Gala language

Galà is a North Andanic language. Sometimes spelled Gala or Galai (exonyms). Galai is very conservative, and there is very little allophony or sandhi.

Scratchpad

Lava Beds

10:58, 11 April 2022 (PDT)

Gala uses Lava Bed morphology for its nouns, described by learners and critics alike as being the most difficult noun declension system in the world. Unlike Play, it was not based on infinities, zeroes, and ones — it really was a language built on large numbers, with a different paradigm needing to be learned for every single noun, and with no master formula capable of generating the many paradigms.

Although Gala is a predominantly prefixing language, Lava Bed morphology means that all parts of a word can change: for example, àko "port" becomes kăki "his port", with a new initial consonant, a different tone, and a new final vowel. Essentially the root is parsed as an atomic whole, so from the Galà standpoint, only one thing is changing: the morpheme in question. It can be bookended by other morphemes, as in Thaoa, which will not change. Thus in this way Gala resembles the head-final Trout languages, but as below this is because both languages are so consarvative (Thaoa is not conserative, is it old).

Semantics

The Lava Bed mutations are used for inflection, unlike Late Andanese where inflection and derivation are merged into the classifier prefixes. This means the nouns do not change meaning, although with some semantically vague nouns, especially those derived from verbal roots, it could be said that from the standpoint of English they do change.

For example the root kĭ "diaper" still means diaper if it is inflected with a transformation that marks male or female gender, whereas in some other languages there might be no root word for diaper at all but only "clothing" marked with an affix that specifies that it belongs to a baby. This is arguably the case for Late Andanese, with kinu "diaper" being just ki- "baby" followed by a word for clothing generically. (However, Late Andanese more commonly uses longer words.)

Use of tone

The diaper word is one of the very few roots that consists of just a single CV syllable on the low short tone (marked with a breve). None of these words are inherited directly from the parent language, since in the MRCA all CV monosyllables had a high tone. This means that there was a preceding syllable that got reanalyzed as a classifier prefix, and that in turn means that the diaper word's Lava Bed inflections act on the missing prefix. Thus, mikĭ "her diaper", etc, instead of using infixes.

Yet, the tone is not sufficient to predict verbal morphology, because it happens that kì "claw" also inflects using prefixes, simply because it also once had a preceding syllable that got lost through sound change instead of analogy. Thus mikì "her claw". (Note that this word normally needs a true classifier prefix, not just ma-, but is here presented as a bare root for comparison's sake. For that matter, the diaper word needs ho- "clothes" as well.)

/B/-less inflections

The masculine agent prefix ki- changes to hi- to mark the accusative. This, however, becomes a simple -h- before most consonant-initial stems, and since coda /h/ is not permissible, this /h/ metathesizes across the syllable boundary and creates aspirated consonants. Thus, stems beginning with b d Ø instead come to have p t h. A small number of vowel-initial stems instead shift the /h/ to -s-; these are the words which were vowel-initial even in the parent language. However, this distinction has not been inherited faithfully. Stems beginning with m n ŋ shift this to mp nt ŋk.

With this process, a word that has no /B/ can still show gender inflections.

Generalization of classifiers

The original classifier prefix for boys in Tapilula was ndu-, but the dictionary lists just a single word, ndʷombàgə, using this prefix. The language may have passed through a stage in which any word of three syllables or more was assumed to begin with a classifier prefix. In this case, it may be that the word was originally a simple compound of two roots, /ndʷò/ and /mbàgə/, with no classifier.

Assuming that at some stage an analogy was made between V[B]V, VV, and V, what was originally a free particle could be reanalyzed as a suffix, and then this suffix would be reanalyzed as an infix. But it would need to have begun with words in which the final vowel already happened to match that of the gender particle. For example, Tapilula tìku "gemstone" could become tìku ndù, "the boy's gemstone", but also tìku ù "[his/her/their] gemstone" with no gender consonant, and since /uu/ > /u/, this would just return the word to its original form. Then, reanalysis could turn ndù into -und-, making the suffix into an infix.

This process could happen either before or after the MRCA broke up, since the Andanic and Trout branches both underwent similar vowel-dropping processes independently, while the MRCA also had vowel elision.

Sociolinguistics

The Moonshines, having failed to learn Play, comforted themselves by describing Play as the most difficult language in the world. At later meetings, the question came up of whether there existed a language even more difficult than Play. The Moonshine diplomats thus asked what Players considered to be the world's most difficult language. Rather than claim their own, the Play diplomats pointed to the mountain nation of Galà.

The Galà language had held on in the high mountains of Nama for thousands of years, defying the many waves of immigration that had repopulated the surrounding lowlands. The Galà speakers were not aboriginals; they were much shorter than the Naman aboriginals and did not typically associate with them. But Nama accepted the Galà speakers as part of their society, and therefore they came to be identified as aboriginals after all.

Like Thaoa, the people of Galà considered themselves to be culturally superior to other peoples, but unlike Thaoa, they were isolationists who preferred to live in poverty instead of invading and exploiting other nations. Therefore the ancestors of the Players had never seen any need to subdue the people of Galà. Galà had been pro-Nama as it had come to consider itself part of Nama, but by this time Nama had become a victim nation incapable of pursuing its own needs, so they were still effectively isolationists. When the Players took over this area of Nama, they considered Galà to be part of the Play nation. Thus, they wanted to assimilate the speakers and turn them into monolingual Play speakers. But the Play Parliament was hesitant to enforce this, saying that the Galà people had never done the Players any harm and should not be forced into the same punishment as the people of Thaoa.

The Moonshines had actually contacted the Galà speakers even before they had contacted the Players, but because Galà was politically unimportant (surrounded by lowland tribes on all sides), they had never tried to learn the language. Later, the Play army encircled the Galà homeland and made them fully dependent on Play support, promising to never force them to assimilate linguistically or culturally so long as they supported the Players politically in their wider war against their own invaders.

The Moonshines spread their positive stereotypes of the Players to the Galà people, who were mostly ambivalent about whether they were considered Players or not, so long as they were not invaded by an outside power. This meant that the Moonshines expected Galà people to be very intelligent, and that their children from age 5 onward would be as smart as their adults, at least when measured on the scale that the Moonshines found most impressive.

Basic information

Phonology

Syllable structure

The syllable structure is CVC, and vowel sequences cannot be shortened into diphthongs. This means that the palatal glide y is not an allophone of i. This is unlike Late Andanese, which is purely CV but uses glides (spelled "y" and "v") as allophones of /i/ and /u/ respectively.

Open syllables predominate overwhelmingly over (C)VC. Even so, the consonants p t k m n ŋ l all occur in the coda in a few words, and the high tone ` sometimes adds a glottal stop to the end of the syllable, depending on what follows.

The language is much more guttural than Play, but from the speakers' standpoint, and that of Moonshine, Leaper, etc it is Gala that is normal and Play that stands out. It resembles Late Andanese with a slower speech tempo.

Sound changes

See Andanic_languages#Old_Andanese_.281900.29_to_Gal.C3.A0_.283750_AD.29.

Consonants

Bilabials:         p   b   m        
Alveolars:         t   d   n   l   s
Palatals:                      y
Velars:            k       ŋ       h
Uvulars:           q

There is very little allophony. Consonants are never palatalized before front vowels, and because y patterns as a consonant, it cannot occur in clusters such as /ty/, /sy/, and the like even when a vowel follows. This sets Galà apart from Play, Late Andanese, and most other languages spoken nearby.

Stops

Voiceless stops are weakly aspirated.

The voiceless stops p t are mostly found at word edges, and b d mostly intervocalically. Thus they are almost in complementary distribution. But distinctions still occur, such as the classifier prefix du- and word-internal voiceless stops from collapse of earlier /bəh/ and /dəh/ sequences.

The velar stop k is by far the most common stop.

The uvular stop q occurs mostly after a high tone, but in a few words, analogy has led to isolated /q/. For example, heqŏ "bass (fish)", which was transferred from a different noun class.

The voiced stops b d are often lenited to fricatives (IPA [β ð]) after a low tone.

Fricatives

The voiceless fricative h is not usually found after a high tone. Its pronunciation varies from velar to uvular to glottal. It is never palatalized.

The voiceless fricative s has no significant allophony. Like the /s/ of Late Andanese, it arose from contraction of earlier sequences /ti hi ki/ before vowels, and is therefore as rare as these syllable sequences once were.

Vowels

The vowels are /a e i o u/ on three tones: ă, à, and ā. There is no vowel harmony and very little allophony. The uvular stop /q/ backs the /i/ to a central vowel, [ɨ], when occurring adjacent in either direction.

This five-vowel inventory is quite rich by the standards of the family, and even the planet; most languages with five or more vowels have restrictions on which vowels can occur adjacent to other vowels (that is, vowel harmony), or reduce all vowels in unstressed syllables.

Tones

Grave

The grave tone (à è ì ò ù) indicates a short high tone. When it precedes another vowel, a glottal stop is inserted between them. All following unstressed syllables are allophonically lowered.

Breve

The breve tone (ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ) indicates a short mid tone, although because it is considered to be identical to the tone of unstressed syllables, it is also called the low tone. All following unstressed syllables are allophonically lowered.

Macron

The macron tone (ā ē ī ō ū) indicates a long falling tone. The pitch begins high and ends low. All following syllables are allophonically lowered, and the last syllable preceding the macron, if there is one, is also allophonically lowered.

Galà distinguishes between the macron tone and sequences of two short vowels; òo "horse", ō "ring", hōo "cloud", and oō "border" all have distinct vowel sequences. A sequence of ŏo is also possible and would contrast with all of the above. This sequence is more commonly found with differing vowels across the syllable boundary, as in kŏu "twig", showing that Galà not only distinguishes all of the above tone patterns but also distinguishes /oo/ from /ou/ in all of them.

Syllable structure

Most syllables are open and hiatus is common. The clusters mp nt appear as medial voiceless alternants of /m n/ in the same manner that p t replace /b d/. This occurs in the genitive of most CVCV nouns.

All three tones can occur before a hiatus, which is again unusual.

Grammar

Nouns

The inherited classifier system is expanded slightly further by splitting of classifiers, primarily before vowel-stems, and by reanalysis of previously existing bare stems as classifier+stem compounds, producing new prefixes such as ko- "young boy". This same prefix also means "ocean" and is used in the names of fish. Galà is among the languages with the most classifiers in the world.

Climate and geography

Galà is located on the continental divide, within the highest terrain of the Hykwus Mountains, with even the lowest valleys having an elevation above 4000 feet. It shares this natural environment with the Pabap state of Blip to its east and the independent nation of Wimpus to its north.

Gala is spoken in upland Nama, for which the lingua franca is Khulls, and freely loans words from Khulls.

Despite being surrounded on all sides by nations with violent histories, Galà itself was not affected by most of these wars because of its highland location and terrain even more mountainous than those of its neighbors.

Climate

THe wind in Galà blows mostly from the south. Despite the high elevation, the climate is broadly similar to sea-level sites located a few hundred miles to the north, both in temperature and in precipitation. However, valleys can get very cold in winter, with temperatures below —30°F having been recorded in many towns, and it is in valleys where the greatest human population concentration is found. On the other hand, wind is generally calm during extremely cold winter nights, so even here the coldest weather is found in the mountains.

Relations with neighboring nations

Galà bordered Litila. The Galà word for crab was hekăba, and they referred to the crabs of Litila with this name.

Galà-Paba relations

The Pabap conquest of the state of Blip occurred during Paba's Thousand Year Peace, and thus was not conquered by force. They may have instead signed a tripartite alliance with Galà and the Repilian aboriginals in which Blip was opened to Pabap settlement as it was in a strategic military position but offered a poor natural environment for human habitation. In other words, Blip was open to anyone party to the treaty who wanted it, and as Pabaps moved in, aboriginals moved out, likely in both directions (into Paba proper and also into their still-free arctic homeland).

This also assumes Galà ēa > yā, but īa > ya. As in Japanese, the shfit fails if the second element is /e/ or /i/.