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.

Phonology

Ogili changed rapidly from an early date. It was spoken by people whose first language was Babakiam, but they soon abandoned Babakiam. Ogili shares very few sound changes with other branches of Khulls or with other surrounding languages, as its people tended to migrate quickly from one area to another.

Changes from Khulls to proto-Ogili

Early on, the ejective consontsn became voiced. Thus /ḳ ṭ ṗ/ > /b d ġ/. Then /z r d/ merged as /d/, which kept [r] as an intervocalic allophone.

Possible shift of /e/ > /ja/ unconditionally; if so, /e/ can be ignored for the next two lines, and afterward it is covered for by the shift of /o/ > /ɜ/, which is spelled as /e/.

Possible palatalization of nonlabial, nonlabialized consonants before /e i/, which becomes significant after the next shift.

The vowel system collapsed to a vertical three-vowel setup, spelt /a e i/ for convenience but pronounced more like [a ɜ ɨ].

Around this time, most fricative consonants became stops or affricates in initial position or after a glottalized tone. Thus, in these positions, /s š ž x g xʷ gʷ/ became /c č ǯ k ġ kʷ ġʷ/. Note that the glottals /ʕ h ʕʷ hʷ/ were excluded from thsi shift. Also, this shift was soon reversed in final position, unlike many other Khulls languages.

The lateral approximant /l/ became /ʷ/ after any consonant; that is, it labialized the consonant and then disappeared. This shift did not apply over syllable boundaries, however.

Remaining voiced fricatives were deleted, though their labialization hung around as a new pure /w/ phoneme. Thus /z ž g gʷ ʕ ʕʷ/ became /0 0 0 w 0 w/.

Remaining velar fricatives merged with the glottals. Thus /x xʷ/ became /h hʷ/.

All vowels occurring before a labialized consonant became back rounded vowels, and those that did not were pushed into front unrounded vowels. Thus the inventory of /a ɜ ɨ/ expanded to /a e i/ (front) and /ɔ o u/ (back). This was similar to Poswa, but not to Khulls: in Khulls, vowels had been colored by vowels that occurred before them, but not after.

Remaining labialized consonants became pure labials. Thus /pʷ bʷ kʷ ġʷ hʷ/ became /p b p b f/ (note the loss of the other guttural fricatives explained above).

Word-final /l/ disappeared. It had previously been moving towards a [w] sound, but pressure from the existing [w] caused it to disappear instead.

Word-final fricatives became glottal: /f s š h/ all merged as /h/. Note that /f/ is distinct from the others because in an earlier shift it had labialized any vowel occurring before it. Note that at this point, the only consonants permitted in final position were /p b w h/ and the nasals /m n ŋ/, which had come to be seen as variants of the syllabic nasals.

Consonants before (or after?) a syllabic nasal were deleted, thus reducing them to simple nasals.

Tones

The tone setup travels from Khulls fairly intact. There are at least five tones, "believed to be" register (flat) tones, and one neutral tone, which takes sandhi from the others:

• a̋ is descended from the Khulls á and ā tones. It is the highest tone.
• á is descended from the Khulls à tone. In formerly closed syllables, perhaps also from the á and ā tones.
• ā is descended from the Khulls ă tone. It is a medium tone with no vowel coloring.
• à is descended from the Khulls â tone and in some syllables also from the unstressed vowels.
• ȁ is descended from ????
• a, the neutral tone, is descended from unstressed vowels.

Note: It might make sense to merge even more, since the à tone generally does not occur before a non-labialized final consonant in Khulls (it is etymologically à, but due to sandhi becomes ă), and therefore there will be almost no rounded vowels on the á tone in Ogili if this system is used as given.

Must make split versions of the tones, depending on whether they end in a final consonant or not, and perhaps also varying on what that consonant is. The number of allowable finals is down to just four, /p b w h/, by the end of the sound change list above. /p b/ are rare in non-labialized form, so they might simply switch to labialized and then disappear. /l/ might also switch over, despite up above saying that it did not.

á and ā were rare in Khulls, but occurred with both plain and labialized finals, and thus do not need to be repaired as they merge in Ogili as a̋ (but see below).

à does not occur before nonlabialized finals except as an allophone of ā and á. If this allophone persists into Ogili, then the Ogili a̋ tone will need repair.

ă occurs with both types of finals in Khulls and thus does not need repair when it appears as ā in Ogili.

â occurs with both types of finals in Khulls and thus does not need repair when it appears as à in Ogili.