Trout languages
This is a geographical area east of the Tropical Rim whose languages used circumfixes and had various other traits in common. The area had a poor natural environment with few sources of protein on land, thus the dependence on fishing the sea and maintaining vegetable farms on land. (Animal husbandry was unknown, and people did not drink milk as adults.)
Many Trout Lakes languages were soon spoken in outer climates such as the equatorial zone and the mountains.
Pre-Gold (1095) to Pēles
It is possible that the Pelesians maintained friendly contact with one of the dark-skinned tribes and thus spoke the same language as of 2175 ad. However , it is not clear if these neighbors were monolingual themselves .... Wax had acted alone when it seceded in 1905, and may not have truly spoken Gold. Tarise spoke a single language in 1905, but this may have been due to subsequent assimilation.
Although the Pelesians were surrounded by dark skinned tribes, their language initially formed a speech continuum with the tribes in both directions. It was simply that more of the blonde settlers moved to Pēles than elsewhere, so the dark skinned tribes borrowed the settlers' language but did not absorb appreciable numbers of the people.
Initial phoneme inventory:
PLAIN LABIALIZED Bilabials: p b m f v mʷ w Alveolars: t d n l tʷ dʷ nʷ Postalveolars: č ǯ y Velars: k ŋ h g ḳ ŋʷ hʷ gʷ
Note that the inherited /h/ sound was a true /h/ in the onset, but variable in the coda.
The vowel inventory was
Short vowels: a e i o u ə
Long vowels: aa ee ī oo ū
Falling diphthongs: ae ei ao ou
əi əu
Long vowels could be followed by /g/ (from k/k'/h/g), /n/, or /l/. They could also be followed by some clusters.
THE ABOVE ASSUMES THIS LANGUAGE IS THE ONLY ONE THAT DIDNT ANALOGIZE THESE.
- All consonants occurring after the vowel /u/ (any length, any tone) became labialized.
- All consonants occurring after the vowel /i/ **EXCEPT in the sequence /əi/** became palatalized.
- The high vowels i ī ə u ū shifted to yi yī i i ī.
- When an /a/ was in an adjacent syllable, the sequences e ē ei o ō ou shifted to ya yā yai a ā au.
- The sequences eḳ oḳ (on any tone) shifted to aḳ.
- The sequences e ē ei əi shifted to yi yī yi ī.
- The sequences o ō ou əu shifted to u ū u ī.
- The sequences aa ae ao merged as ā.
- The labial fricative f shifted to h.
- What happened to /v/?
- Any consonant that was both labialized and palatalized became labialized alone.
- The labialized consonants kʷ ḳʷ čʷ tʷ pʷ merged as p. Then, mʷ nʷ ŋʷ shifted to m. The voiced labialized stops dʷ bʷ merged as b. Lastly, xʷ gʷ shifted to f w.
- The sequences kʲ ḳʲ ŋʲ xʲ gʲ shifted to č č n s y.
- The clusters kp kb km kf shifted to pp pp pm p. Then kt kd kn shifted to tt tt tn . (/ks/ did not occur.) Then kč became čč. (/kŋ/ remained, and kh, kg, kk, etc had been eliminated in the proto-language although those shifts are not listed.)
- The voiced alveolar stop d shifted to r.
- What about /dʲ/?
- possibly i,u>e,ə in closed slabs (see here.)
- If this happens, it means that the Tropical Rim V culture had strong influence on Pēles, and it would likely mean that Pēles also loses its tones. If tones are preserved, then Pēles would be the only three-vowel language with a three-way tone contrast.
There is still lw,g,ł,etc
Many word roots begin with labials because of classifier prefixes ending with /u/. The situation is similar to Subumpamese and Bābākiam.
The final phonology was:
Bilabials: p b m f w Palatalized labials: pʲ bʲ mʲ Alveolars: t n s r l Postalveolars: č y Velars: k ŋ x g Postvelars: h (Ø)
And the vowels /a i u/ on three tones (high, low, long).
