Babakiam/Sound changes

Gold to Yeisu Kasu (3100)

Alternate names: Papies; Pre-Proto-Pabappa; Pre-Pabappa; Pabappic Gold

Gold was the language spoken in the city of Beni-Iubaia (earlier Iūni-Iubāia) around 1900 AD. It evolved into a language called Yeisu Kasu within about 1000 years, and then further into Babakiam by 4100 AD.

Starting phonology:

Cosnonants

/p b m w t d n s z l č ǯ j k ġ ŋ h g ḳ ʕ/

The permissible final consonants are /k ḳ l n s ʕ/. Syllabic consonants /ṁ ṅ ŋ̇/ do, however, exist.

Any consonant other than /w/ can be labialized, but only in a syllable onset, meaning that they can be analyzed as clusters of consonant + /w/. However, this setup ignores the influence of the labialized conosnants tʷ dʷ nʷ, which are much more common than other labialized consonants, and evolve distinctly from them in all branches of the Gold family.

Note that all voiceless stops here are spelled the same regardless of whether they were aspirated or not. This is because Babakiam later merges all aspirated voiceless stops with their plain voiceless counterparts unconditionally, with there being no difference in outcome even in conditional environments such as after a closed syllable. The changes relating to aspiration are mentioned here only for the purpose of deriving loanwords from Babakiam into Khulls and other languages.

The fricative that corrsponds to Khulls /x/ is here spelled /h/; its pronunciation began as [h] but shifted towards [x] in some positions over time. It never merged with the much rarer /ħ/ phoneme, which mostly corresponds to Khulls' true /h/.

1. Sequences like /ʕaʕ/, /ʕiʕ/, etc. lost the first /ʕ/ regardless of whether it was in the same syllable or not. (Possibly move this back even into Gold.)
2. At this time, syllable-final /s/ was pronounced [h], as in Khulls. This allophone is actually a retention of the original pronunciation rather than an allophone. Now, this aspiration spread across a following voiceless stop, causing it to become aspirated. Note that since Babakiam later merges aspiration anyway, this change had no effect except for causing a small number of loanwords to appear in other languages with unexpected aspiration.
3. At the end of a syllable, /ʕ/ disappeared and changed the previous vowel to a high tone. It also voiced the following consonant. No new consonants arose from this change, but some voiced ones now became less restricted in their distribution.
4. Syllable-final k ḳ ŋ changed to kʷ ḳʷ ŋʷ. A few compound words in which the second element began with a vowel or a suppressed consonant split into doublets depending on whether the free (labiovelar) or bound (plain velar) version of the morpheme was generalized in the compound.
5. The bilabial approximant w changed to ʕʷ (in internal reconstructions, also spelled "v") before a vowel. Note that words like "kua" were still /kua/ rather than /kwa/ and thus did not undergo this change.
6. Thenl lʷ both becamew (not ʕʷ) in all positions although it retained a rhotic allophone. /lʷ/ was very rare, occurring only from word-initial collapse of an earlier /ul-/ sequence.
7. The labialized consonants tʷ dʷ nʷ also took on this same rhotic allophone, unlike all other labialized consonants. Thus they became clusters tʕʷ dʕʷ nʕʷ, which can also be spelled "tv dv nv".
8. The labiovelar consonants kʷ ḳʷ ġʷ hʷ gʷ became p ṗ b f w unconditionally.
9. Sequences of two vowels in which the first vowel was i or u became rising diphthongs. Then all clusters of a consonant followed by a semivowel came to be pronounced as coarticulated single consonants. Thus bua became bʷa, bia became bʲa, and so on. ñ was assimilated as nʲ.
10. Stressed syllabic nasals were opened to sequences containing a schwa. This happened in various ways depending on the environment: the maximal expansion was [CəC], where the two C's are identical. This happened only when the syllabic nasal had occurred between two vowels. If instead, it occurred at the end of a word or in a closed syllable (e.g. /pṁpsa/), the second C was always m. If the syllabic nasal had also been preceded by a consonant in the same syllable, the first C would be omitted altogether. The first C was also omitted if the syllabic nasal had occurred word-initially; however, since this created a word beginning with a stressed schwa, a /β/ was quickly inserted by analogy with all other words beginning with a stressed syllable. Nevertheless, the β-less form appeared in compounds in which the preceding element ended in a consonant, where it additionally competed with forms appearing in compounds whose first element ended in a vowel. Thus for example, the Gold language word ṁ "breast" split into em, βem, and mem, with no difference in meaning between the three.
11. Unstressed syllabic nasals followed the same rules as above, except that whenever possible, they contracted to a simple nasal rather than retaining a schwa. Whenever syllable-final, the result was always m, never *n or *ŋ.
12. The voiced labialized stops bʷ dʷ ǯʷ ġʷ changed to b between vowels.
13. The voiced palatalized stops bʲ dʲ ǯʲ ġʲ changed to ǯ between vowels.
14. The voiced stops b d ǯ ġ(including ones created by the previous two rules) changed to β ð ž g between vowels. This change also caused the voiced labialized stops dʕʷ ġʷ to merge into ðʷ gʷ.
15. The voiced aspirated stops bʰ dʰ ǯʰ ġʰ (structurually [h] + consonant, plus sandhi) changed to f þ š x between vowels. <---Experimental change, requires replacing some roots. /š x/ would be extremely rare
16. The clusters gj jg (where [j] is an allophone of /i/) changed to jj unconditionally. This new cluster sometimes became resyllabified into /ī/, but usually did not. (Because these clusters by definition could only occur between two vowels, the new /jj/ cluster was treated like an ordinary consonant cluster. However, /gj/ and /jg/ had sometimes occurred at word boundaries.)
17. The voiced fricatives ð z g became silent between vowels and occasionally in initial position (due to compounding).
18. βʷ ðʷ gʷ all changed to w.
19. žʲ became ž.
20. All aspirated consonants (except nasals) became voiceless, and the aspiration disappeared.

NOTE ON POLITICS

This time period is around 3100 AD, near the beginning of the "Era of Happiness" (Yeisu Kasu: 3138 - 3302 AD). The branches of the language that fork off from mainline Bābākiam in 3138 all die out, and therefore all of their names in the history are written in Babakiam, but they could be revived as minor local languages, and there would be quite a lot of them.

The name Yeisu Kasu would have been exactly the same in Yeisu Kasu itself, as it is unlikely to have contained a /ġ/ or an unusual cluster such as /sħ/.

Thus the language now had the consonants

Labials:        /p ṗ b m f β w/
Dentals:        /þ/
Alveolars:      /t d n s z/
Postalveolars:  /č ǯ ž/
Palatals:       /j/
Velars:         /k ḳ ġ ŋ h g/
Pharyngeals:    /ħ ʕ/

Voiced stops had an odd distribution, occuring almost entirely in word-initial position. Word-internally, the contrast was not between voiced and voiceless stops but between single and double voiceless ones. These two contrasts were not related to each other, but loans from Babakiam into CV languages often treated the single voiceless stops as voiced stops in intervocalic position.

There may have also been a marginal /š/ and /x/.

Yeisu Kasu (3100) to Bābākiam (4100)

Alternate names: Proto-Pabappa; Pabappa (in historical texts)

1. A nasal (or any voiced sound^??) in a cluster after a voiceless consonant (nearly always /p/ or /s/) changed to ʕ.
2. The voiced fricatives β z ž g changed to b d ǯ g before a high tone.
3. The post-velar fricative consonants ħ ʕ, which had been developing labial compression, changed unconditionally to f β. Note that this was the (rare) "true" /h/, not the common {h} which is /x/. (Possibly shift this rule up by one position, creating /b/ instead of /β/ in many words.)
4. The clusters pʕ sʕ changed to the ejectives ṕ ś, but this shift did not affect the labialized or palatalized versions. (These are the same consonants that became clicks in some Kxel languages.) This happened also for other voiceless sounds ,but they were very rare.
5. The velar fricatives h g were fronted to š ž unconditionally. šʲ žʲ became š ž.
6. The labialized voiced stops bʷ dʷ ǯʷ gʷ changed to b.
7. The palatalized voiced stops bʲ dʲ ǯʲ gʲ changed to ǯ.
8. Any remaining voiced stops b d ǯ g changed unconditionally to p t č k (except when in clusters). This eliminated the situation that had persisted in the early Yeisu Kasu era in which the contrast for stops was voiced:voiceless in word-initial position (and a few clusters) but single:geminate in intervocalic position.
9. The voiced fricative žʷ changed to β.
10. Tones were eliminated. However the stress accent (nouns on the penultimate syllable, verbs on the ultimate) remained and became regularized.
11. The voiced stops d ǯ g (now found only in clusters) changed to n nʲ ŋ unconditionally.
12. Remaining β changed to b.
13. Remaining z changed to s.
14. The ejectives ṕ ś became plain, making the earlier sound change entirely meaningless but for the presence of a few loanwords into Khulls and other surrounding languages.
15. The postalveolar affricate č was softened to š unconditionally.
16. Newly created vowel sequences beginning with i or u collapsed into rising diphthongs, thus creating a new series of palatalized and labialized consonants.
17. The labialized consonants bʷ žʷ changed to b unconditionally. (Despite the fact that a nearly identical sound change had occurred only shortly before this one, this rule was very common in verb forms that were created by the shift of /bua/ > /bʷa/ > /ba/, and likewise for other vowels.)
18. The palatalized consonants bʲ žʲ changed to ž unconditionally. (The above shift also applies here; many verbs underwent a shift of /bia/ > /bʲa/ > /ža/.)
19. A schwa ə in a word in which the following syllable had /a/ changed also to a. Note that this is the only vowel change in the entire history of the language going back 3500 years, even before the Gold language, except for a few diphthongizations such as /ua/ > /wa/. However, the vowel system became very unstable in the succeeding period as the language developed into Poswa and Pabappa.
20. The stress was shifted to the first syllable in all words.

Thus the language had the consonants p m f b w t n s k ŋ š ž j and the vowels a i u ə, the last of which was a schwa. Of the consonants, all except b w ž j could be followed by a semivowel w or j, when occurring at the beginning of a syllable. At the end of a syllable, only p m w s j could occur. This stage of the language is referred to as Bābākiam, "city language".  Spoken around the year 4100, not only in the city of Bābā but a significant

amount of territory away from it in all directions.