Leaper/Apple

Lòkrika is the name of a language descended from Khulls that comes to superficially resemble Proto-Indo-European by shedding some of its dorsal fricatives, thus increasing the prominence among the fricatives of the previously rare s, but retaining enough dorsal fricatives to remind the listener of the Proto-Indo-European laryngeals.

The source of the name Lokrika is abandoned morphemes for "apple circle"; that is, apple represents Nama, the origin of the language, and the circle represents PIE. It is part of a series of fruit-flavored languages including Lemonade, Mandarin Orange, Strawberry Icecream, and Raspberry Wine.

Lòkriki distinguishes labialization on some of its stops, but not its nasals or sonorants. There are no palatals. There are no voiced aspirates. However, as in Khulls, it is very likely that voiceless aspirates will be far more common than any other stop series.

Lokrika will probably remain a tonal language, but with a somewhat reduced system and a stress pattern that limits tone to just one syllable per word. I don't believe that PIE was a tonal language, but it is very difficult for Khulls to lose tone without creating massive ambiguity. Note that unlike PIE, Khulls typically has very short word roots, and approaches oligosynthesis. This is a feature I intend to retain in Lokrika. Thus, Lokrika may resemble PIE in its phonology, but not in its grammar or lexicon. (Note that all languages I create are entirely a priori.)

My intention is for Lokrika to be fairly close in time to Khulls, thus leaving time to branch off daughter languages that resemble early IE languages the way that Lokrika resembles PIE. These will round out Lokrika's unstable vowel system by deleting the remaining laryngeals, after first using them to allophonically color surrounding vowels.

There will probably be no ablaut, and no distinction between /kw/ and /kʷ/ or like sequences. However, such distinctions may appear in the daughter languages.

Lokrika will likely need to abandon Khulls' "mend and blend" sandhi operation, which took disharmonious consonant sequences such as /xʷn/ and "repaired" them into harmonious clusters like /nkʷ/, or in some cases into single consonants.

Lokrika probably retains the Khulls distinction between /p ṗ b/ and /pʷ ṗʷ bʷ/ since it would be unlikely for such a contrast to disappear without also losing the distinction between the corresponding velar series.

Phonology

See above; for the meantime the phonology is undetermined beyond the design goals itemized above.

Diachronics from Khulls

The eight laryngrals of Khulls were x xʷ g gʷ h hʷ ʕ ʕʷ, of which /ʕ/ was essentially a silent consonant that pharyngealized any stressed vowel that it touched. /ʕʷ/, on the other hand, was an ordinary consonant that did not spread out to color surrounding vowels. It is possible that Lokrika could change the behavior of one or both of these sounds.

One unstable feature of Khulls was that most of its voicing distinctions occurred in these laryngeal consonants. There was a stop series /b d ġ/, but all three were extremely rare. The labialized stops /bʷ ġʷ/ were less rare (they had come from nasals), but still much rarer than /pʷ kʷ/ (and /ḳʷ/). Thus, it is possible that Lokrika will start out by devoicing all fricatives. This could mean that there could be some laryngeal-associated vowel coloring even in Lokrika itself, rather than only in the daughter languages. Perhaps vowels that touch primordial voiced laryngeals are lengthened or moved to a slightly different position in the vowel space.

Grammar

Noun gender is retained. The basic grammar of Khulls is mostly intact, which means that it does not resemble PIE whatsoever.