The Correspondence Library

[linguoboy]

I could really use the sound changes from P-Celtic to Irish

Um, good luck finding them: Irish, like Proto-Celtic, is Q-Celtic.

[Dauyn]

I believe Celestine meant Proto-Celtic. That's certainly what I understood anyway, especially since all the other familial derivations were correct.

[linguoboy]

I believe Celestine meant Proto-Celtic. That's certainly what I understood anyway, especially since all the other familial derivations were correct.

Maybe you're right. I've never seen anyone abbreviate it that way before, not with the (outdated) consecrated expressions "Q-Celtic" and "P-Celtic" floating around.

[Dewrad]

I could really use the sound changes from P-Celtic to Irish and from Proto Celtic to any mainland dialect.

I assume you mean a Continental Celtic language like Gaulish here? The changes aren't all that interesting to be honest. Basically *kw > p and *ei > ē

(As I understand it this would eliminate Breton since it is descended from Welsh.)

No, Breton's derived from Proto-Brythonic, not Welsh. Welsh, however, is also derived from Proto-Brythonic (as is Cornish).

The sound changes from Irish to Scotish and Welsh to Breton would also be welcome.

By "Irish to Scottish" I assume you mean "Old Irish to Gaelic"? I might be able to rustle up the sound changes from Proto-Brythonic to Breton if I can find my copy of Jackson from amongst the detritus of my study.

[Celestine]

Wow, lot's of responses. Yes, I meant Proto Celtic , not P-Celtic (which I've always heard refered to as P-Gaelic, hence the confusion). The title of the post gave that away I thought, ce le vie.

Dewrad wrote:
I assume you mean a Continental Celtic language like Gaulish here?

Celestine responded:
That's what I was thinking, but perhaps the Asia Minor Gaulish is more what I need... I want a Celtic derivative that is as far removed from the dialects of the British Isles as possible.

Dewrad wrote:
No, Breton's derived from Proto-Brythonic, not Welsh. Welsh, however, is also derived from Proto-Brythonic (as is Cornish).

Celestine responds:
My formal training is as an historian. Thus the mistake.. I knew the Bretons emmigrated from the Isles, just didn't know the linguistic history/terms.

Dewrad wrote:
By "Irish to Scottish" I assume you mean "Old Irish to Gaelic"? I might be able to rustle up the sound changes from Proto-Brythonic to Breton if I can find my copy of Jackson from amongst the detritus of my study.

Celestine responds:
Again, my background is as an historian. I know the Scots originally came from Ireland. So, what I was asking for here is the sound changes from Proto-Celtic to the common ancestor of Irish and Scottish, and then from there to Modern Irish and Modern Scottish. (I don't know the correct terms for these and the steps in between with certainty.) Proto-Brythonic to Breton would be appreciated.. but help connecting it back to Proto Celtic would be appreciated too.

Celestine Responds in general to all previous posts:
Dauyn and Dewrad, any sound changes you (or anyone else for that matter) post would be much appreciated. I'm writing as we speak, and my characters are now coming to the lands where the languages in question are used. (I have the grammars, which are quite independent of these natlangs, but I want the vocabulary to sound/feel somewhat like them. I have complete conlangs for the parent langs [equivalents to PIE and Proto-Celtic] as well..including vocab. )

[Lleu]

On a tangent, I see a bunch of comments on Gaulish. Does anyone have enough information to teach me Gaulish or Lepontic? I'm very interested in learning either or at the very least learning more than can be seen in the Wikipedia entry on it (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaulish|en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepontic).

[Dewrad]

On a tangent, I see a bunch of comments on Gaulish. Does anyone have enough information to teach me Gaulish or Lepontic?

Yes, I probably do. No, I'm not going to teach you. I don't have the patience nor the inclination. I can send you some grammatical information and you can teach yourself, however.

[Lleu]

On a tangent, I see a bunch of comments on Gaulish. Does anyone have enough information to teach me Gaulish or Lepontic?

Yes, I probably do. No, I'm not going to teach you. I don't have the patience nor the inclination. I can send you some grammatical information and you can teach yourself, however.

That would be awesome!

[hwhatting]

Celestine responded:
That's what I was thinking, but perhaps the Asia Minor Gaulish is more what I need... I want a Celtic derivative that is as far removed from the dialects of the British Isles as possible.

What's known of Asia Minor Gaulish (better known as Galatian) is only a few place and personal names. Based on that, one can say that it was not very different from Gaulish - which isn't surprising, as the Galatians entered Asia minor only in the Hellenistic era.
If you want something more removed (linguistically, at least) from Insular Celtic, try Celtiberian.
Best regards,

Hans-Werner

[Echobeats]

Wow, lot's of responses. Yes, I meant Proto Celtic , not P-Celtic (which I've always heard refered to as P-Gaelic, hence the confusion).

Whoever you've heard using the term "P-Gaelic" is very confused, because the Goidelic or Gaelic group and the Q-Celtic group are the same thing.

ce le vie.

C'est la vie.

[Celestine]

Wow, lot's of responses. Yes, I meant Proto Celtic , not P-Celtic (which I've always heard refered to as P-Gaelic, hence the confusion).

Whoever you've heard using the term "P-Gaelic" is very confused, because the Goidelic or Gaelic group and the Q-Celtic group are the same thing.

I don't doubt that... the fact that I haven't studied Celtic history for 20 years might also have something to do with it.

ce le vie.

C'est la vie.

Gosh, you sure know how to make an amateur feel welcome on the board, but ce le vie. =P

[Echobeats]

Gosh, you sure know how to make an amateur feel welcome on the board, but ce le vie. =P

I wasn't blaming you in the slightest for not knowing that the Gaelic languages are all Q-Celtic, or how to speak French, but I did presume you'd want to know what was correct, so I was simply telling you. We're like that round here ? we correct each other ruthlessly and don't take it personally at all. You'll get used to it.

Welcome, by the way. Have a cookie.

Yours, Tim.

[Celestine]

No biggy.

[brandrinn]

request for sound changes: Proto Celtic to Irish, or any kind of Athabaskan/Na Dene info, or Proto Indo European to Proto Indo Aryan, or Proto Semitic to Arabic or Hebrew. Anything would be nice!

EDIT: Tocharian sound changes (other than dh, d, t > t) are pretty elusive. does anybody know where to find them?

[Celestine]

Now that I finally have time to actually answer, (in reference to the ce le vie thing) I was just looking for a reason to make a joke out of it... hence the repeated spelling errors.

Any ETA on the Irish sound changes? (I'm kinda planning around it at present.)

Still VERY Appreciative!
-Celestine

[Dauyn]

I will try to have some stuff for you tomorrow (2/26).

And some stuff on Tocharian, if my notes are as complete as I think they are.

EDIT: Today is 2/25! I mean 2/26...

[Dauyn]

I make no promises on how detailed or accurate this is. It's from my PIE textbook by Jasonoff.

PIE > Tocharian

p, b, bh > p
t, dh > t
d > ts (though also > 0, but the environments are not yet understood)
k, k', g, g', gh, g'h > k
kw, gw, ghw > k plus labialization (Toch. A. kus 'who'< PIE kwis, Toch. B yakwe 'horse'< PIE ekwos)

Palatization before front vowels, including, but not limited to:
- t > /tS/
- k > /S/
- st > /S:/ or /StS/
- w could > y in B (Toch. B yente 'wind'< PIE H2weH1nt)
- l and n > ly, ny (AB lyuk 'light up' < PIE leuk)

l and r remained, with r the only consonant remaining finally
final nasals > n (Toch. has m, n, N, and ny)
syllabic resonants develop prothetic ? in Toch. A, a in B
RHC > RC (laryngeals lost between syllabic resonants and consonants)
laryngeals > a: between consonants
iH > ya
uH > wa
e, i, u > ? > a, a: or remain depending on complex factors
o,e: > A a B e but o remained if followed by u in following syllable
a, o: > a:
a: > A a B o
i: u: > i u
Diphthongs > monophthongs in A, remained in B
? > 0 in A open syllable, B unstressed open syllables
Final syllables > 0 in A (with addition of ? as needed), preserved in B (A rt?r B ratre 'red')

[Dauyn]

Celestine,
I'm sorry to say that trying to post the details on Proto-Celtic to Irish is an immense task. Celtic studies (my Masters) is complex, dense, and still essentially an old boys' network of classic philology. In addition to general dense and obscure writing that most texts contain, the sound changes for the Q-Celtic languages are incredibly complicated. This means that while I can eventually work out sound changes for you, it would take me much longer to dig through McCone, Hamp, Binchy, Schrijver, and a bunch of other old linguistic fogies than I thought it would, and I have a life too. If you want to PM me with words, I can do my best to transform them for you, but here's an abbreviated list from the same textbook as the Tocharian stuff above that might be somewhat helpful.

labiovelars > velars (kw > k)
lenition: stops > fricatives between vowels, s > h, f > 0
nasalization: unvoiced stops > voiced, voiced stops > nasal, n- before vowels
palatization: consonants > palatized before front vowel
unstressed o > a
a-affection: i,u > e,o before a in following syllable
eu, ou > ? > ?a
ei > ? (?a depending on following vowel)
i-affection: e, o > i, u before i in following syllable
Syncope: loss of unstressed vowels in 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc. syllables
Apocope: loss of final syllables

[Celestine]

Hey man, you're great! I'd never intentionally impose upon anyone. I really appreciate what you were able to do ... noone understands better than I how important having a real life can be. Thanks!!!

[Celestine]

I'll make due with what I have until you or Dewrad can get around to it.. I was really just looking for an eta so I had some sort of timescale to work with... I'll put it in the "indefinite" folder
Thanks Again!

[Eledhi]

Looking for a few sets of sound changes:

PIE > (Proto-Greek) > Greek
PIE > (Proto-Celtic) > Welsh

Any help would be highly appreciated!

[Dauyn]

I can have those both for you within the week, as long as you don't need extremely detailed lists. I'll use the PIE textbook again (since it's a good summary), so look at the Tocharian info above to see if that's good enough for what you need, and I'll get on it.

[Rory]

I've been thinking - while this is a useful thread, there's a lot of conversation in it that could be clipped out... Perhaps sometime we should compile a list of all the sound changes we have, minus all the chatter?

Anyway, I had a really good book with basic outlines of a lot of IE sound changes, but I had to take it back to the library, curses! I'll see if I can get it back.

[Lleu]

I'm still looking for Gaulish information.

[Radius Solis]

Sound Changes from Proto-Uto-Aztecan for some modern UA languages.

Source: International Journal of American Linguistics, vol. 28, #1, supplemental. Jan. 1962, checked out from the dusty back shelves of the University of Arizona linguistics library.

This paper was a goldmine of information compared to what's out there on the net, but unfortunately is far from complete even so. For one thing, for some languages it doesn't bother giving the conditions for the changes, just what the various reflexes are of the Proto-UA segments, and when conditions are given, they're often full of holes. Please take these as incomplete (but covering most of the known important stuff), and also at risk of being out of date given that the journal article was from 44 years ago.

In addition, the time depth for Proto-Uto-Aztecan is roughly comparable to that of PIE, and so quite often there's a problem of languges having insufficient remaining cognates to be sure of all their sound changes. I've marked the worst such cases below.

The following five languages are chosen partly because some were requested of me, and partly because this is a nicely representative list of most of the main branches of Uto-Aztecan. Nahuatl and Tohono O'odham are in the Southern UA branch, and in its two sub-branches, Aztecan and Sonoran respectively. Luiseño is in the Takic branch, Comanche in the Numic branch, and Hopi is its own branch. That covers most of the family tree.



PROTO-UTO-AZTECAN RECONSTRUCTED PHONEMES

Consonants: */p t ts k k_w ? s h m n N w j r l/
Vowels: */i 1 u o a/
for purposes of below notation, */i 1 u/ are "high" and */o a/ are "low".
I haven't seen it said straight out, but I gather that all PUA words ended in vowels.
See end of post for a discussion of "suspending" and "nasalizing" and "unaffecting" vowels.



NAHUATL

t > tK / _a, _u
p > 0 / #_
p > 0 / V(s)_ *****
ts > tS / _i
s > S / _i
? > 0
h > 0
N > n
m > n / _#
l > n / #_
w > 0 / _o
1 > e
u > i and e (all */u/ affected, but conditions for when it became /i/ or /e/ are not known)
What happened to PUA */r/ is not known. Nahuatl has no cognates that would have a reflex.




TOHONO O'ODHAM

p > w / #_
p > w / V(s)_ *****
t > tS / _V(high)
ts > s / _i
kw > b
h > ? / #_
h > 0 / medially
s > h
N > n
n > J / _V(high)
l > J / #_ (in doubt; initial *l occurs in too few cognates to be sure. Apparently PUA intial *l was rare and is of questionable certainty whether it existed at all.)
l > l`
l` > d` / _a
w > g
j > dZ / _V(high)
j > d / _V(low)

What follows is a set of vowel deletions (there were no changes in articulation) that are more suited to description in English than in notation:

- Vowels delete when in the first syllable of a bisyllabic morpheme, if after a morpheme boundary in the same word (all other first-syllable vowels have non-zero reflexes);
- All vowels except *i (see below) remain finally if after */s h ?/ and are otherwise lost in final position:
- *i is lost finally after *ts in all dialects, retained finally after */p m w k kw/ in all dialects, and varies by dialect after other consonants.

What happened to PUA */r/ in O'odham is difficult to say. There are only two known cognates, each showing a different reflex: /l`/ and /d`/.




LUISEÑO

p > v / V(s)_ *****
p > v / 1_ (sometimes; other conditions not known)
t > l / medially
ts > tS
k > q / #_V(low)
k > q / a(n)_ *****
isolated other instances of k > q occur with uncertain conditions
k > x / a_
? > 0 / #_
s > S
l > n / medially (initial *l unattested in Luiseño - see note in O'odham section)
o > e
1 > o
V > 0 / in some final syllables (conditions are unknown and it varies by dialect)



HOPI

p > v / V(s)_ *****
k > q / _V(low)
i > j / after medial *h
h > 0 / medially
l > l (no change) / #_ (highly unsure, only one cognate has initial */l/)
l > n / medially
w > l / #_V(low) and V(low)_V(low)
w > Nw / 1(n)_ *****
o > 2
u > o



COMANCHE

p > v / V(s)_ *****
t > r / V(s)_ *****
ts > 0 / V(s)_ *****
k > hk / V(u)_ *****
s > h / V(s)_ *****
s > 0 / V(n)_ *****
N > n
l > n
w > 0 / medially
j > 0 / medially

No vowel changes occurred.








***** What's up with all the asterisks? I put them after every sound change involving vowels being marked by (s), (u), or (n). Here's the explanation of them:

Reconstructed PUA had three sets of vowels; this book calls them "suspending", "unaltering", and "nasalizing". The nasalizing vowels likely were actually nasal, but it's uncertain; their existence was deduced only by the sound changes that revolved around them. There's few good guesses yet about the nature of the "suspending" vowels, but their existence is likewise deducible from the sound changes that have been affected by them across a majority of the UA family - more changes than from the nasalizing series, occurring in all UA branches, enough to be pretty certain that it was a reality in PUA.

(u) = unaffecting (normal) vowels
(s) = suspending vowels, most often having the effect of leniting or deleting (i.e. "suspending") any following stops, in the changes they caused; the most frequently affected sound was */p/, which lenited or deleted after suspending vowels in all five of the above languages and a majority of the UA family.
(n) = nasalizing vowels, named for their nasalizing effect in some UA languages but which aren't seen in any of the ones posted here.

The U, S, and N vowel series might or might not have been contrastive in PUA, and S and N might or might not have been mutually exclusive. Nobody's really sure.