Cupbearer Coast: Difference between revisions

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It is possible that this chain of languages is derived from [[Cosmopolitan_Play_languages#Play_.284138.29_to_Blossom|Blossom]], which is a middle step in another chain, meaning that one chain intersects another and that the early dialect map is two-dimensional.
It is possible that this chain of languages is derived from [[Cosmopolitan_Play_languages#Play_.284138.29_to_Blossom|Blossom]], which is a middle step in another chain, meaning that one chain intersects another and that the early dialect map is two-dimensional.


==Structure of society==
:''This content may be moved to [[Cosmopolitan_Age#Northwest_Coast]], though that page is already crowded.''
The multiethnic Thunder quarter of the Anchor Empire broke down quickly after the great war in Baeba.  At the dawn of the Cosmopolitan Age, this area of the world was in a power vacuum, as it lay between Baeba, the Moonshines, and the Ghosts, but was not an attractive target for invasion by any of them.  The Play speakers would likely have migrated down the Plup River, bringing their language with them, but even they may have been disorganized and so their language could have broken up into dialects and then separate languages, increasing the diversity of the area.


====Naming====
==Wineapple languages==
The Play name for the region was ''Fayuva'' and for the new country ''Fayuvas''.  This could be translated into English with a name like Sharpland or Clawland, but the name was chosen because it rhymed with Mayuvas, one of the names of Dreamland.  (Note that, similarly, ''Žayuvas'' had been chosen as one of the names of Memnumu.)  More specifically, the Play word ''fayu'' depicted any sharp body part of an animal, whether a tooth, a claw, or something else;  its use by the United Pacifist League underscored their awareness that, as humans, they did not have any sharp body parts with which to shed the blood of their enemies, and  that as humans, they were pacifists by nature.
Daughter languages here may be given names related to alcohol.  This is not world-internally canonical because the speakers referred to themselves with ordinary tribal names.  Rather it is sort of a weak double pun .... these languages were spoken near [[Proto-Moonshine language|Moonshine]] and the speakers were also involved in the bottling and distribution of wine from warmer climates into cold regions such as Moonshine; they also consumed alcohol themselves.
 
===Height gap===
It is possible that the multiracial society will segregate itself based on body type.  Although the Dreamers, Oyster speakers (who were of diverse political affiliations), and Cupbearers all commonly had blonde hair, and thus were [[Lenia]]ns, they would have nonetheless considered themselves distinct.  As elsewhere, the central divide would be not about skin or hair color but about whether it was women or men who were the taller sex. 
 
Historically, the Dreamers had tall men and short women, while  the other two tribal confederations were mixed.  This means that Dreamer society could maintain itself, despite being cut off from Dreamland by both Baeba and the Players, as an endogamous social group within each nation.  Then, the Oyster and Play speakers could marry each other but yet also soon form into two endogamous groups based on their height profiles, with some of the tall-male families blending into Dreamer society while others remained distinct for political reasons.
 
It is overwhelmingly likely that the Matrixes would have preferentially selected and bred slaves from the lineages with tall women and short men,  knowing they would be easier to push around, but because the Matrixes held power for just a single generation, and because they bred with their own slaves, they would not have been able to significantly affect the population structure in this manner, and in fact may have pushed the gene pool back towards a masculist height profile.
 
===Physical appearance===
Apart from the height profile, the three tribal groups were of similar appearance.  They had weathered several invasions by tribes with dark hair and even dark skin, but because of the high latitude and cold climate, dark skin was maladaptive, and strong pressure existed for the children of mixed marriages to inherit a lighter skin color. Indeed, this may have been an unspoken reason why the dark-skinned Ghosts did not try to conquer nations that would have otherwise been an easy targets for them.
 
Of the three tribal groups, the Players would have had the darkest hair color overall because they were the only group with Andanese ancestry. The Oyster-derived tribes would likely have had the lightest. But because the Oysters and Players married each other frequently while the Dreamers were mostly endogamous, these differences may have  soon become unnoticeable even to the locals.
 
It is also possible that there will be endogamous groups based on speech patterns, which by definition would have languages of their own.  This requires that the Andanese strain of the Player tribes be recoverable, however, rather than blending into the wider society around them, and this is unlikely because they were forced into slavery for a period of time where they did not have the choice of who to marry.
 
===Daily social organization===
Thus, the maximum possible diversity within a Cupbearer Coast nation would consist of:
#A Dreamlandic-speaking community where men are taller than women;
#An Oyster-speaking community where men are taller than women;
#A Play-speaking community where men are taller than women;
#An Oyster-speaking community where women are taller than men;
#A Play-speaking community where women are taller than men;
#A second Play-speaking community, but whose language has a distinct sound and shows Andanic influence, where women are taller than men.
 
===New political parties===
Because the tall-male and tall-female societies stood apart by mutual respect, they would not need to form political parties of their own.                          It is possible that political parties in this region were based primarily  on ideology rather than tribal identity, defying the global trend towards identity-based politics.
 
Nonetheless, as the nearby Moonshine Empire grows in power over the centuries, they would have increasingly favored the tall-female societies, and encouraged feminist politics even for the Dreamers, so there could be a political alliance called the Feminists or even the Moonshines (though the Moonshines would not accept these people as true Moonshines).  In theory, Dreamland could have also applied counter-pressure and funded Masculist organizations, but the shared linguistic connection, as well as Dreamers' different attitudes towards gender issues, may have led them to simply identify their favored political parties as Dreamer parties rather than specifically picking them out as men's parties.
 
The '''[[Political_parties_of_Teppala#Dolls_.28UPL-3.29|United Pacifist League]] ''' must become the dominant party in at least one area very early on, perhaps even from the dawn of the Cosmopolitan Age, and remain so for thousands of years, as it is the dominant political party in the Poswob Empire in 6800 AD (and likely even in 8700 AD).  Likewise, it was historically dominant in Lypelpyp, although canonically Lypelpyp later replaced it with a home-grown party.    Lypelpyp's    language is derived from Play, and it may be that UPL is naturally dominant whenever the Play speakers take    root, with other parties existing due to political pressure from Moonshine, other foreign powers, and possibly internal conflicts with the descendants of the Dreamers.
 
====Representation====
The early split between the Cupbearers and the Bottoms was an artificial creation by an outside party, and almost certainly did not persist into the Cosmopolitan Age.  Indeed, the Bottoms came to call their party the United Pacifist League shortly after they achieved independence.
 
The early UPL prohibited its members from carrying or even owning weapons, but did not apply these rules to the rival parties around them.  Thus, Pacifists were vulnerable to attack even in their home territory, and to protect themselves they would have needed to defect to a rival party.
 
Furthermore, the [[Dreamland|Dreamer]] minority demanded that the Pacifists amplify the voting power of all of the non-Pacifist groups, claiming that as minorities, they needed extra power to oppose the Pacifists.  The Dreamers claimed that Pacifists would make good soldiers because they were much more obedient to authority than other parties, and were willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their enemies.  This was in keeping with the ancient policy of the Gold party, and the Dreamers pointed out that in Dreamland itself, minority  parties indeed had extra representation in parliament.  It is not clear, however, that even a party so gullible as the United Pacifist League would have submitted to a demand such as this.
 
Moreover, it is possible that the rival parties eventually disarmed voluntarily, as only the Dreamers had a foreign ally, and Dreamland was becoming weaker every century.
 
===Relations with foreign powers===
====UPL-Ghost relations====
UPL territory bordered the rival Ghost Empire, whose constitution referred to blonde-haired tribes as ''pissies'' ('''patin''') and considered them fit for abuse by Ghosts and by other tribes.  The Ghosts may have tried to divide the Lenians in UPL on the basis of hair color, agitating for the dark-haired groups to put aside their differences, join the Ghosts, and attack the blondes.  Indeed, they tried to arm the Dreamers in this area, even as they opposed the Dreamers in Dreamland and banned the Dreamer party from the Ghost Empire. 
 
The early Ghosts, who formed around 4150 AD (before the Cosmopolitan Age), claimed their racial discrimination program was necessary to undo the [[Political_parties_of_Teppala#Firebreath_.28GAP-6.29|Firebreath]]'s policies of discrimination in the opposite direction.  (The Firebreaths may even have still been around, though they would have been controlled by Moonshines.)  Yet the Ghosts claimed that they opposed racism because the Ghost party was ideological, whereas the Firebreath party had been tribalistic.  The Ghosts claimed that  their party was open to membership of all tribes except those with blonde hair, and that their exclusion of the blonde Lenian tribes was based on a law of nature, and did not need to change. Thus, they quickly abandoned their early argument that their discrimination laws were simply needed to equalize the standing of the different tribes.
 
Indeed, it may be that the Ghosts' original capital city lay directly in the Pacifists' line of settlement.  In the long term, however, their strategy failed.  The Ghosts had similarly attempted to spark a racial war in [[Baeba Swamp]] by promoting the interests of the dark-skinned aboriginals while antagonizing the '''Iron''' party, whose members mostly had light skin and dark hair.  This led the Iron party to defend the interests of the Lenians, though they took very little positive action and began encouraging Lenians in Baeba Swamp to move to Dreamland.
 
Because the Ghosts were trying to provoke two simultaneous wars using contradictory positions, their own leaders began to question the Ghost ideology, and defections became numerous.  In Baeba Swamp, many Ghosts converted to the Iron party, giving the Irons a firm grip on power.
 
 
====UPL-Baeba relations====
The Irons were not pacifists, but by running a world government from Baeba Swamp they kept hostile powers from starting new wars within their territories.    They may have won the approval of Moonshine even though Moonshine was not part of their world government.


====UPL-Moonshine relations====
Wineapple speakers almost certainly settle the offshore islands as well, including "Wipep"; they may have also settled Sakʷalo and been later pushed back by Moonshine speakers.
Moonshines were pacifists and shared interests with UPL, but their main interest in  Blossom politics was to promote feminism among the Blossoms.  Thus it could be said that the Ghosts tried to divide the Blossoms along racial lines while the Moonshines divided them along gender-power lines.
This was the language spoken in Olansele.


====Geography====
This branch may have actually begun diverging before 3370, but is given as such in the assumption that the sound changes in the first few centuries where Baywatch and Cappini had lost contact were minimal enough to be ignored.
The Plup River was called '''Nimesippensami''' in proto-Baywatch; the Thunderers could have borrowed the name at this stage. The Wineapple version of the name would have been '''Nimešipezami'''.


==Wineapple languages==
THere may have been a marginal /u/ + vowel construction, left over from Dreamlandic ū + vowel.
Daughter languages here may be given names related to alcohol.  This is not world-internally canonical because the speakers referred to themselves with ordinary tribal names.  Rather it is sort of a weak double pun .... these languages were spoken near [[Proto-Moonshine language|Moonshine]] and the speakers were also involved in the bottling and distribution of wine from warmer climates into cold regions such as Moonshine; they also consumed alcohol themselves.
===Cappini (≈3370) to Wineapple (3958)===


#The alveolars ''t n'' shifted to '''k ŋ''' before any of /o u/.  This included the geminate forms.
#Any singleton ''s'' shifted to '''h''' unconditionally.  The specific sequence /hu/ may have been pronounced as IPA [ɸu].
#Voiceless stops were lenited according to a two-step rule:
#:When occurring before a singleton voiceless stop, the voiceless stops ''p t k'' shifted to '''f s h'''.  (Thus, this is a "FiSH language".) This new /f/ would not have contrasted with the allophonic [ɸ] from the shift above, however.
#:When occurring after a voiceless stop (whether single or double), the voiceless stops ''p t k'' again shifted to '''f s h'''.  These changes left the language with a sparse distribution of singleton voiceless stops, so it could be said that any remaining /p t k/ geminated to /pp tt kk/ for ease of  reckoning.
#The short ''o'' vowel shifted to '''a'''.  /ō/ may have then shifted to /o/, but it was still spelled as a full /ō/.
#The geminates ''pp tt kk ss'' shifted to '''p t k s'''. 
#The voiced bilabial stop ''b'' shifted to '''v'''.  This did not include the rare sequence /mb/.
#The clusters ''mp nt ns nk'' shifted to '''mb nd z ŋġ'''.  Then, the prenasals ''mb nd ŋġ'' shifted to the simple stops '''b d ġ''' in word-initial position.  Note that there was a very small amount of preexisting /mb/ that was not from /mp/.
#The sequences ''ia ua'' came to be pronounced    '''ye wo'''.
#Before a vowel, the sequences ''fu hu'' merged as '''f'''.
#Before a vowel, the sequences ''si hi'' merged as '''š''', while ''ni ŋi'' merged into '''ň'''.  Likewise ''ti di zi'' became '''či ǯi ži'''.
#In word-initial position, facing a voiceless sound across a short vowel, the voiced stops ''b d ǯ ġ'' devoiced to '''p t č k'''.
#Between vowels, except post-tonically, the voiceless fricative ''h'' disappeared to '''Ø'''.  Any preceding obstruents became voiceless (this may mean that distinctions like mb/mp became phonemic again).
#Any remaining  ''h '' now shifted to '''š''' if bordering a front vowel in either direction, to '''f''' if bordering a rounded vowel in either direction, and otherwise (the sole remaining environment being /a-_-a/) disappeared to '''Ø''', creating a long vowel /ā/ from the resulting hiatus.


The consonant inventory of Wineapple was  
The consonant inventory at this stage was  


  Labials:        p  b  m  f  v  w
  Labials:        p  b  m  f  v  w
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  Postalveolars:  č  ǯ  ň  š  ž  y
  Postalveolars:  č  ǯ  ň  š  ž  y
  Velars:          k  ġ  ŋ     
  Velars:          k  ġ  ŋ     
   
   
It may be that all consonants were palatalized before /i/, and that the postalveolar row can be reanalyzed as palatalized alveolars.
It may be that all consonants were palatalized before /i/, and that the postalveolar row can be reanalyzed as palatalized alveolars.
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The vowel system may have been /a e i u ā ē ī ō ū/.
The vowel system may have been /a e i u ā ē ī ō ū/.


Even in 3958, the speakers were already in contact with Moonshine, and despite the early Moonshine speakers' closed society there may have been influence flowing in the opposite direction.
Even in 3958, the speakers were already in contact with Moonshine, and Moonshine may have influenced the evolution of the Wineapple languages.  Wineapple could not influence Moonshine, however, because the standard dialect of Moonshine was that of the interior, whose high population growth continually refreshed and buried the outlying dialects of the border regions.


Possible paths for vowel evolution are:
Possible paths for vowel evolution are:
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A third possibility is that the Play speakers never truly established themselves along the coast of Olansele, and though they may still have dominated sea trade, they did not control the land and therefore there was no daughter of Play that was spoken in Olansele, meaning that Wineapple was dominant after all.
A third possibility is that the Play speakers never truly established themselves along the coast of Olansele, and though they may still have dominated sea trade, they did not control the land and therefore there was no daughter of Play that was spoken in Olansele, meaning that Wineapple was dominant after all.


===Wineapple (3958) to Craft Brew (4800)===
===Wineapple (3958) to Craft Brew (4800)===
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#:It may be that new pseudo-suffixes of /e i u/ were generated by this shift, since e.g. some roots would have shapes like /bep/ as nouns and /bepi/ as verbs.
#:It may be that new pseudo-suffixes of /e i u/ were generated by this shift, since e.g. some roots would have shapes like /bep/ as nouns and /bepi/ as verbs.
#:Likewise, because of the noun classifier prefixes, this shift allowed the creation of monosyllabic verbs beginning with clusters, corresponding to nouns that were either CVC[a] or CVC.
#:Likewise, because of the noun classifier prefixes, this shift allowed the creation of monosyllabic verbs beginning with clusters, corresponding to nouns that were either CVC[a] or CVC.
#Palatalized labials passed their coarticulation to a following consonant if there was one, and then depalatalized.
#Palatalized labials passed their coarticulation to a following consonant if there was one, and then depalatalized.  This likely also occurred for labialized consonants.
#It is possible that unstressed /o/ shifted to /a/.
#It is possible that unstressed /o/ shifted to /a/.
#The high vowel ''u'' shifted to '''o''' if an adjacent tonic syllable contained a mid vowel.   
#The high vowel ''u'' shifted to '''o''' if an adjacent tonic syllable contained a mid vowel.   
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#All consonants other than labials became palatalized before any /i/.
#All consonants other than labials became palatalized before any /i/.
#All short ''e'', even in stressed syllables, shifted to '''i''' if any other syllable contained a high vowel.  Note, however, that this shift was quite rare, as all of the /i/ in classifiers prefixes and most other unstressed syllables had been lost by this time.
#All short ''e'', even in stressed syllables, shifted to '''i''' if any other syllable contained a high vowel.  Note, however, that this shift was quite rare, as all of the /i/ in classifiers prefixes and most other unstressed syllables had been lost by this time.
#The sequence ''rʷ'' shifted to '''w'''.
#The labialized nasals ''mʷ nʷ ŋʷ'' (and any others) merged as '''mm''' between vowels and to a single '''m''' otherwise.


Because of the vowel reductions, all classifiers except those containing /i/ contracted into single consonants.  These lost their function as classifiers, as they could no longer carry the rhythm of the original CV classifiers, and therefore became inseparable prefixes on certain words.  For example, Baywatch ''pensele'' "shirt" became '''fzel''',<ref>probably with [fs]</ref> with the f- reflecting the clothing  classifier  prefix but no longer seen as such.  Instead there simply came to be a lot of words for clothes that began with /f/.
Because of the vowel reductions, all classifiers except those containing /i/ contracted into single consonants.  These lost their function as classifiers, as they could no longer carry the rhythm of the original CV classifiers, and therefore became inseparable prefixes on certain words.  For example, Baywatch ''pensele'' "shirt" became '''fzel''',<ref>probably with [fs]</ref> with the f- reflecting the clothing  classifier  prefix but no longer seen as such.  Instead there simply came to be a lot of words for clothes that began with /f/.
==Oyster languages==
In the interior region, perhaps in Poise, there may be a shift of ''p b f v'' > '''f p v b''', although the /p/>/f/ shift would take place AFTER /b/ > /p/, and be highly conditional, so it would require /pʰ/ as a middle step. It could even be that /p/>/f/ happened at the same time  that Wineapple was also shifting /p/>/f/, a shift which was similarly conditional. (On the other hand, consider that Wineapple may have done its shift under Oyster influence.) Later, the main dialect of this Oyster language would  shift /v/ > /b/, meaning that apart from a few /f/'s, the shift would actually be ''p b f v'' > '''p p b b''', which would make it resemble Play.
==Lypelpyp languages==
It is not clear which branch of the family is even the ancestor of the language of Lypelpyp, but it should evolve into a consonant inventory based on /p b m n ŋ l r/ by 5200 AD or so, with all other consonants marginal.
It is likely that Lypelpyp was settled through the nation of '''Yīspʷilinâ''', whose entry on [[Crystals]] indicates that it is likely a duplicate name of some other nation, but none of the other nations listed fit the description well.  The nation of  '''Poise''' is also nearby and if  Yīspʷilinâ did not have its own language it may have had a similar profile to Poise.
Note that the first Thunder government (3884 - 3915) ruled all Crystals out of the Empire, but nations like Poise and Yīspʷilinâ may have seceded from the occupied Empire even before 3884 due to previous conflicts, and therefore never fallen under Thunder control.


==Baywatch (3370) to Tata-A (4800)==
==Baywatch (3370) to Tata-A (4800)==

Latest revision as of 09:09, 10 September 2021

The Cupbearer Coast (sometimes known by its Play name, Fayuva) is an area which in the 4100s came under the control of the speakers of the Play language, as several waves of mutually hostile invaders all spoke this language. Thus even when power changed hands several times in one century, the language of the population did not change. However, the Play speakers never fully drove out the languages of the indigenous inhabitants, such as Oyster, Middlesex, and North Dreamlandic.

The native population of Mipatatatai, also known as Tata, spoke the Baywatch language. But as the Dreamers, the Players, the Crystals, the Matrix, the Zenith, the Soap, the Tinkers, the Slopes, the Cold Men, the Mirror, the Phoenixes, the Dolls, the Cupbearers, and the Storms sent their armies into Tata to fight for control of the territory and adjacent Baeba Swamp, more languages appeared.


If both labialized consonants and prenasalized consonants are analyzed as clusters, the phonology would be 

Bilabials:       p   m           b   
Alveolars:       t   n   s   l   r

And the vowels /a e i o u/ in both short and long forms. The geminates /pp ss tt/ still remained, and there were sound gaps of */te so bo lo ro/, except in a few rare words where contraction of long vowels before geminates had created new short vowels there.

The coronal stop /t/ was allophonically [k] before any /o u/. Unlike the neighboring Dolphin Rider language, however, it remained [t] before /a/, and therefore [t] is considered the primary allophone. It was not palatalized before /e i/.


Cosmopolitan Play languages

This is likely within the Baeban Play dialect continuum, despite the sharp political boundary between Baeba and Tata.

It is required that the Play speakers become the majority in Lypelpyp no later than 6800 AD, and the traditional writeup requires them to be the majority already by 5500 AD, though this timeline relied on settlement of Play speakers coming from Paba (where the birthrate was high for thousands of years) rather than from the Baeba region.

Try to find the string halpa in open74 dictionary, as it may refer to the original Cupbearer party name.

Plup River

The Plup River (a place holder name) may be the route by which Play speakers left Baeba Swamp and moved northeastward into what had been an Oyster/Cappini patchwork, but since they had lost much of their power, they would not have been able to become the superstratum as they had along the coast. Any Play languages spoken in this area would have been fragmented and of no higher status than those of the aboriginals. Nonetheless, this is the most logical route to Lypelpyp, rather than relying on old roads.

Note that this is not the river that flows north into Olansele, though it is likely that the Play speakers would have control of both at least upstream. This river forms the southern border of Poise, but from there turns to the east instead of flowing into Poise's northern neighbor, Olansele. This means that any Play speakers living in Poise would be cut off from the coast by Moonshines.

It is possible that this chain of languages is derived from Blossom, which is a middle step in another chain, meaning that one chain intersects another and that the early dialect map is two-dimensional.


Wineapple languages

Daughter languages here may be given names related to alcohol. This is not world-internally canonical because the speakers referred to themselves with ordinary tribal names. Rather it is sort of a weak double pun .... these languages were spoken near Moonshine and the speakers were also involved in the bottling and distribution of wine from warmer climates into cold regions such as Moonshine; they also consumed alcohol themselves.

Wineapple speakers almost certainly settle the offshore islands as well, including "Wipep"; they may have also settled Sakʷalo and been later pushed back by Moonshine speakers. This was the language spoken in Olansele.

This branch may have actually begun diverging before 3370, but is given as such in the assumption that the sound changes in the first few centuries where Baywatch and Cappini had lost contact were minimal enough to be ignored.

THere may have been a marginal /u/ + vowel construction, left over from Dreamlandic ū + vowel.

Cappini (≈3370) to Wineapple (3958)

  1. The alveolars t n shifted to k ŋ before any of /o u/. This included the geminate forms.
  2. Any singleton s shifted to h unconditionally. The specific sequence /hu/ may have been pronounced as IPA [ɸu].
  3. Voiceless stops were lenited according to a two-step rule:
    When occurring before a singleton voiceless stop, the voiceless stops p t k shifted to f s h. (Thus, this is a "FiSH language".) This new /f/ would not have contrasted with the allophonic [ɸ] from the shift above, however.
    When occurring after a voiceless stop (whether single or double), the voiceless stops p t k again shifted to f s h. These changes left the language with a sparse distribution of singleton voiceless stops, so it could be said that any remaining /p t k/ geminated to /pp tt kk/ for ease of reckoning.
  4. The short o vowel shifted to a. /ō/ may have then shifted to /o/, but it was still spelled as a full /ō/.
  5. The geminates pp tt kk ss shifted to p t k s.
  6. The voiced bilabial stop b shifted to v. This did not include the rare sequence /mb/.
  7. The clusters mp nt ns nk shifted to mb nd z ŋġ. Then, the prenasals mb nd ŋġ shifted to the simple stops b d ġ in word-initial position. Note that there was a very small amount of preexisting /mb/ that was not from /mp/.
  8. The sequences ia ua came to be pronounced ye wo.
  9. Before a vowel, the sequences fu hu merged as f.
  10. Before a vowel, the sequences si hi merged as š, while ni ŋi merged into ň. Likewise ti di zi became či ǯi ži.
  11. In word-initial position, facing a voiceless sound across a short vowel, the voiced stops b d ǯ ġ devoiced to p t č k.
  12. Between vowels, except post-tonically, the voiceless fricative h disappeared to Ø. Any preceding obstruents became voiceless (this may mean that distinctions like mb/mp became phonemic again).
  13. Any remaining h now shifted to š if bordering a front vowel in either direction, to f if bordering a rounded vowel in either direction, and otherwise (the sole remaining environment being /a-_-a/) disappeared to Ø, creating a long vowel /ā/ from the resulting hiatus.

The consonant inventory at this stage was 

Labials:         p   b   m   f   v   w
Alveolars:       t   d   n   s   z   l   r
Postalveolars:   č   ǯ   ň   š   ž   y
Velars:          k   ġ   ŋ

It may be that all consonants were palatalized before /i/, and that the postalveolar row can be reanalyzed as palatalized alveolars.

The vowel system may have been /a e i u ā ē ī ō ū/.

Even in 3958, the speakers were already in contact with Moonshine, and Moonshine may have influenced the evolution of the Wineapple languages. Wineapple could not influence Moonshine, however, because the standard dialect of Moonshine was that of the interior, whose high population growth continually refreshed and buried the outlying dialects of the border regions.

Possible paths for vowel evolution are:

  1. /e/ > /ə/, /ē ō/ > /ai au/, thus imitating Play, though there would be no */əi əu/.
  2. Conditional /i u/ > /ʲ Ø/, followed by conditional /e ē ī ō ū/ > /i i i u u/, probably followed by loss of at least one intervocalic consonant. This also imitates Play, but would make more sense if Play were peripheral to the area and that Wineapple was really being influenced only indirectly.

Cultural evolution of Olansele

The Play speakers became the dominant culture in the region after about 4220 AD, but they were likely not strong enough to create a Play-speaking state and therefore Olansele was at least bilingual and possibly trilingual (Play, Wineapple, Oyster).

On the other hand, it is also possible that the Play speakers seceded, taking the best land for themselves, and that the inland areas of Olansele formed a much poorer state which was economically dependent on the Play-dominated coast.

A third possibility is that the Play speakers never truly established themselves along the coast of Olansele, and though they may still have dominated sea trade, they did not control the land and therefore there was no daughter of Play that was spoken in Olansele, meaning that Wineapple was dominant after all.

Wineapple (3958) to Craft Brew (4800)

The consonant inventory of Wineapple was 

Labials:         p   b   m   f   v   w
Alveolars:       t   d   n   s   z   l   r
Postalveolars:   č   ǯ   ň   š   ž   y
Velars:          k   ġ   ŋ
  1. In posttonic position (nouns were stressed on the penultimate mora, while verbs were variable), the vowels e i u shifted to Ø ʲ ʷ. Long vowels could not be posttonic, so after this shift, the only vowel allowed in posttonic position was /a/.
  2. In immediate pretonic position, the vowels e i u usually collapsed to Ø ʲ ʷ in a manner precisely identical to the previous shift.
    Note that many of the relevant words were compounds in which this shift was automatically applied because the first element of the compound had a free form in which the involved syllable was posttonic. However, the shift failed to occur if the pretonic syllable stood alone. It also did not occur when the first consonant of the tonic syllable was a voiced stop, as these were still pronounced prenasally. It may also have not occurred before a voiceless stop, since these were historically geminates. This would require a preexisting shift, however.
    It may be that new pseudo-suffixes of /e i u/ were generated by this shift, since e.g. some roots would have shapes like /bep/ as nouns and /bepi/ as verbs.
    Likewise, because of the noun classifier prefixes, this shift allowed the creation of monosyllabic verbs beginning with clusters, corresponding to nouns that were either CVC[a] or CVC.
  3. Palatalized labials passed their coarticulation to a following consonant if there was one, and then depalatalized. This likely also occurred for labialized consonants.
  4. It is possible that unstressed /o/ shifted to /a/.
  5. The high vowel u shifted to o if an adjacent tonic syllable contained a mid vowel.
  6. In unstressed position, the mid vowel e shifted to i if an adjacent tonic syllable contained /i/ (but not /u/).
  7. All consonants other than labials became palatalized before any /i/.
  8. All short e, even in stressed syllables, shifted to i if any other syllable contained a high vowel. Note, however, that this shift was quite rare, as all of the /i/ in classifiers prefixes and most other unstressed syllables had been lost by this time.
  9. The sequence rʷ shifted to w.
  10. The labialized nasals mʷ nʷ ŋʷ (and any others) merged as mm between vowels and to a single m otherwise.

Because of the vowel reductions, all classifiers except those containing /i/ contracted into single consonants. These lost their function as classifiers, as they could no longer carry the rhythm of the original CV classifiers, and therefore became inseparable prefixes on certain words. For example, Baywatch pensele "shirt" became fzel,[1] with the f- reflecting the clothing classifier prefix but no longer seen as such. Instead there simply came to be a lot of words for clothes that began with /f/.

Oyster languages

In the interior region, perhaps in Poise, there may be a shift of p b f v > f p v b, although the /p/>/f/ shift would take place AFTER /b/ > /p/, and be highly conditional, so it would require /pʰ/ as a middle step. It could even be that /p/>/f/ happened at the same time that Wineapple was also shifting /p/>/f/, a shift which was similarly conditional. (On the other hand, consider that Wineapple may have done its shift under Oyster influence.) Later, the main dialect of this Oyster language would shift /v/ > /b/, meaning that apart from a few /f/'s, the shift would actually be p b f v > p p b b, which would make it resemble Play.

Lypelpyp languages

It is not clear which branch of the family is even the ancestor of the language of Lypelpyp, but it should evolve into a consonant inventory based on /p b m n ŋ l r/ by 5200 AD or so, with all other consonants marginal.

It is likely that Lypelpyp was settled through the nation of Yīspʷilinâ, whose entry on Crystals indicates that it is likely a duplicate name of some other nation, but none of the other nations listed fit the description well. The nation of Poise is also nearby and if Yīspʷilinâ did not have its own language it may have had a similar profile to Poise.

Note that the first Thunder government (3884 - 3915) ruled all Crystals out of the Empire, but nations like Poise and Yīspʷilinâ may have seceded from the occupied Empire even before 3884 due to previous conflicts, and therefore never fallen under Thunder control.

Baywatch (3370) to Tata-A (4800)

This is cladistically part of the Minor Lenian languages and was even in contact with some of them.

This should probably begin around 4100 AD instead of 3370.

Note that the substratum language had likely already lost its /f/. see Oyster_language#Proto-Oyster (~2050) to Birch (~3310). Note also that the four-vowel inventory /a i u ə/ was not found in this area at the time, so there is no great pressure on this language to follow its shift of /o/ > /a/ with a shift of /e/ > /ə/.

Birch (which is probably intelligible with Plume) had lost its inherited freestanding /š č/, and although new palatals had been created from consonant + /j/, these were fairly rare, so there is no great pressure on Tata's Dreamer dialects to develop palatalization either.

It is also possible that the mainline Baywatch dialects influence this one.

  1. The alveolar stop t shifted to k before any /o u/.
  2. The vowel o shifted to a.
  3. In word-initial position, the sequences pp mp tt nt shifted to p b t d.
  4. The sequences s ss shifted to h s. It is likely that /hu/ was pronounced much like [ɸu], and perhaps other allophones existed before the other vowels; because these allophones arose after the shift of /t/ > [k], though, there was no contrast before historical /a/ vs /o/.
  5. The sequences mp nt ns shifted to mb nd z.
  6. The mid front vowels e ē shifted to ya yā. It is possible that the shift was just to /a/, but note that Middlesex was spoken nearby and did a conditional shift without its /e/ previously being iotated.
  7. The sequences ia ua (from pre-Baywatch deletion of /w/) came to be pronounced ya wa. There may also have been a iu, which could shift to yu. Also, it may be that these new sounds were pronounced much like IPA [je wo], as they had come almost entirely from similar sequences.

At this point, the Play army invades Tata and drives out the competing adstrates, meaning that influences from Crystal and Oyster cease to be significant.

  1. The long vowel ō shifted to ū. This was with Play influence. It is possible that it broke to /au/ instead, as Play was shifting /əu/ rather than /au/.
  2. Labialization was defeated. This left a new true /o/ vowel.
  3. All vowels became palatalized before /i/. This may have created a new phonemic /e/. However, Play's dialect continuum terminated in a three-vowel language, so it is possible that even these new vowels soon disappear.

Notes

  1. ↑ probably with [fs]
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