Gala language

Galà is a branch of Old Andanese. Sometimes spelled Gala or Galai (exonyms). Galai is very conservative. /q/ > /ʔ/ > /0/ unconditionally; labialization was mostly dropped; intervocalic voicing became phonemic (because the consonants were restored to voiceless if stressed); the voiced fricatives /g gʷ/ hardened in initial position into stops.

NOTE, SOME OF THE CHANGES BELOW ARE ACTUALLY INTENDED TO BE FOR OLD ANDANESE, NOT GALA. THE REASON THEY ARE NOT ADDRESSED YET IS BECAUSE PREVIOUSLY I HAD HAD ONLY ONE DAUGHTER LANGUAGE FOR OLD ANDANESE, AND THE SHIFTS IN QUESTION DIDNT MATTER BECAUSE ALL OF THEIR OUTCOMES MERGED. Thus Tapilula phonology is relevant here.

Tap 2 Old &anese:

• The genitive infix in Tapilula was -ə̀h-, which changed very early on to -əh`- (that is, an infix of /əh/ plus a shift of the tone onto the following syllable). Then the schwa disappeared, creating aspirated consonants. Except for a few words where there had been voiced stops, this changed nothing whatsoever.

• Options are:

• 1) irregular retention of the schwa in this morpheme as /i/, then a change to palatalization. This contradicts mainline Andanese, however, which would not split off for another 1500 years.
• 2) Generalization of the infix to a suffix after some "misbehaving" words, probably those ending in /q/ + vowel, make it appear like a suffix.
• 3) Generalization of aspiration, perhaps with a Khulls-like shift of /mʰ/ > /mp/ so that the words will not collide with their own genitives. This still contradicts mainline Andanese, but only at a later stage.
• 4) Do nothing, since the tone shift alone should be sufficient to mark the genitive, even in monosyllabic roots, so long as monosyllabic roots are assumed to have been bisyllables that previously ended in a schwa or in /qi/.

• Note that Andanese did in fact retain sequences like [mha]~[mʰa] until quite late, even though they were spelled as /maha/ etc and thus did not appear to have once contained a schwa. Thus, Galà could do /mh/ > /mp/ while mainline Andanese did /mVh/=[mh] > /m/. Since the stops /p/ and /t/ were allophonically voiced between vowels, the resulting /bh dh/ would change back into /p t/ and thus become phonemic. Thus the only "problem" sounds whose mutated form merges with the plain form are /h/, /k/, and possibly /q/. /g/ probably mutates to /h/ instead of to /k/, or perhaps to a new phoneme /x/.

Phonology

Diachronics

Old Andnese to Gala

• Because the language is vowel-strong, it may do /ti/ > /si/ (likely t > č > š > s). Possibly also /ki/ > /si/, and then /kʷi/ > /ki/.

• /q/ > /0/ may be ignored in monosyllabic words, or perhaps in initial position generally, in favor of shifting to /k/. This would prevent words consisting of just single vowels from arising. If so, this /q/ > /k/ must be made later than the /k/ > /s/ shift. /qʰ/ (arguably better analyzed as a cluster /qh/) could also misbehave and thus survive as /k/.

• possible changes for aspirates (see above). instead of /mʰ/ > /mp/ (as in Khulls), perhaps /mʰ/ to /f/ (separate from hʷ) and /nʰ/ to /s/. This was an idea for mainline Andanese that I later scrapped.

• Also, the syllable /qi/ might delete its /i/ early on, leading to a setup similar to that of Japanese, where geminate conosnants appear in place of the earlier /qi/. Possibly /qu/ also. Note, however, that this would not likely happen if there was not also a nasal coda other than that left by the remnants of the very rare syllabic consonants.

• Initial /d/ is rare, coming only from the sequence /ġi/ plus a vowel. There are probably no phonemic palatals in the language; if there are, they are like Japanese in that they cannot occur before /i/.

• /g/ merges with /ġ/, with the stop pronunciation winning out eventually. The dot above the /ġ/ is to keep it distinct when Galai words are loaned into other languages that still have a contrast.

• /hj/ probably to /s/ (not given as such in the wordlist below).

vowel ashifts

like japanese, the vowel setup was once /a e i o u ja jo ju/ but with no */je ji/ since they were automatically palaltalizat.ed. like jp (and Khulls), [je] > [e] later on, leacing a gap.

PROBABLE FINAL PHONOLOGY

/p b m/

/t d n s l/

/k ŋ h g/

/a e i o u/

/ă à ā á/

/j/ and /w/ could be considered phonemes as well, despite being written as vowels, since they cannot carry tones.

A rare /r/ may come from the sequence /lj/.

Contacts with other languages

Gala is spoken in upland Nama, for which the lingua franca is Khulls, and freely loans words from Khulls.

Table of cognates

The table below makes some assumptions, such as unconditional /k/ > /t/ in Olati and /hj/ > /s/ in Galà.

Note that many roots are preserved only as parts of words rather than independent words, since this language family made abundant use of classifier prefixes to pad problematic words that collided with other words. This means that the homophones, especially those found in Late Andanese, did not cause problems in comprehension. For example, the word for "dolphin" appears to be a compound of sa "love" and gu "breast", but the two smaller words are used with classifiers only. Other words are attested but not often used: for example, the common word for torch in Late Andanese is not hunupu but the related ihunu.

Furthermore in these languages, especially Classical (and Late) Andanese, there are no differences between the sound changes that take place word-internally and those take affect independent words.

Also, semantic shifts are not given here.

This also assumes Galà ēa > yā, but īa > ya. As in Japanese, the shfit fails if the second element is /e/ or /i/.

Old Andanese	meaning	Galà	Proto-Olati	Lyugi	Late Andanese
kakŏbe	tree	kakŏbe	tatŏbe	kakē	kakupi
kʷonŏṁ	orange	konŏn	porō (?)		punu
gimòga	whip	gimòga	yimā		imua
gegŭbo	semen	gegŭbo	yúbo	gigū	yupu
hʷekăl	seaweed	hekā	fetā (?)	hukā
hʷèyunge	claw	sūnge	fūne (?)		sugi
kŏgu	tree bark	kŏgu
agʷùdu	countryside, plain field	agùdu	avùdu		alutu
galàqi	Galàqi (placename)	galà	yalàki		alai
hʷèyabe	the Sĕyepa religion	sābe	fābe		hiapi (sapi?)
pudigʷèyo	diaper	pudigyō	pudivō		putiliu
lìya	beaver	lyă (?)	lyā (?)		lia
nàgo nòma	honeybee	nagonòma	rōroma (?)		naguma
hìqi	key	hì	sìki		hii
heyăbo	lap (body part); pubis	sābo	sábo		sapu
lòqa	mouth		lòka		lua
làda	girl, woman; child	làda	làda	làra	lata
qĕi	wheel	kē	kē		i
qèga	sawgrass	kèga	kā		ya
hʷàhʷa	hair of the head	hàha	fàfa		haha
gʷū	milk	gū	vū		lu
qʷū	urine; pee	kū	pū		pu
ukòna	wine	ukòna	utòra		ukuna
hʷŭba	Fuba (a placename and tribal name)	hŭba	fŭba		hupa
pè	a type of tall grass; cognate to gʷăga	pè	pè		pi
pĕ	hip; side face	pĕ			pi
hʷŭm	breast; nipple	hun	fū(?)		gu
hĭbo	cranberry	hĭbo	sĭbo		hipu
gìbi	water				ipi
hʷugʷàyi	menstrual pad	hugē	fuvī		hulai
kùqi	bird's beak	kù	tùki		kui
hṅda	snow	hĭnda			gina(?)
qŏqu	rain	kō(?)	kŏku		wu
qùne	slicing knife	kùne	kùre		uni
gʷàda nŏda	Heaven; spiritual paradise	gadanŏda	vadarŏda		latanuta
hʷonùbu	torch	honùbu	forùbu		hunupu
kulagʷī	step; stair	kulagī	tulavī		kulali
ăpmi	woman; female	àmi			ami
hʷèdu	duck (bird)	hèdu	fèdu		hitu
hʷeyahʷŭm	dolphin	sāhun(?)	fāfū (?)		sagu
ùqi	eye	ù	ùki		wi
hʷō	fire	hō	fō		hu
hʷiă	love	să	fyá		sa
nŭbu	fruit that grows on trees	nŭbu	rŭbu		nupu