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.

NOTE: it is perhaps better to analyze the final consonants as /p b h/ which can either carry or not carry an additional labializing influence (thus making h into /f/).

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.

Thus paths leading to ȁ and a̋ are needed. Each tone could sprout a modified version when appearing with a final consonant, which then disappears. á could become a̋ before final -p, although since this is a labialzing tone, this wouldnt help. final -h could be added to the list, since it is also voiceless.

Note that in some words a syllable-final consonant will be preserved, since the next syllable will have become vowel-initial by another rule. In these cases, the consonant still has its intended affect.

new idea for tones etc

a reworking of the above would envision the possible syllable codas at the end of the three-vowel stage as consising of three binary elements [b] [h] [w]. That is, e.g. coda /b/ is +b -h -w, coda /pʷ/ is +b +h +w, coda /hʷ/ is -b +h +w, and so on. Then three shifts would apply:

First, all vowels before [w] become rounded. Thus /a ɜ ɨ/ > /ɔ o y/ (sic). There are no diphthongs because a three vowel system with diphthongs and a mostly CV syllable setup is unstable.

Then, all vowels *not* before [h] become long. (This could be problematic, since long vowels would outnumber short vowels, but vowel length can be reduced in a secondary shift, probably by shifting long vowels to the tones with gaps in their distribution.)

Next, all vowels *not* before [b] undergo a secondary shift such that /a ɜ ɨ ɔ o y/ > /a e i o u y/. (That is, some vowels are unaffected.) Possibly allow /æ/, but this language family has a strong tradition of resisting any sound changes removing [a].

Then, /ɜ/ > /ø/ unconditionally to round out the vowel space, leacing the language with a total vowel inventory of /a e i ɨ ɔ ø y o u/.

tomne shift history

this is the same as the above chart, but from the opposite direction. "primordial" means Khulls or even pre0Khulls sandhi is responsible for the shift, not what the syllable looked like later. i.e. the distinction was not phonemic in Khulls but rather part of sandhi, but became phonemic shortly after the split.

Khulls á & ā > Ogili [á:] in primordial open syllables, but Ogili [á] in primordial closed syllables.

Khulls à > Ogili [á] in primordial open syllables, but Ogili [ă] in primordial closed syllables.

Khulls ă > Ogili [ă] in all environments.

Khulls a > Ogili [ă] or [à] depending on sandhi. (This is the Khulls neutral tone.)

Khulls â > Ogili [à:] in all environments.

Later, [á:] > [a̋], and [à:] > [ȁ], but for ease of typing both transcriptions remain valid.

Note that the above shifts do NOT lead to a clean and balanced five-tone setup because primordial closed syllables prohibited the later presence of the rounding coda element [w], which means that the topmost tone will only ever occur with unrounded vowels unless it is fed by a secondary later shift. Additionally, the [à] tone will only occur in polysyllabic words since it arose solely from unstressed neutral tones. This, too, must be fed by a later shift.

The language at this time was entirely CV, unless the syllabic nasals hang on and become nonsyllabic. this changes only in the daughter languages.