Creating a Conlang Family Part 11: Reconstructing Protolanguage 0
Perhaps the most prominent feature of protolanguage 1’s phonology is the emphatic consonants: /pˀ tˀ tsˀ kˀ/. For the origins of these, I’ll take the same path as the Semitic languages, having them develop out of ejective consonants: /pʼ tʼ sʼ kʼ/.
Another important phonological feature of protolanguage 1 is its vowel hiatus. I want this to be a feature protolanguage 1 developed after protolanguage 0. The most common way for vowel hiatus to develop is because a consonant is deleted in between two vowels. The most likely target would be a glottal consonant, like /ʔ/ or /h/, as these are conspicuously absent from protolanguage 1. However, I want to do a bit more than that. Given that I’m taking some inspiration from Proto-Semitic, it seems natural to include an additional voiced/voiceless/emphatic contrast: /l ɬ ɬʼ/. /ɬ/ often weakens to /h/, and I could see /ɬʼ/ weakening to /ʔ/. If this happens before glottals are deleted, this gives us further places for vowel hiatus.
ɬ → h
ɬʼ → ʔ
{h,ʔ} → ∅
I’d also like the alveolopalatal consonants to come from palatalized alveolars. This gives us more potential for evolution in protolanguage 2. I’ll make it so that there are emphatic palatalized alveolars, /tʲʼ/ and /sʲʼ/, as it makes more sense to me than omitting it. When the emphatics go to pharyngeals, we can say that the palatalization cancels out the pharyngealization, so /tʲʼ/ and /sʲʼ/ just goes to /tʲ/ and /sʲ/.
That gives us the following table:
(Notice that I deleted /j/ and /w/ from this table. I’ve decided to delete them from protolanguage 1 as well - it just felt like they weren’t fitting.)
This isn’t very different from protolanguage 1 yet, but fear not - there are more changes coming soon. I previously mentioned that word-final vowel deletion might explain some of the morphological features of this language. In the next installment, I’ll finish up (for now) the sound changes by adding word-final vowel deletion, and maybe some other vowel deletion!
