New CBB

I've decided to actually properly work out a proto-lang for Sakata and Katamna (and any other relatives of those two I want to make) to descend from. Primarily because I think I'll do a better job of working out Katamna's morphology if I know what the morphology in the proto-lang looks like. It's named 'Proto-Kataic' after the word for 'people' in the languages of the family (e.g. Sakata kát'á).

Here's the phonology:

Phonemes:

/ɓ b p tʼ d t tsʼ dz ts kʼ ɡ k/
/m n ŋ/
/z s/
/ɾ ɹ l/
/w j/
/iː uː eː oː aː/
/i u ə a/

Phonotactics:

The largest possible syllable is CCVC.

Onset clusters are limited to the following:
Obstruent + liquid
Obstruent + glide
Nasal + glide

Proto-Kataic is pretty permissive when it comes to medial clusters. The main restriction is that if both consonants in a cluster are obstruents, they must agree in voicing.

Glottalic consonants are not permitted in syllable codas, and only one is permitted per root.

The sequences əj and əw are not permitted in the surface form. They do not appear in roots, and if one occurs as the result of inflection, they simplify to [i] and [u] respectively.

Long vowels are only permitted in the first syllable of a root. If a lexical root is a single syllable, it must have a long vowel.

/l/ was realised as [ɫ] unless followed (or, in a coda, preceded) by a front vowel.

I'll write up the sound changes that result in Sakata and Katamna in a later post, but for now I've put a selection of cognates and some of the sound changes in the PDF below:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/412 ... atamna.pdf

_________________
Languages!
Native: Proficient: Decent: Have dabbled in:

Sakata and Katamna actually both belong to the Southern sub-group of the family. When I finally get round to writing something up about Proto-Kataic morphology, I'll probably discuss Proto-Kataic proper and Proto-South-Kataic together. As a prelude to that, here are the sound changes:

Consonants:

*l became *ɫ unless preceded or followed by a from vowel, and *ɾ became *l

*s and *z were backed to *x and *ɣ, while *ts and *dz (and in some varieties also *ts') became fricatives

Vowels:

Proto-Kataic's long vowels came to be pronounced with a tenser, more advanced tongue position. In South Kataic this lead to the development of a tongue root position contrast, which subsequently spear to adjacent vowels. Proto-South-Kataic thus shows ATR/RTR vowel harmony.

Various changes resulted in the elimination of the Proto-Kataic schwa phoneme.

*jə and *wə became *e and *o respectively, losing the glide unless they followed a vowel.

In a word final syllable, *ə became *o if it was followed by a consonant, *e if preceded by an *e earlier in the word, *o if preceded by *o, and *a otherwise.

Non final *ə assimilated totally to the following vowel.


The resultant Proto-South-Kataic phoneme inventory was as follows:

/ɓ b p tʼ d t kʼ ɡ k/
/(t)sʼ z s ɣ x/
/m n ŋ/
/ɹ l ɫ/
/w j/

/i̘ u̘ e̘ o̘ a̘/
/i̙ u̙ e̙ o̙ a̙/

Romanisation wise, I'll use IPA characters except for the vowels, where I'll use an acute accent for the +ATR vowels.

_________________
Languages!
Native: Proficient: Decent: Have dabbled in: