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

	Front unround	Front round	Back unround	Back round
Close	*i	*ü	*ï	*u
Mid	*e	*ö	*ë	*o
Open	*ä		*a

All vowels can be short or long. Long vowels are marked with acute (e.g. *é), or those with umlaut dots with double acute (e.g., *ő).

Sound changes

(incomplete draft)

• Laryngeals "as usual", but with triple reflex as in Greek
• Syllabic resonants develop *ë as prop vowel before the resonant
• Labiovelars lose labialization, with rounding of following vowel, e.g. *kʷe > *kö
• Palatovelar stops become palatals, e.g. *ǵ > *j
• s > ṣ /(r, u, k)_
• s > ś /i_
• Dentals become velars before *w, e.g. *dw > *gw; also, *sw > *ṣw
• Dentals become palatals before *y, e.g. *ty > *c; also, *sy > *ś (does the *y delete?)
• *e lowered to *ä except before an *i in the following syllable
• Voiceless and voiced-aspirated stops merge as aspirated stops, e.g. *t > *th, *bh > *ph
• Grassmann's Law: aspirated stops lose aspiration before another aspirated stop later in the word
• Front vowels are backed before velars and *ṣ, e.g. *eg > *ëg

Proto-CBBic morphology

(not determined yet)