Wendoth/Historical phonology
Correspondances between Proto-Wendoth and Wendoth
Consonants
The reflexes of each Pre-Wendoth consonant can be classified into two groups: the slender (palatalised) reflexes and the broad (velarised) reflexes. Slender reflexes appear in slender syllables and broad reflexes appear in broad syllables. A syllable is slender if one of the following conditions holds.
- The nucleus of the syllable is i or e.
- The nucleus of the syllable is a, the coda of the syllable is empty, the syllable is not the final one in the word, and the syllable immediately precedes a syllable whose nucleus is i or e. (It is not sufficient for the preceded syllable to be slender; in the word baɣari, the syllables ri and ɣa are slender but the syllable ba is broad.)
Also, if the nucleus of the syllable is a and the coda of the syllable is a nasal consonant (m, n or ŋ) then the syllable may be either slender or broad; no regular rule is known which distinguishes the two possible reflexes.
The following table gives the reflexes of each Pre-Wendoth consonant in syllable-initial position, along with the environments in which they occur (via the footnotes). The environments are described with reference to the Pre-Wendoth forms of the words.
| Pre-Wendoth consonant | Slender reflexes | Broad reflexes |
|---|---|---|
| m | n̪d̪ʲ (nd) | mˠ (m) |
| n | n (n) | ŋ (ng) |
| ŋ | ŋʲ (nj), ∅1 | ʁ (h), ŋ (ng)2, ∅1, 3 |
| p | t̪ʲ (t) | pˠ (p) |
| b | d̪ʲ (d) | bˠ (b) |
| t | t͡sʲ (ch) | tˠ (ṭ) |
| d | d͡zʲ (jh) | dˠ (ḍ) |
| k | kʲ (k) | q (q) |
| g | gʲ (g) | ʁ (h), ∅2, 3, q (q)1 |
| f | θʲ (th) | fˠ (f) |
| v | ðʲ (dh) | vˠ (v) |
| s | sʲ (sh) | sˠ (s) |
| z | zʲ (zh) | zˠ (z) |
| x | xʲ (c) | χ (x) |
| ɣ | ɣʲ (j) | ʁ (h), ∅2, 3, χ (x)1 |
| r | r (r) | ʁ (h), ∅2, 3, χ (x)1 |
| l | lʲ~j (y) | lˠ~w (w) |
| ʔ | jˤ~iˤ (į) | wˤ~uˤ (ų) |
| ɦ | jʱ~iʱ (i) | wʱ~uʱ (u) |
- Immediately before a word-final vowel.
- In word-initial position.
- Immediately after a vowel which is preceded by ʔ or ɦ.
In syllable-final position, the only consonants which occur are the nasals, m, n and ŋ, and the laryngeals, ʔ and ɦ.
Syllable-final laryngeals do not differ in their reflexes depending on whether the syllable is broad or slender when the preceding vowel is e, o or a. In this position, the outcome of ʔ is always ą /aˤ/ and the outcome of ɦ is always ã /aʱ/, and the preceding vowel is deleted. On the other hand, the syllable-final sequences iʔ, iɦ, uʔ and uɦ have the reflexes į, i, ų and u, respectively, unless they are themselves preceded as a laryngeal, in which case iʔ and uʔ become ą /aˤ/ and iɦ and uɦ become ã /aʱ/. Therefore, for example, the syllable ʔiʔ becomes įą /jˤaˤ/ and the syllable ɦuɦ becomes uã /wʱaʱ/.
As for syllable-final nasals, if these precede ʔ or ɦ, then they develop in the same way as they do in syllable-initial position (because the vocalisation of the following ʔ or ɦ results in them entering a syllable-initial position). Before other consonants they are unconditionally elided. In word-final position, m becomes m /mˠ/ (whether the containing syllable is light or heavy) and ŋ is always elided, while n becomes n /n/ when slender and ng /ŋ/ when broad.
Vowels
The two high vowels of Pre-Wendoth, i and u, merged at an early stage as /ɨ/ and the two mid vowels, e and o, merged at an early stage as /ə/. The semivowels that were the reflexes of ʔ and ɦ merged with preceding /ɨ/ to reintroduce high vowels to the language: /ɨjˤ/, /ɨjʱ/, /ɨwˤ/ and /ɨwʱ/ became [iˤ], [iʱ], [uˤ] and [uʱ], respectively (these high vowels can be regarded as allophones of the semivowel phonemes /jˤ/, /jʱ/, /wˤ/ and /wʱ/, respectively, occuring after consonants [including these semivowel phonemes, even when they are realised as phonetic vowels]). The sequences įį, iį, įi, ii, ųų, ųu, uų and uu were regularly dissimilated to ųį, uį, ųi, ui, įų, įu, ių and iu, respectively (the initial vowel was simply altered in quality), although these sequences were often restored by analogy when they occured across morpheme boundaries.
Later on, a distinction emerged between nasalised and non-nasalised vowels. Nasalised vowels occured in all positions when a nasal consonant immediately followed in the Pre-Wendoth form of the word, non-nasalised vowels occured elsewhere; the loss of nasals before consonants and, later, the changes that occured to the broad reflex of Pre-Wendoth ŋ phonemicised the distinction. A chain shift then occured that affected the non-nasalised vowels only, triggered by the backing and rounding of non-nasalised a to o. The following table shows the effects of this shift.
| Pre-Wendoth vowel | Nasalised reflex | Non-nasalised reflex |
|---|---|---|
| i, u | ɨ | ə |
| e, o | ə | a |
| a | a | o |
The nasalisation distinction was subsequently lost, and the /ɨ/ phoneme was eliminated via merger with u adjacent to Wendoth labial consonants (that is, broad Pre-Wendoth labial consonants) and i elsewhere. It can still be analysed as a separate phoneme, which is conventionally written ü, because of the regular morphological alternations between u and i that are produced.
Some vowel elision also take place in the development of Wendoth. As mentioned above, i and u merged with following syllable-initial laryngeals and all vowels merged with following syllable-final laryngeals, with various reflexes appearing as a result. Vowels immediately preceded by ʔ or ɦ, and word-final vowels, were also unconditionally elided.
Suprasegmentals
Pre-Wendoth had regular stress on penultimate syllables, or on final syllables if the final syllable had a non-empty coda. The elision of word-final vowels resulted in stress regularly falling on the final syllable.
Sound changes from Pre-Wendoth to Wendoth
(to do, but the above section on correspondances contains all the information needed)