Old Dageshian

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dhok
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Old Dageshian

Post by dhok »

I was bored, and wanted to do an a posteriori language, but the research involved in doing an IE or a Romance language didn't appeal to me.

Old Dageshian was spoken in pockets of the Shkorono valley, but split up sometime around the Dhekhnami conquest of old Caďinorian territory (although it had been in decline for a while). It (and its barely attested sisters) formed an independent branch of the Eastern branch. It has two daughters (which I'll sketch out later): Northern Dageshian, spoken in a few isolated villages in the northern foothills, and Eastern Dageshian, spoken in a handful of settlements about 50km east of Izame.

Although it never produced any native literature, two treatises, along with glosseries and grammatical sketches on it were written by Caďinorian authors (one of whom noted turis pelesmantos ȟronin caďinorin er cuezisein bunesises), and these combined with a knowledge of the modern language has allowed us to reconstruct Old Dageshian with some measure of precision. Old Dageshian was probably closest to the Central and Karazi branches at an early stage, sharing with them the "correction" in gender of words whose natural and grammatical genders mismatched, the introduction of an epenthetic vowel in final -Cs clusters, and the preservation of a causative. In terms of vocabulary, it has borrowed large numbers of Munkhãshi and a few Caďinor words.

Sound Changes
It is assumed that Proto-Eastern stress fell on the root.

Code: Select all

1. Ø -> e /[t, d]_s#
    Ø -> o /[k, g, x, ɣ]_s#
    Ø -> a / C_s# otherwise
    Ø -> a/#t_s, except _i
    ey -> ē

2. l -> w / [fricative]_
    l -> r / C_ otherwise

3. t, k, x -> : /_#

4. mp, nt, nk -> pp, tt, kk
mb, nd, ng -> m n ŋ

5. t, d -> č, dz /_[ī i ē]V
    ts -> č

6. [k, g, x, ɣ]n -> ɲ
    n[i ī ē] -> ɲ /_V
    Ø -> u /[velar]_C otherwise

7. ɣ, rC -> ʀ /V_V
    ɣ -> y / _[iīeē]
    ɣ -> g / otherwise
    x -> š / _[iīeē]

8. Initial:
w -> f 
y -> š

9. Intervocalic (and before a sonorant):
    b d g -> v ð ɣ
    p t k -> b d g
    pp tt kk -> p t k
    w -> Ø (except as a diphthong)
    f -> v

10. s -> z /V_V, if one of them is a stressed long vowel

11. x -> ɣ /V_V
     x -> h /otherwise

12. Stressed:
ē -> ie
ō -> uo

13. Unstressed:
V: -> V (also includes stressed ones)
aw -> o
ay, oy -> e

14.  dz -> z
č -> š
r -> a /V_#
l -> Ø /[ou]_V

15. Syncope: in a three-syllable or more word, the second vowel will drop out. If it was [ie], then preceding k, g -> š, y in its wake.
Coming up: morphology.

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