Tapilula

The Tapilula languyage is much more guttural than its ancestor of 8000 years ago, but is almiost entirely CV, so does not necesarrily sound harsh or intidimating. e.g. /plam/ > /ḳà/. This is a matter of preference. The name Tapilula refers to the continent, as this was the language spoken by the first Laban settlers to reach the continent in over a thousand years.

The mother of Tapilula was Mumba . This is the same word as the tribal name Hupa.

E'oqaaniam

Phonology

The Tapilula language had an unusual phonology that set it apart from its neighbors on the islands of Laba:

• It lacked both /r/ and /s/, unlike its parent language and unlike most of the languages around it.

• The labialized alveolar consonants /tʷ dʷ nʷ/ contrasted with plain alveolars, but the only other labialized consonants in the language were the velar fricatives /hʷ gʷ/. Previously, there had been labialized stops and nasals at other places of articulation, but these merged into other consonants while only the alveolars remained. Both branches of the Tapilula family that were spoken on the continent of Rilola changed these into lateral consonants /tɬ dɮ nl/.

• There was a labiodental fricative /f/, which contrasted with /hʷ/.

• Stops produced towards the front of the mouth (/p b t d tʷ dʷ/) came in voiced and voiceless pairs; the two stops in the dorsal area (/k ḳ/) were both voiceless, but distinguished a plain and an ejective version.

• Stops produced in the front of the mouth (/p b t d tʷ dʷ/) were more common in speech than those in the dorsal area (/k ḳ/). By contrast, the only fricative produced in the front of the mouth was /f/, and it was much rarer than the dorsal fricatives /h g/. The labialized velar fricatives /hʷ gʷ/ were more common than /f/ but less so than the plain /h g/, but note that /gʷ/ is commonly realized as [w].

• Tapilula was the only language in its area that had tones; it had developed them independently, without being influenced by other languages.

• All syllables were CV, but there were three syllabic nasals /m n ŋ/ which behaved as vowels except for the fact that they could not take contrasting tones. They could, however, carry stress in a word (as in afṁ "dolphin") and even stand alone as words of their own (e.g. ṁ "breast").

pholongy:

/p b m f t d n l tʷ dʷ nʷ j k ḳ ŋ h g hʷ gʷ/

/a e i o u ə/

Note that there is no /s/, but there is a contrast between /f/ and /hʷ/. This leads to a change of /f/>/s/ in the Gold branch, but the Andanese branch simply merges the two labial fricatives and goes on without an /s/.

Tapilula family tree

• Tapilula

• Gold language

• Khulls

• Moonshine
• Ogili

• Thaoa

• Palli
• Sakhi

• Babakiam

• Poswa

• Future Poswa

• Pabappa

• Old Andanese

• Andanese

• Pejo language (this is the dialect that remained on the islands of Laba)

Basic sound changes from Tapilula to proto-Pejo

• /ḳ/ > /ġ/ (a voiced velar stop).
• /tʷ dʷ nʷ/ > /kʷ ġʷ ŋʷ/. Thus all labialized consonants are velars.
• /f/ > /h/. Thus all fricatives (at this point) are velars as well.
• Probably /g gʷ/ > /0 w/, leaving the language with just /h hʷ/ for fricatives. Perhaps, though, before this shift happens, there is a vowel shift changing sequences like /àu/ into /ō/, like the languages of the mainland. Thus the /g/ > /0/ shift creates new sequences after a brief period in which the language had no vowel hiatus (except possibly at word boundaries). Also, /g/ after syllabic nasals creates a voiced stop instead of disappearing. Thus, sequences like /ṁb/ became more common. They had existed before, but only at the same rate as disharmonious sequences like /ṁt/, since the origin of the syllabic nasals had nothing to do with what consonants, if any, followed them.
• Some of the new vowels created by the above shift might actually be rising diphthongs, which are not considered diphthongs in most Tapilula languages but rather sequences of /j/ or /w/ plus a vowel. Thus, Pejo gained new syllables that had a /j/ or /w/ between the initial consonant and the nucleus of the syllable. The primordial labiovelars merged with these, meaning that they can be analyzed as /kw/, /hw/, etc, and therefore the labiovelars disappeared from the phonology, although sequences of a velar consonant plus /w/ were still far more common than any of the other combinations.

The phonology at this stage would be for consonants /p b m w t d n l j k ġ ŋ h/. The dot over the /ġ/ is to conform with the spelling traditions of related languages, but is unnecessary since this language has no voiced velar fricative /g/. The vowels and the syllabic consonants remain the same as the parent language's, but there is probably at least one new tone, and possibly two. The maximal tone system would be /ă à ā á/, a common setup for the mainland branch of the family.

• Syllabic nasals remain. They cannot have an epenthetic vowel inserted, such as /ə/, because then there would be only one vowel in the language which could carry a syllable-final consonant.

Notes

While one might expect a pushchain sound shift of /b d ġ/ > /p t k/ > /f s x/, this never happened in any of the descendants because the parent language's voiceless stops were more common than the voiced stops, which would mean a language undergoing this shift unconditionally would then have more fricatives in its words than stops. However, this shift did not even occur conditionally, either. Instead, some languages changed the voiced stops /b d ġ/ into voiced fricatives /v z g/, which then in most branches became voiceless /f s x/.