Western Telic

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Western Telic is a language descendant from Proto-Telic.


Phonology

Consonants

p t k b d s x v(β) l r(ʐ) j ɣ m n ŋ

Vowels

i u e o æ(ɛ) å(ɔ) a

Syllables

The syllable structure is CV(C)(C)(C)

Sound Changes

Credit to Frislander for text.

*Firstly, this variety appears to derive from one where the proto-language *i *u and corresponding glides *j *w gained fricated pronunciations [v zʲ] early on. These would later be strengthened into the modern day voiced stops /b/ and /d/, but before that they were deleted after sonorants, so e.g. *waku "man" → baɣb but *kaːmi "sun" → xæm, and in the case of *ti it instead resulted in palatalisation to*tʲ.
*Secondly, said variety also appears to have derived from one where *k had a uvular pronunciation [q] adjacent to non-front vowels. While sister languages would retain this stop pronunciation, in this language it instead has a velar~uvular fricative as its direct reflex.
*Thirdly, seemingly early on this variety was pronouncing *ɲ as [ʐ], but otherwise it patterns with the nasals, including losing a following *i and *u.
*Now onto the sound changes which took place after the breakup of the protolanguage. Early on it seems that the stops were voiced intervocalically: from *p *t *tʲ *c *k giving [b d dʲ ɟ g ɢ]. Later on it seems all these bar the coronals were later lenited to approximants [β j ɣ ʁ], e.g. *copə "bone" → sov, *jekə "earth" → deɣ; it appears that [d dʲ] instead lost their voicing.
 * Early on, it seems that both *a and *aː under went umlaut to *æ(ː) → /ɛ/ when a following syllable contained a front vowel *i or *e and/or when followed by a palatal consonant *c *j, e.g. *waki "woman" → bæɣd, *kaːmi "sun" → xæm, *kaːjə → xæd (note that this likely occurred after *ɲ had shifted to /ʐ/, as it did not cause this fronting in the a
   same manner).
*  *s was generally debuccalised to *h and later was lost, e.g. *soːkə "spirit" → uɣ, *taːsə "heart" → tå "hearth, fireplace", *-soi "3sg possessive (stressed)" → -ut. Remaining *c and *tʲ correspondingly shifted to /s/, e.g. *copə "bone" → sov, *ceːsi "snow" → sid, *lati "grass" → læs.
* The long vowels *eː *aː *oː were raised to /i ɔ u/, and the length contrast was generally lost, e.g. *keːcə "fire" → kij, *waːŋə "duck" → båŋ, *joːmə "rock" → dum (note that this means that *a and *aː merge under umlaut, as can be seen in the above umlaut examples). *e and *o in non-initial syllables were also raised, e.h. *keːwəpou "to the water" → kubup, *keːcəloŋə "with fire" → kijluŋ.
*Schwas were generally lost (as seen in above examples), except in circumstances where they break up a non-sonorous cluster, e.g. *tapəŋə "river" → tavŋ [tavəŋ], 
  • *peːɲəmu "anus" → pirm [ˈpiʐəm] "smoke hole".
* This point is probably when the voiced fricatives from the original approximants *j *w came to be pronounced as voiced stops, including when syllabic. *v likely went straight to /b/ , while *zʲ lilkely went through a stage as *dʲ or *d͡ʒ before settling on /d/, which indeed in some varieties still shows light palatalisation.
* Finally, we have the loss of the uvulars - *q fricated to /x/ (except in the cluster *ŋq where it instead merged with the stop /k/) while *ɣ and *ʁ, if indeed they ever were distinct, have fully merged as /ɣ/.
 * Moving into the beginnings of the dialectal fragmentation of the daughter, one group of varieties, likely the northern ones, apparently underwent a change where a front vowel inbetween a velar consonant and a labial one was backed and rounded. Many of these forms later spread across all varieties, e.g. *keːwə "water" → kub. This change must have occurred before the following one, hence why it is in this list and not in the dialectal changes list.