Techomonic

CBBic is the provisional designation of a collaborative project on the Conlanger Bulletin Board aimed at the construction of a fictional branch of the Indo-European language family. The chief contributors are Üdj, WeepingElf (Jörg Rhiemeier) and Salmoneus.

Setting

The languages are meant to descend from the language of a group of people who were "dropped off" along the way by the people who trekked eastward along the Eurasian steppe to become the ancestors of the speakers of Tocharian. The languages will be written in conscripts derived from the Kharoshthi script.

Proto-CBBic phonology

Consonants

In an IAST-derived notation:

	Labial	Dental	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar
Aspirated stops	*ph	*th		*ch	*kh
Neutral stops	*p	*t		*c	*k
Voiced stops	*b	*d		*j	*g
Sibilants		*s	*ṣ	*ś
Nasals	*m	*n		*ñ	*ṅ
Liquids		*l	*r
Semivowels	*w			*y

Vowels

(not determined yet)

Sound changes

(incomplete draft)

• Labiovelars lose labialization (fronting following back vowels?)
• Palatovelar stops become palatals, e.g. *ǵ > *j
• Laryngeals "as usual"
• Voiceless and voiced-aspirated stops merge as aspirated stops, e.g. *t > *th, *bh > *ph
• Dentals become velars before *w, e.g. *dw > *gw; also, *sw > *ṣw
• Dentals become palatals before *y, e.g. *thy > *ch; also, *sy > *ś (does the *y delete?)
• Grassmann's Law: aspirated stops lose aspiration before another aspirated stop later in the word
• s > ṣ /(r, u, k)_
• s > ś /i_

Proto-CBBic morphology

(not determined yet)