Future Moonshine

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Future Moonshine is a term for the post-classical dialects of Moonshine that began to arise after 6843 AD. Though Moonshine had been the most rapidly changing branch of its family for its first 3,000 years, the centralized school system slowed down the rate of change as it spread the Cartwheel dialect throughout the empire, and nearly all citizens attended school.

Scratchpad

Aspiration

May 18, 2021

Aspiration becomes phonemic, arising at first from transparent clusters /ph th/ and possibly others. But since there is no /kh/ cluster in Classical Moonshine, the regular /k/ becomes aspirated to fill the gap. Then /ġ/ shifts at least conditionally to become the new plain /k/. Then, new aspirates arise from /h/-hopping.


Minimal phoneme inventory

Labials:         p   m   f       w
Dentals:                 ṣ       ḷ
Alveolars:       t   n   s   z   l   r    
Palataloids:         ň   š   ž   y        
Velars:          k   ŋ   h   g   r̄

The analysis above takes every possible opportunity to analyze phonemes as clusters, even though some, such as analyzing /ṃ/ as /mf/, do not resemble the surface pronunciation very well.

NOTE: So far, there are no words with /ḷ/ or /w/ in the vocabulary. /w/ will almost certainly appear eventually, but /ḷ/ can only come from PMS /lu/, which can only occur over morpheme boundaries, since the parent language provided only /lū/, no short forms.

Unconditional consonants shifts in the daughter languages

Jun 25, 2021

Possible splits among the daughters:

pʷ tʷ kw

  1. pʷ tʷ kw > pʷ kʷ kʷ.
  2. pʷ tʷ kw > pʷ pʷ kʷ.
  3. pʷ tʷ kw > p.
  4. pʷ tʷ kw > pʷ.
  5. pʷ tʷ kw > b p p. (with regular /p/ also > /b/)

z

  • z > Ø very common conditionally, and in some languages unconditionally after vowel coloring
  • this likely triggers ʒ > z in all such languages

velarized consonants

there could be shifts of all sorts. only some of them are treated below.

  1. ṇ ṭ > nn tt common only in languages that grow geminates from tones, as there would otherwise be very few other geminates
  2. ṇ ṭ > m p
  3. ṇ ṭ > ŋ k
  4. ṇ ṭ > m k possible split shift as seen thousands of years earlier in the tropics
  5. ṇ ṭ > m f variant of /m p/ that passes through a fricative stage, repeating Moonshine's own earlier history
  6. ṇ ṭ > mm pp combination of labialization and gemination


elision of nasals

In some languages, perhaps even the majority, all of the lenis nasals m n ň ń ŋ are debuccalized, creating nasal diphthongs, with the palatals adding a /j/ glide to the first mora. Thus the only remaining nasals are the fortis nasals /ṃ ṇ/, which shift to ordinary /m n/. The nasal vowels may nonetheless create prenasalized consonants as in Polish.

voicing distinctions

  1. p > b occurs because of the distribution of /p/ and /b/ in Icecap Moonshine; with /b/ occurring freely but /p/ tied to stress
  2. b > p rare except in daughters that devoice other stops as well
  3. f > v but does not include voicing of ṗ


Conditional consonants shifts in the daughter languages

vociing

  1. p t k > b d ġ except after a high tone

elision

  1. z > Ø, but only after vowel shifts. one set of related shifts could be a az až iz i agʷ > Ø a e ʲe ʲi o.

Other information about the descendants

Aug 13, 2020

Although it would be extremely difficult to sketch out properly, perhaps IMS could be seen as like Latin, and over 2,000 years it evolves into a family of languages that behave like Romance, with one dialect in particular being so conservative that its speakers consider it to be identical with the original IMS. They would call IMS as spoken in 6843 AD "Classical" and their own dialect "Modern". Since the school system is based in Cartwheel territory, this is probably the dialect that will be the most conservative, but note that there was a population migration beginning in the far north that might have wiped out Cartwheel.

Medical Moonshine

A scientific language that works like the 1990s Moonshine to the greatest possible extent, even if requiring shifts made unlikely by the mechanisms of standard diachronics. For example, àpaz "soap" could be reanalyzed as containing a root àp- (incorrect but plausible) and a suffix derived from the freestanding word àz "block; bar; brick" (which is both wrong and diachronically impossible). Alternatively, or perhaps simultaneously, this language could delete both all unstressed -z and all unstressed vowels, making the language monosyllabic at the word level. Then, new words would be created from compounds of the monosyllables, but this time there would be no new vowel or tone reduction, and the language would behave as though it had a multiplied inventory of 12 vowels instead of 3 (or however many arise after all of the shifts).

Additionally, noun cases would probably disappear altogether, though they could later be replaced by new ones.

The above shifts mean that Doctorate would be able to make great use of noun-noun compounds, one feature missing from Classical Moonshine and likely also missing from some of the daughter languages.

It is possible that high vowels are lowered when a dleeting syllable was /a/. try to make a chain shift of a>o>u>i>e or a>e>i>u>o for marking plurals or possibly many other things. Alternatively, there could be a three-way cycle of a>u>i (less likely a>i>u) or two cycles, one of a>o>e and the other of ə>u>i.

FULL SOUND CHANGES LISTS

Classical Moonshine (6843) to Berry Patch (8773)

  1. When padded by palatalized consonants on both sides within a syllable, the vowels ă ā à á (that is, /a/ on any tone) shifted to ĕ ē è é.
  2. When adjacent to a tautosyllabic palatalized consonant, the vowel a (on a low short tone) became e. The difference between this shift and the previous one is that this new shift also applied to open syllables.
  3. When padded by labialized consonants on both sides within a syllable, the vowels ă ā à á (that is, /a/ on any tone) shifted to ŏ ō ò ó.
  4. When adjacent to a tautosyllabic labialized consonant, the vowel a (on a low short tone) became o.
  5. The voiced fricatives z ž g gʷ shifted to Ø except in the coda of a stressed syllable.
  6. The voiceless fricatives f ṗ shifted to v f unconditionally. Other voiceless fricatives remained in place.
  7. Between vowels (except after a high tone), the voiced stops b ʒ ǯ ġ shifted to v̥ z ž g.
  8. Voiceless stops became geminated after a high tone.
  9. All palatalized labials became depalatalized.
  10. Labialization was eliminated.

Classical Moonshine (6843) to Muppets Toy Piano (8773)

  1. When padded by palatalized consonants on both sides within a syllable, the vowels ă ā à á (that is, /a/ on any tone) shifted to ĕ ē è é.
  2. When adjacent to a tautosyllabic palatalized consonant, the vowel a (on a low short tone) became e. The difference between this shift and the previous one is that this new shift also applied to open syllables.
  3. When padded by labialized consonants on both sides within a syllable, the vowels ă ā à á (that is, /a/ on any tone) shifted to ŏ ō ò ó.
  4. When adjacent to a tautosyllabic labialized consonant, the vowel a (on a low short tone) became o.
  5. In closed syllables, any remaining ĭ ì ŭ ù shifted to ĕ è ŏ ò.
  6. The voiced fricatives z ž g shifted to v̥ if bordering a rounded vowel, and if not, to y if bordering a front vowel. If the vowel on both sides was low, they shifted to Ø y Ø.
  7. The voiced fricatives ž gʷ shifted to y v̥, except in final position, where they disappeared.
  8. Any remaining instances of the voiced fricatives z g disappeared to Ø. If they had been in the coda of a stressed syllable, that vowel became longer. (This was likely confined to monosyllables.)
    Note that this introduced true vowel hiatus, meaning that vowel sequences existed in unstressed syllables, and that stress came to be marked explicitly since length no longer predicted the position of the stress. In Romanization, this requires stacked diacritics.
  9. Unstressed final a shifted to Ø, though a schwa (ə) allophone may have survived in some prosodic environments.
    Note that as a result of these previous shifts, the unstressed (FINAL ONLY) sequences a az až iz i agʷ had shifted to Ø a e ʲe ʲi o.
  10. The voiced bilabial fricative v̥ shifted to v.
  11. The labiovelars kʷ ġʷ (typically written "k g") decoupled to kw ġw.
  12. All stops became voiceless.
  13. The sequences pw tw kw (including from ġw) merged as p. Sequences like ks kš kl kr all shifted to having p.
    Note that there was little or no /bw dw/. The language thus became almost entirely free of velar consonants, like Poswa, but did not resemble Poswa.
  14. At this stage, all remaining dorsals occurred in narrowly defined contexts, such as verbal infinitives; here, speakers simply eliminated all words containing dorsals rather than shifting them to a new value. A speech register difference may have helped with this, as there had been alternations between /kʷ/ and /p/ in some morphemes before this, and a similar alternation such as /k/~/č/ could have arisen along the way.
  15. The dental ṭ came to be pronounced tˠ .
  16. The liquids ḷ r̄ shifted to w.
    This was originally written with /l/ also shifting, but if it happened it would likely be only in coda position or even only in superheavy codas like /-lts/.
  17. Palatalized labials depalatalized. All other palatalized consonants became palatoalveolar.
  18. All consonants after any vowel on the acute tone became voiced stops.
  19. The nasals m n ŋ disappeared to Ø, nasalizing the vowels around them. Then the palatalized nasals n ň likewise shifted to y and nasalized the vowels around them.
  20. The fortis nasals ṃ ṇ shifted to m n.

Classical Moonshine (6843) to ????? (8773)

  1. When padded by palatalized consonants on both sides within a syllable, the vowels ă ā à á (that is, /a/ on any tone) shifted to ĕ ē è é.
  2. When adjacent to a tautosyllabic palatalized consonant, the vowel a (on a low short tone) became e. The difference between this shift and the previous one is that this new shift also applied to open syllables.
  3. When padded by labialized consonants on both sides within a syllable, the vowels ă ā à á (that is, /a/ on any tone) shifted to ŏ ō ò ó.
  4. When adjacent to a tautosyllabic labialized consonant, the vowel a (on a low short tone) became o.
  5. The voiced fricatives z ž g gʷ shifted to Ø except in the coda of a stressed syllable.
  6. The voiceless labials f p shifted to v b unconditionally.

others

Italian Ice

The most conservative dialect is probably Cartwheel, the place where it all began. This is similar to how Italian is (arguably) the most conservative Romance language. The conservatism will be exaggerated by scholars, and with the help of the morphophonemic spelling system, many words will not visibly change at all over the 2000 years. There will be very few sound changes .... unlike Icelandic where á > au, k > hk, etc the sounds really do stay the same, and the glyphs of the alphabet continue to represent the same sounds. Thus, those few true sound changes are in fact respelled.

Crown dialect

Spoken deep in Poswob territory, far from the Moonshine Empire proper.

Wawiabi dialect

Spoken in the state of Balaš, also within Poswob territory. Contact with the Empire is continuous, however, and so this language may be very similar to the Cartwheel standard.

Eastern dialects

Though Xema was sparsely populated, it may have more daughter languages than the west since the population was more isolated from the rest. However, even here, most people were likely nomadic.

General ideas

Aug 13, 2020

Possibly merge all of /z ž g/ into one sound, since they contrast only incompletely. The same is true of the voiceless versions, but they will not be merged.

One dialect might do a conditional shift of /ṗ ṭ/ > /f þ/ after voicing the fricatives.

Try to make /w/ more prominent. Remember /wiwi/ "time", etc. "/w/ was the original /p/" (1994)

The clusters /px tx/ are common in IMS, but there is no /kx/. This is why they did not evolve into an aspiration contrast. But it is possible that some daughter languages manage to shift /px tx/ > /pʰ tʰ/ and somehow also evolve a distinction between /k/ and /kʰ/. It is not likely to involve losing /ġ/ since there was almost no bare /ġ/ to begin with (only /ŋġ/).

Aug 2, 2020

Since voiced stops occur in restricted environments, they could lose.

Aug 1, 2020

It is likely that the Moonshine Empire is so centralized that there is only one language for the vast area even 2,000 years after the standardization of Cartwheel Moonshine. (This is why it is also known as Icecap Moonshine.) Any dialects would have to be spoken in areas that broke free of the Moonshine Empire, which happened only once, and even those people were in close contact with the Empire, so they may not have had a separate language either.

Old ideas

Phonological developments

Sound changes involving consonants

Sound changes had already begun to slow in the centuries leading up to Classical Moonshine because the grammar had become tied to consonant and vowel gradations in ways that discouraged change. For example, one word might alternate its final consonants between /d~t~z~s/,[1] discouraging merging of those sounds. The classical consonant inventory was 


Bilabials:          p   b   m   ḟ   w
Labiodentals:       ṗ   ḅ   ṃ   f   v
Dentals:            ṭ   ḍ   ṇ   ṣ   ẓ   ḷ
Alveolars:          t   d   n   s   z   l   ř   c   ʒ
Postalveolars:              ň   š   ž           č   ǯ
Palatals:                       ś   y
Velars:             k   ġ   ŋ   h   g   r

As the language developed into dialects, and these dialects developed into languages, shared innovations spread throughout the territory, while other changes were unique to each daughter language.

The labiodental stops /ṗ ḅ/ held strong in many dialects because of their grammatical alternations with /f v/. The same was true of the dental stops /ṭ ḍ/ and their alternation with /ṣ ẓ/. However, the nasals ṃ ṇ had no such grammatical associations, and in many dialects they shifted to simple m n, or less commonly, shifted to voiced fricatives v ẓ.

In some dialects, the voiced stops became prenasalized; this is actually a retention of a pre-Classical trait. In the daughter languages that descended from these dialects, the voiced stops were thus taught as clusters and eliminated from the basic inventory. In some of these languages, the voiced fricatives hardened in some positions into voiced stops, reintroducing the contrast.

Sound changes involving vowels

The classical vowel inventory was /a e i o u/, with no diphthongs. This remained stable in most of the daughter languages.

Sound changes involving tones

The four tones of Icecap Moonshine were a à ā á, and these showed various developments in the daughter languages. Words borrowed between languages were often borrowed orthographically, and therefore the tones did not match acoustically.

In Icecap Moonshine tone was inseparable from its vowel, meaning that for all practical purposes there were 20 vowels (18 if segmenting /ō ó/ as /āʷ áʷ/). In the daughter languages, it is possible that stress interacts with tone and causes tones to migrate across long words.

Notes

  1. ↑ this is made up
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