Icecap

Icecap Moonshine is a language spoken in cold climates famous for its compact morphology.

Proto-Moonshine (3948) to Icecap Moonshine (~6800)

The expansive inherited phonology simplified quickly during the settlement period as the proto-Moonshine speakers passed through territory inhabited by speakers of Play and other languages with similarly small inventories.

1. The ejective stops ṗʷ ṗ ṭ ḳ ḳʷ shifted to the voiceless aspirates pʷ p t k kʷ. Thus aspiration became nondistinctive.

   Note that PMS did not have voiced stops either.

2. All high rising tones became ordinary long tones.
3. All pharyngealized vowels became ordinary low (mid) tones. The stress became weak.
4. The labialized glottal fricative hʷ shifted to a voiceless bilabial fricative f.
5. The velar fricatives x xʷ came to be spelled h hʷ. Note that /hʷ/ contrasts with /f/.
6. Labialization was lost in the syllable coda; pʷ mʷ kʷ ŋʷ hʷ gʷ became p m k ŋ h g.

At this stage, reached by about 4300 AD, the proto-Moonshine language had a consonant inventory of:

Rounded bilabials:      pʷ  mʷ          w
Plain bilabials:        p   m   f             
Alveolars:              t   n   s       l   r
Palataloids:            č   ň   š   ž   y    
Velars:                 k   ŋ   h   g
Labiovelars:            kʷ  ŋʷ  hʷ  gʷ

Vowels were

High tone     à  ì  ù  ə̀  
Low tone      a  i  u  ə
Long          ā  ī  ū  ə̄

The PMS /ə/ vowel corresponds to Khulls /o/ and the two were written with the same symbol rather than PMS reviving the early Gold schwa glyph. The script also had a row of symbols for /e/, but this /e/ could be analyzed as /ai/. It just happened that there were no other falling diphthongs in the language. Unlike Khulls, the palatal glide /y/ could occur after labialized consonants, and it did not stain a following vowel. Thus all four vowels could occur after the /y/.

Prenasals existed in word-initial position, also unlike Khulls. e.g. /mpʷà/ "house" vs Khulls pà.

1. The clusters mm nn ŋŋ shifted to m n ŋ and lengthened the preceding vowel.

   this may lead to unstressed longs, unknown in Khulls, which could survive vowel deletion.

2. Syllabic consonants bordered by vowels became normal.
3. Unstressed syllable-final s shifted to h.
4. All remaining syllabic consonants (bounded by consonants) became normal.
5. The short vowels o ò shifted to a à.
6. Unaccented a (including earlier /o/) became ʕ, the vowel separator. Then ʕh shifted to h (often spelled /ʔ/). Unaccented u, which occurred only after labialized consonants, disappeared.
7. Unaccented e i shifted to ʲ . Thus, all non-compound words became monosyllabic.
8. The alveolar flap r came to be spelled ř.
9. The labial approximant w shifted to a uvular approximant r.
10. The rising tone vowels á é í ó ú shifted to ā ē ī ō ū.

    This was originally further down and more destructive.

11. Doubled consonants simplified to singles and caused the tone of the preceding vowel to become high (à or á).
12. Any consonant before a nasal disappeared and lengthened the preceding vowel. If the sound had been voiceless, it caused the tone of the preceding vowel to become high rising (á). If it had been voiced, it caused the tone of the preceding vowel to become high falling (ā).

    Note that this causes all stem-final /t/ to disappear from all feminine and neuter nouns, because the feminine forms of such would have contained /tm/, but the masculines would not.

13. Nonpalatalized alveolar consonants became velarized (not shown in the orthography).
14. The long vowel ō changed to o.
15. Before a palatalized consonant in a closed syllable, the short vowels a e i o u became e e i e i respectively.

    originally had /ē i ī i ī/

16. Before a labialized consonant in a closed syllable, the short vowels a e i o u became o o u o u respectively.

    originally had /ō u ū u ū/

17. The consonant clusters řp řt became lp lt in all positions.
18. Before front vowels, k g ŋ shifted to č ǯ ň.
19. A labial following any posttonic consonant disappeared to Ø. That is, /ātp/ > /āt/. (This assumes that any labialization had already bled into the preceding consonant. If not, rounded bilabials generated /ʷ/ and then disappeared.)
20. Before a vowel, unaccented a e i shifted to the glide ʲ. Unaccented o u became ʷ.
21. as a coda, řl>l.
22. The palatalized labials pʲ bʲ mʲ became the labiodental affricates ṗ ḅ ṃ (pronounced /pf bv mv/) in all positions. Meanwhile the dentals fʲ vʲ changed to f v.
23. The labialized alveolars tʷ dʷ sʷ zʷ nʷ became the dentals ṭ ḍ ṣ ẓ ṇ in all positions.
24. The alveolars tʲ dʲ sʲ zʲ nʲ became the postalveolars č ǯ š ž ň in all positions.

    This shift originally had the palatals shifting to dentals and the labialized ones remaining in place. Note, however, that the palatals mostly shift back even so.

25. Then lʲ řʲ became j ř.
26. The dorsals kʲ hʲ rʲ became the palatals č š j in all positions.
27. The labialized postalveolar consonants čʷ ǯʷ šʷ žʷ ňʷ became delabialized.
28. The palatal consonants č ǯ š ž ň became c ʒ s z n in all positions.
29. The labialized alveolar approximant lʷ shifted to w.
30. The dorsals kʷ hʷ rʷ became w before a consonant, while also lengthening the preceding vowel.
31. The labiodentals ṗ ḅ ṃʰ ṃ and the dentals ṭ ḍ ṇʰ ṇ became c ʒ ns nz in word-final position.

    POSSIBLY SKIP THIS, since other "new" consonants will be just as common in final position.

32. The affricates ṗ ḅ ṃʰ ṃ ṭ ḍ ṇʰ ṇ became f v f v ṣ ẓ ṣ ẓ in initial position and after a consonant.
33. The prenasals mpʷ mp mṗ nṭ nt nč ŋk, and their voiced counterparts, shifted to bʷ b ḅ ḍ ʒ ǯ g in all positions.
34. Nasals disappeared before a fricative.
35. The velar stops k ġ became labialized to kʷ ġʷ before any labial consonant.

    This is why /kp/>/kw/ rather than /čw/.

36. Any š before a nasal changed to ž and the nasal changed into a voiced stop.
37. The velar stops k ġ were fronted to č ǯ unless they occurred in a cluster after another consonant and before a o u.
38. Labialization was lost on all consonants.
39. The clusters šb and bš were devoiced to šp and pš respectively.
40. The clusters žp and pž became žb and bž respectively.
41. Velar stops in accented syllables before another syllable beginning in a velar were fronted to postalveolar affricates before front vowels, and otherwise to alveolar stops.
42. Alveolar stops in accented syllables before another syllable beginning in an alveolar became postalveolar affricates.
43. A bilabial sound in an accented syllable before a syllable beginning in a labiodental sound became labiodental. A labiodental sound in an accented syllable before a syllable beginning in a bilabial became bilabial.
44. Sonority hierarchy shifts: word-initial /hp/ > /kw/, etc.
45. After a vowel, the consonant clusters wt wd merged as d. If after /u/ or /o/, that vowel became long.
46. After a vowel, the consonant clusters gč gǯ changed to ġ.

Thus the final consonant inventory was

Bilabials:          p   b   m   ḟ   w
Labiodentals:       ṗ   ḅ   ṃ   f   v
Dentals:            ṭ   ḍ   ṇ   ṣ   ẓ   ḷ
Alveolars:          t   d   n   s   z   l   ř   c   ʒ
Postalveolars:              ň   š   ž           č   ǯ
Palatals:                       ś   y
Velars:             k   ġ   ŋ   h   g   r

Phonology

Moonshine has a large phonology with with about 40 consonants, 5 vowels, and a strong tone system with contrasts on every syllable and weak tonal sandhi. Counting tones as a feature of syllables, Icecap Moonshine has the largest permissible syllable inventory in the world.

Consonants

The consonants /c ʒ/ are in IPA /ts dz/, and are considered phonemic only because they would otherwise violate the sonority hierarchy because they can occur at the ends of words where one would otherwise expect just /t d/. The stops /ṗ ḅ ṭ ḍ k ġ/ are not distinguished from affricates /ṗf ḅv ṭṣ ḍẓ kh ġg/ at all, however, so given that /č ǯ/ exist without homorganic stops it could be said that /c ʒ/ are just as basic to the phonology as /t d/ are. (The true bilabial stops are indeed distinguished from affricates, but only because the bilabial fricatives have [w] as an allophone after a stop.)

The palatal approximant is placed with the postalveolar row by tradition, but is a true palatal.

Voiced stops are prenasalized when preceded by vowels. But fricatives are not.

Romanization of consonants

Note that the dot diacritic has several unrelated meanings: it can indicate a (labio)dental pronunciation, as with ṗ ḅ ṭ ḍ ṣ ẓ ṇ ḷ; a bilabial one, as with ḟ ṿ, or a simple stop as opposed to a fricative, as with ġ. Additionally, although the caron marks a postalveolar pronunciation on š ž č ǯ (and ň if this spelling is substituted for ñ), it marks an alveolar trill when used on ř.

Laryngeal consonants

The Moonshine alphabet contains two more consonant symbols: /ʔ/ and /ʕ/, which are both silent. However, /ʔ/ makes the previous consonant voiceless; thus Tòdʔřóm (the name of a state) is pronounced as if spelled Tòtřóm. The /ʕ/ is silent and has no effect at all on surrounding consonants, but both symbols mark places where vowels used to be and sometimes reappear in conjugations. For example, ʕd "sun" is pronounced /d/, but when it takes inflections, they go before the /d/ instead of after it. In the native Moonshine alphabet, both of these are spelled with apostrophe-like symbols or with letter modifiers, but in Romanization this would lead to diacritical overload.

Because the /ʕ/ and /ʔ/ symbols originally represented vowels, and because these vowels changed into schwas before becoming silent, it could be argued that the symbols are actually vowels rather than consonants, and should have the values of /ə/ and /ə̀/ respectively; that is, a low and a high tone schwa. But Moonshine by tradition insists that its vowels must be able to occur on any of the four tones, and therefore any sound which cannot appear with all four tones is considered a consonant. This is why /j/ and the borrowed /w/ are not considered allophones of the vowels /i/ and /u/.

Approximants

The sound [w] is an allophone of the voiceless bilabial fricatives /f̣ ṿ/ after another consonant. A bare /w/ does not occur in native words but can be spelled ʕṿ, where the silent /ʕ/ shows that the following ṿ is using its post-consonantal allophone.

NOTE: /w/ might occur in native words after all, as a reflex of an earlier /lʷ/. But this would be extremely rare since mainline Khulls did /lʷ/ > /ʕʷ/ before the split, so any words with that sequence would need to have come from /lŭ/ + vowel.

Clusters

There are many clusters not found elsewhere, such as /th/ (IPA [tx]), /fl/, etc., but the sonority hierarchy is strictly observed. This is why the affricates are considered single consonants. That is, /ts/ can occur at the end of a word because it behaves as a single consonant c, but /ps/ cannot occur at the end of a word. Stems ending in clusters like /-ps/ are always followed by vowels.

Vowels

The vowels are cardinal IPA /a e i o u/. They become more centralized ("lax") when in a closed syllable, and because the ` tone adds a glottal stop after the vowel, all ` vowels are closed syllables and therefore lax. This even applies to cases in which a vowel immediately follows the grave-tone vowel.

There are no diphthongs or vowel sequences; written sequences like ài are separated by a glottal stop because the first vowel is a grave tone.

Gender

IMS is notable for its extreme feminine bias, in that women and feminine objects are associated with power and success whereas males are ranked lower than some inanimate objects. The Moonshine people have lived in an extremely feministic society for 5,000 years and this has shaped the language to a degree found nowhere else.

Gender can be marked up to five times on a single word: for the word itself (even if it is a verb), for the owner, for the agent (even if it is a noun), for the speaker, and for the listener.

It is common to list the possession markers in the order 1f 2f 3f 3m, because 1m & 2m can be derived from the rest. E.g. the clothes ending in ň are ǯā ǯas ǯ nen.

Neuter nouns

Most nouns in IMS are neuter. IMS retains most of the neuter nouns inherited from the Gold language, whereas in the other descendants a large number of neuter nouns were shifted into the feminine and masculine genders. Gender in IMS is more closely tied to semantics than in most related languages, and there are very few nouns semantically excluded from the neuter gender because they are the category that encompasses all nouns not in the other two categories.

Neuter nouns acquire the gender of their possessor, however, so while the word for seashell is neuter in isolation, it becomes masculine or feminine if it refers to the personal property of a man or a woman.

Feminine nouns

Most feminine nouns in IMS are semantically related to the female anatomy, although the chain of relation can be very long, as any newly derived feminine noun behaves the same as the original, and many new words have been coined during the 5,000 years since the split of Moonshine from its relatives. For example, tulips are feminine because they resemble skirts, and skirts are feminine because they loop around the wearer's womb. But daisies are neuter because there is no such connection.

Triangular objects are mostly feminine because they resemble the shape of a womb. Round objects are mostly feminine because they resemble breasts. This includes objects that are round in only one view, such as tubes and rings.

Because of its extreme rate of sound change, most Moonshine nouns are historically compounds. IMS follows the inherited rule that the rightmost gendered (that is, non-neuter) morpheme in a noun determines the gender of the noun. However, the etymology of most nouns is opaque and in many cases reanalysis has taken over.

Despite all of this, the semantic scope of feminine nouns in IMS is actually much smaller than in related languages like Khulls because IMS underwent much less analogy. For example, the word for vine in Khulls is feminine because it begins with ma-, but in Moonshine, this word and its derivatives have remained neuter. However, IMS feminine words like ním "house" correspond to terms which in most other Gold languages are in the neuter noun class containing words for buildings.

Masculine ownership

Males are grammatically excluded from being the owner of certain feminine objects, and for others they must take an additional morpheme that corresponds to the females' morpheme for involuntary temporary ownership. This difference is defined by the structure of the word rather than semantics: stems ending in consonants cannot take a further two-consonant suffix to show temporary ownership, either for males or for females, and therefore there is no means to indicate that a man is the owner of such an object.

Even so, there is noticeable semantic correlation because the final consonant of a stem often derives from an earlier independent syllable. For example, the final -ň appearing on many items of women's clothing cannot be followed by the temporary ownership suffix, and therefore, neither men nor women can be said to temporarily own such clothes. (There is a separate verb meaning "to wear"; that is, unlike some related languages, one cannot express the concept of wearing clothes by merely inflecting the words for the clothes.) The difference is that men cannot be said to own such clothes at all. Note that the same -ň can also appear at the end of words for men's clothing, or for blankets, but that these items are often neuter and therefore it is possible to mark masculine ownership (but still not temporary ownership).

Masculine nouns

By contrast, masculine nouns obey a simple rule: they end in -t. Most masculine nouns are dynamically constructed by adding this suffix to a neuter or feminine noun. The most common word for man, le, is in fact grammatically feminine, because men are considered to be female property. Thus, merely to be the agent of a verb, a man must use the suffix indicating a borrowed noun. Other masculine nouns follow similar patterns: the word for king, used to describe foreign monarchs, is pó "queen", plus a suffix indicating semantic similarity, plus the masculine suffix. Thus the word for king means "a man that is like a queen".

There is no shape-based analogy creating masculine nouns because men are not seen as having any distinct anatomy apart from the penis, which is considered to be feminine.

Speech registers

There are four speech registers: the speaker can be female or male, as can the listener. Children in the nursery do not acquire these speech registers until they start school. In school, boys learning proper grammar are humiliated as they realize that the grammar requires them to use separate, longer forms for nearly every word, while by contrast women's speech leaves out various details whenever the listener is a man.

Thus, not only are the words for men and men's items longer than those of women, but even these lengthened forms are further extended whenever the speaker is a man, and if the listener is a woman, the man must also use evidentiality morphemes to indicate that he is uncertain of what he is seeing.

Direct register

The direct register is used between females, and by females addressing mixed groups. It does not entail any additional marking for the speaker and listener. It is the only register used in writing and is considered the only true descendant of the parent language.

Deferential register

The deferential register is used by men addressing women and mixed groups, and also whenever a female is present even if the speaker is addressing another male. The character of the register changes depending on the listener, but certain rules must be followed at all times.

When addressing a female, content words of the 2nd and 3rd person must take evidential morphemes explaining why the man thinks he knows what he is talking about. These evidentials are suffixed to the otherwise obsolete interior person markers -č -š -Ø. When addressing a male, the structure reverts to the form used in the vulgar register.

Limits on vocabulary

Polite words are required at all times, whether addressing a male or a female audience. Males must avoid words referring to the female anatomy, even as elements of compounds. The forbidden words include not just terms for sex organs but also any distinctive female body part, such as the womb, breasts, and even long hair. Some words for female body parts consist of just a single vowel, and therefore appear within a large number of other words. For example, the most common word for shield is čáň, but because this word contains the letter á, which means "womb", men avoid it in favor of čàp, which has no transparent internal morpheme structure. This situation came about even though the original word for womb was not etymologically involved in the creation of the word for shield. Thus, all words in the standard language containing the letter á are forbidden for men, and men must learn special forms of each of these many words to use while also learning the standard forms so they can understand the speech of women. These special forms are not predictable from the structure of the original word. For example, há is the standard word for rose, but men cannot use a word such as *hàp to refer to roses because /àp/ has no meaning of its own and cannot merely substitute for any /á/.

And this same situation repeats for other forbidden terms such as m "milk", n "moon" (due to the association with menstruation), ū "wide hips", l "egg; vagina" and for CV sequences such as zà and bà, both meaning "breast", and zì, meaning "vagina". Thus, all words in the standard language containing any of /m n á ū/, plus certain other words, are unusable for men, and must be replaced with alternate forms. However, the phonemes themselves are not forbidden, because a few of the men's replacement words happen to use the same sounds just by chance; because women do not use these replacement words, they are not considered to be in violation of the prohibition against mentioning female anatomy.

Because of the evidentials, all content words are grammatically 1st person, and the outermost morpheme encodes the man's confidence level in addressing his female audience rather than information about the content words.

There is no imperative mood.

Context

Men continue to use the deferential register even to address their wives and other female relatives. However, women often instruct their men to use vocabulary from the direct register even while using the grammar of the deferential register, as some women find the vocabulary substitutions offensive, as if implying that Moonshine women are little more than menstruation machines.

Terse register

The terse register is used by women addressing trained animals and men. Many grammatical categories merge, and the information is simplified to minimize the length of the sentence. There is a polite imperative and a direct imperative. There are some defective verbs; for example, there is no 1st person form of the verb "to apologize".

Grammar

Many noun cases merge in the terse register. This is a continuation of a process that has affected the entire language, even in the most formal contexts, but women merge noun cases much more often when talking to men.

Because sentences in the terse register often omit information, men sometimes have difficulty understanding women who speak to them, but Moonshine boys learn early on that they need to listen closely and think hard whenever a woman speaks to them so that they can confidently understand what is required of them.

Context

Women continue to address their husbands and other male relatives in the terse register, as the direct register lacks terms of address for males. Because all verbs and many nouns in Moonshine inflect for the gender of the speaker and listener, any woman wishing to speak to a man in the direct register would need to instead direct her sentence to an imaginary woman.

Vulgar register

The vulgar register is used between males when the absence of females makes it safe to do so.

Vocabulary

The vulgar register uses many impolite and obscene words for everyday objects; often these are compounds. For example, a morpheme meaning urine appears in many words for clear liquids and a morpheme meaning breast milk appears in many words for opaque liquids. Most of the obscene words are terms for the female anatomy, and are considered obscene because men are not allowed to use terms for female anatomy when women are present, and this explains the presence of words for abortion, menstruation, and other concepts that are impolite but not obscene in other cultures. Conversely, the word for urine, ē, is not considered obscene in Moonshine culture, and thus its use as a replacement for o "water" is a masculine innovation independent of men's desire to violate the speech rules.

Some vocabulary substitutions are the polar opposites of those used in the deferential register. For example, men cannot use any word for breast when in mixed company, and can only use phrases with meanings like "in front of the heart". Therefore, men in the vulgar register avoid the standard word for heart and instead refer to it as the organ behind the breast. Others are unique creations, such as deriving the word for art from the word for pornography.

Verbs are mostly the same as in the standard language; even though Moonshine culture considers the womb and other female anatomy obscene, the terms for sex and sexual activities are mostly derived from independent morphemes and thus not covered by the prohibition.

Grammar

The grammar is simpler than that of the direct register and shows many resemblances with that of the terse register, as men learn to imitate the speech of women that address them. Although many men dislike the imprecise vocabulary and grammar, Moonshine teachers keep the vulgar register the way it is because they do not want men to prefer conversations with men over conversations with women.

Interaction with Poswa

Because of the speakers' isolation, the only language which had a major influence on IMS was Poswa, and likewise, Moonshine was the only language that had a major influence on Poswa. Yet, the two have little in common. IMS actually cut through the Poswob homeland, but the speakers separated themselves by habitat and neither considered the other to be in violation of any territorial rights. Poswobs lived by rivers and lakes found on plains whereas Moonshines lived on mountains and cold windward retreats.

It is said that even the speech register that Moonshine women use to speak to their men is more polite than the common speech used by all speakers of Poswa.