Palli language

Palli is a language expanded from Thaoa. Although originally an independent society, many Andanese spilled over and soon became the new majority.

Thaoa (2674) to Palli (4175)

The inherited phonology of the crushed Thaoa state was

Labials:        pʰ   p   b   m   f   v   w
Alveolars:      tʰ   t   d   n   s   z   l
Palataloids:         č   ǯ   ň           y
Velars:         kʰ   k       ŋ   x   g
Postvelars:     qʰ               h

1. The glottal stop ʔ came to be spelled h.
2. The voiced fricatives v z g shifted to f s x.
3. The STAIRCASE SHIFT occurred:

   The voiceless fricatives x h shifted to š before any /e i/.

   The voiceless fricatives š x h shifted to f before any /o u/.

   The voiceless fricatives š s merged to s.

   The voiceless fricatives f x h merged to h.

   Note that in this shift, 1) /f/ stayed /f/ always; 2) /h/ became /f/ when before /a o u/, but became /s/ when before /e i/; 3) /š/ became /s/ when before /a e i/, but became /f/ when before /o u/; 4) /s/ stayed /s/ always.

4. The voiced stops b d ǯ shifted to p t č.
5. The aspirate stops pʰ tʰ kʰ qʰ shifted to p t k q.
6. The vowels e o shifted to a unconditionally. Then, ə shifted to i.
7. Syllable-final k assimilated in manner, but not position, to any following consonant.
8. Syllable-final n assimilated in position, but not manner, to any following consonant.
9. Syllable-final glottal stop (spelled "h") assimilated in both position and manner to any following consonant.
10. The uvular stop q came to be spelled hk.

There may be more. e.g. did /č/ survive or did it collapse with /š/ ?

Orthography

The Palli scribes insisted on writing their language with the Andanese script, despite it having only 30 syllables. This they shared with the Players. The Players eventually took over all of Palli-speaking territory, however.

Grammar

Much of the vocabulary was borrowed from Late Andanese, but the grammar remained native. Though the phonology collapsed to almost the same tiny inventory as Late Andanese, closed syllables remained, and could occur even at the ends of words. Thus, for example, the word ulukukuya "hook" had dative case ulukukuyan.

Even words for simple concepts were often very long, both because of the small phonology and because the inherited Thaoa circumfixes were often wrapped around borrowed Andanese stems that already contained prefixes and were often transparent compounds. The word for hook above thus contains four morphemes. NOTE: IT IS UNLIKELY THAT PALLI USED THE SUFFIX -ya FOR HANDHELD OBJECTS, AND MAY HAVE HAD VERY FEW SUXXIES OVERALL.

Verbs had to be followed by particles denoting the gender of the agent. These were thus like inflecting verbs for gender, but were separate words. This was sometimes called the Feminist pattern or a similar term such as Feminist alignment.

Culture

Palli was one of the languages of Creamland, but was likely not widely spoken since its speakers were descended from the losing side of a major war. Its survival is primarily due to the genetic traits of its speakers; they were closely related to the much larger Pabap nation, but did not have the same childhood growth pattern and thus did not accept the introduced Play language, which to them sounded like baby talk. While in earlier times, this situation had led people to learn Andanese, by 4175 the Andanese were no longer a distinct population, and therefore their language was reduced to ceremonial use.

Note that, while Palli came to sound very similar to Late Andanese, all of this happened before 4175.