Kijeb (Sohlob)

The Kijeb (Proto-Sohlob) sound system

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Low		a

Consonants

	Labial	Dental or Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labiovelar
Voiceless stops	p py	t ty		k ky	kw
Voiced stops	b by	d dy		g gy	gw
Voiceless fricatives	f fy	s sy		x xy
Nasals	m my	n ny		ŋ	ŋw
Liquid		r ry
Semivowels			y (IPA [j])		w wy

Palatalization

An y after a consonant or cluster is realized as palatalization of the consonant, or all consonants throughout the cluster.

Assimilations

There were some assimilatory changes that probably applied synchronically in Kijeb:

Underlying	Condition	Result	Example(s)
t	before voiced stops and nasals	d	*kitbyu > *xidbyu > CS: xefd, K: sijd, L: xirz "heart" *yadgi > CS: yæqd, K: yejd, L: ierg "light"; *atmi > CS: æzam, K: ezany, L: erm "shallow"; *gidnu > CS: gezen, K: dizin, L: girn "uncle"; *fidŋi > CS: fizen, K: siziny, L: fid "iron";
s	before voiced stops	[z]
n	before p, b, f, m	m
n	before k, g, x, ŋ	ŋ
mm	in inflection	mb
nn	in inflection	nd
ŋŋ	in inflection	ŋg
rr	in inflection	dr

Root structure

A Kijeb nominal or verbal root has the following structure:

(s) (C) (r) V (D) C (r)

where

slots in parentheses are optional

V is any vowel (a, i, u)

C is any consonant

D is any dental (t/d, n, s, r)

There are some restrictions on possible phoneme sequences, including:

• Geminates do not occur. Thus e.g. if there is an s in a C slot there can be no s in the preceding s or D slot, resulting in an ss, and similarly no rr, ww, yy, tt. dd, nn.
• n + a nasal does not occur (no nn, nm, nŋ).
• Labial + w does not occur.
• None of yi, iy, wu, uw can occur.
• Palatalization or y may occur either in the consonant(s) before the V or in the consonant(s) after the V or not at all, but not both before and after the V. A cluster is either palatalized throughout or not at all.
• In nominal and verbal roots

the same consonant may not occur twice,

no two stops or fricatives (other than s) at the same point of articulation may occur within a single root,

no two nasals may occur within a single root.

The nominal stems mama "mother" and papa "father" are the only known exceptions to these restrictions among nominal and verbal roots. In pronoun and determiner stems, on the other hand, shapes like tat, kak, nan, sas are allowed and even favored. (There is also the numeral stem sas "one", but this may be a determiner in origin.) It may be that these stems were originally CV stems that became reduplicated.

• Roots consisting only of VC are extremely rare.
• Roots with a heavy cluster both before and after the V are rare.

In order to function as a stem such a root must be followed by a vowel. In nouns (including adjectives) this second vowel is a random extension, while in verbs it is an inflectional morpheme.

Morphology

Unlike the daughter languages, which are split-ergative, Kijeb is entirely nominative-accusative.

Nominal morphology

Core cases

	Singular	Animate plural	Inanimate plural
Nominative	-∅ (unmarked)	-n	-r
Accusative	-s	-ns	-rs
Dative	-t	-nt	-rt

(In the daughter languages the accusative is derived from *-si and the dative from *-tu.)

Other cases

	Singular	Animate plural	Inanimate plural
Locative	-tyu	-ntyu	-rtyu
Allative	-sya	-nsya	-rsya
Ablative-Genitive	-yu	-nyu	-ryu
Instrumental	-ri	-nri	-dri

The ergative of the daughter languages derives from *-rya and is certainly derived from the instrumental.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

Singular			Plural (animate)
Clitic	Emphatic		Clitic	Emphatic
-ta	tata