became ʔ.
Incomplete changes:
- ts and dz have merged with s and z in most dialects.
- w has merged with v in some dialects.
Phonology
Consonants
Labial | Coronal | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | (m) | n | ŋ | ||||
Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | ʔ | ||
voiced | b | d | g | ||||
Affricate | voiceless | (ts) | |||||
voiced | (dz) | ||||||
Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | x | χ | h |
voiced | v | z | ɣ | ʁ | |||
Approximant | (w) | j |
w is merged with v in some dialects. In all dialects, [w] does not occur after consonants, but [f] is written w after voiceless consonants and [v] is written w after voiced consonants. The clusters tw and dw occur in syllable onsets, nd occurs across syllable codas, and gj and gw occur before stressed vowels. Other clusters occur due to transformation and loanwords.
m is rare and appears only in loanwords and sound-symbolic words.
Vowels
Front | Central | Back | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
unrounded | rounded | |||
Close | ḭ, i̤ (ɪ) | y̰, y̤ (ʏ) | (ʊ) | |
Mid | o̰, o̤ | |||
Open | a̰, a̤ (a) |
The vowels in the brackets are the unstressed allophones, which are always modally-voiced. All stressed vowels are either creaky- or breathy-voiced; breathy-voice is indicated by the grave accent and creaky-voice is indicated by the acute accent.
There are also some diphthongs, including /ɪi/ ei and /ʏy/ ey.
Morphology
Cases: nominative, accusative (-m), dative / allative (-út), genitive / ablative (-úw), inalienable genitive (-eí), instrumental (-hò), illative (-t), elative (-w).
All monotransitive verbs came to take a dative object, hence -m has become the new accusative case ending, and agreement with objects no longer occurs. Ditransitive verbs have all become monotransitives indicating the recipient in the allative case.