Ogili II

Ogili II is a proposed reworking of Ogili to have a shorter list of sound changes that produce nearly the same result, thus enabling the language to more believably be moved further back in time so that its speakers can have intimate contact with Poswobs and Moonshines when those empires were still young.

The language will here below be referred to simply as Ogili.

Leaper (4700) to Ogili II (6843)

It may be that the language diverged from an earlier state, especially if this is spoken in the tropics. However, the sound changes below assume that the language is still spoken on the northwest coast, near Dreamer territory. It may have also shared sound changes with Ghost, but is all in all very different from Ghost.

The date 6843 chosen here is of no consequence, as it refers to something that happened in Moonshine (and perhaps Poswa) instead; therefore, the daughter languages of Ogili most likely break off at different times while the "core" language, with by far the most speakers, continues to be spoken in the Swamp.

TONE shifts are in PURPLE for easy reading.

The initial consonant inventory was

Rounded bilabials:       pʷ  ṗʷ  bʷ      hʷ          w
Spread bilabials:        p   ṗ   b   m   
Alveolars:               t   ṭ   d   n   s   r   l
Postalveolars:           č       ǯ       š   ž  (λ)  y   
Velars:                  k   ḳ       ŋ   x   g
Labiovelars:             kʷ  ḳʷ  ġʷ      xʷ  gʷ
Postvelars:              q               h       ʕ
Labialized postvelars:   qʷ

And the vowels /a e i o u/ on six tones: à ă ā á â a͆, where the last two differ in sandhi effects only.

1. The voiced sounds r d shifted to b.
2. The vowels e i u, on all tones, shifted to ʲa ʲi i. This effectively created a vertical vowel system, since the inventory was /a ʲa o ʲi i/, but the old spellings were still used for the meantime.

   It is possible that /ʷu/ survives intact, not shifting to /ʷi/, since it would only shift to a plain /i/ in the end.

3. The inherited vowel o came to be spelled ɜ.
4. Labialization defeated palatalization. Ejectives also defeat palatalization, at least in the case of /ʲi/. Uvulars also did not palatalize.
5. All syllables occurring after a post-tonic ejective (/ṗʷ ṗ ṭ ḳ ḳʷ/) shifted to the BOTTOM tone â.
6. All unstressed syllables occurring after a voiced stop or voiced fricative shifted to the low tone (NOT IN PHONOLOGY YET). This happened even if they were pretonic.
7. The ejectives ṗʷ ṗ ṭ ḳ ḳʷ shifted to plain voiceless stops pʷ p t k kʷ.
8. If a word began with an unstressed g, that shifted to Ø and the tonic syllable shifted to the â tone.
9. If a word contained an unstressed h, the tonic syllable shifted to a new tone behaving as if it ended in /s/.
10. In initial position or after a high tone, the fricatives s š ž x g xʷ gʷ shifted to c č ǯ k ġ kʷ ġʷ. The glottal consonants did not shift, and the shift quickly reversed itself in final position (and did so nearly losslessly, because the target sounds rarely occurred in that position after high tones).
11. The voiced fricatives ž g gʷ ʕ ʕʷ shifted to Ø Ø w Ø w. (the "oo wow" shift.)
12. The velar fricatives x xʷ shifted to h hʷ.
13. The uvulars q qʷ shifted to k kʷ.
14. All labialized consonants shifted to pure bilabials. Thus pʷ bʷ kʷ ġʷ hʷ shifted to p b p b f.

    THIS MIGHT BE BETTER HANDLED BELOW.

15. Consonants before (or after?) a syllabic nasal were deleted.
16. Tone shifts took place in tandem:
    1. The long high tones á ā merged as the high tone á, except before a coda of either of /l s/ (H BW), in which case they rose further to the extra-high tone a̋.
    2. The short, post-glottalized high tone à shifted to á unconditionally. Note that this is only the orthographic high tone, and not the allophone of the long tones that sounded identical to it.
    3. Short mid tones ă before a voiceless coda rose to the high tone á.
       1. Coda s was then deleted, meaning the only remaining voiceless codas were labialized. But see the parentheme above where /s/ is treated as identical to /bw/, meaning that the disappearing /s/ may have also become labialized by this time to match the rest; if this is true, then the disappearing /s/ actually leaves behind a /w/. The notation of /bw/ may be for convenience if /b/ always disappears.
    4. Short mid tones ă before a plain /w/ coda shifted to the low-toned ʷà. Note that the coda /l/ had not yet shifted, so this change does not affect syllables that had ended in /l/.
    5. Any remaining short mid tones ă shifted to ā. Here, the macron denotes pitch, not length. Also note that this covers all primordially closed syllables except those with historically long vowels. That is, /tan/ had a surface-level low tone, even though it was underlyingly high in Gold.
    6. The long, low, pharyngealized tone â shifted to the extra-low tone ȁ, except before coda /-s/ (H), where it appeared as the ordinary low tone à.
    7. All unstressed vowels became either ā or à, depending on sandhi.
17. Syllable-final p b l shifted to pʷ bʷ w. The new /w/ can be spelled as /lʷ/ temporarily for precision.
18. Coda labialization skipped across a preceding vowel to labialize the consonant in the onset. The syllables could also be analyzed with structures like /twa/, since the inherited labialization had disappeared. Note that in some clusters, the following consonant was also labialized.
19. The voiced stops ǯ ġ became the voiced fricatives ž g. Note that the labiovelar had become /b/ by this time.
20. The long high tone á:merged with the extra-high tone a̋.
21. Before a coda that was any of /m n ŋ lʷ bʷ/, the mid vowel sequences ɜ ʷɜ shifted to o ʷe.

    These were originally written in the opposite order, under the assumption that both were inherently rounded at least to start with. The new idea is that /ʷɜ/ > /ʷe/ arose from dissimilation while /ɜ/ > /o/ was of little consequence at the time. Another possibility is that both shift to /o/, and that /ʷe/ simply is somewhat less common than /ʷa ʷi/.

22. The voiced velar fricative g disappeared to Ø.
23. The vowel sequences ɜ ʷa ʷɜ shifted to e o u. The /u/ was always rounded and had no unrounded counterpart because the rare inherited bare [u] had become /i/.
24. In a few clusters like /lʷg/, the coda consonant may have become the onset of the following syllable. (But remember that they were mostly labialized.)
25. All remaining codas were deleted.

Thus the consonant inventory had become

Bilabials:         p   m       f   b  (w)
Alveolars:         t   n   c   s       l       
Postalveolars:         ň   č   š   ž   λ     
Palatals:              ń   ć   ś      (y)
Velars:            k   ŋ       h       

And the vowel inventory was /a e i o u wa we wi/. It is possible to analyze /o u/ as a fourth pair, /u wu/, arriving at a four-vowel inventory with room for a /w/ glide before all four vowels. Unlike the parent language, this /w/ glide is not considered part of the preceding consonant.

Further ideas

It is possible that at some early stage, p shifts to ʔ after any vowel, and that vowel becomes a short high tone. Since this is the most common tone before /p/ anyway, it could be said that /p/ > /Ø/. It is also possible that some other consonants joined this shift, or did the same shift at different times. This would lead to more vowel sequences in the language, but they would be pronounced with glottal stops at least to begin with. The motivation for this change would be the uneven distribution of /p/ in the language, where it had been eliminated except in clusters (of which some later shifted to /p/, but these were also unevenly distributed). Then a "proper" /p/ sound comes from /kʷ ḳʷ/.

The palatal and postalveolar series may also merge, with /λ/ shifting to /j/. Alternatively, /l/ could become a new /r/ and then /λ/ would become /l/, though the distribution may be unbalanced due to the scarcity of palatals before /ə u/ (or /e o u/ in the other analysis).

Culture

This language was the official language of Baeba Swamp, originally spoken by the Iron party. The language could even be called Iron, but the Irons were just one of many groups who spoke this language, as they governed a multiparty democracy that was stable for thousands of years.

This language resembles nothing in its area, but it is possible that Baeba is so populous that it would form a sprachbund of its own, and give out cultural influence rather than absorbing cultural influence.

Ogili is bounded on the west by Dreamlandic languages and on the east by Cosmopolitan Play languages. The Ghost language may have held on in the southeast border regions, but the Ghosts' center of population was much further south.