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North Samic has *k̆s *ɣs *vs.

For *sʷ, how about something like *sw skw?

I'm thinking of losing a retroflex series /ʈ ɖ ʂ ʐ/ like this:

ʈ > k
ɖ > r
ʂ > ʃ
ʐ > ʒ

well the only change i'm really doubting is ʈ > k, dunno if a little context would help at all. I am really only doing that cuz I like [k], and it would make irregular k~r alternations, but I may end up going with ʈ > t or r.

Mbwa wrote:well the only change i'm really doubting is ʈ > k, dunno if a little context would help at all. I am really only doing that cuz I like [k], and it would make irregular k~r alternations, but I may end up going with ʈ > t or r.

If it went from a true retroflex (i.e. curling backwards the tongue) to a post-alveolar or something before it became a /k/, it doesn't seem too implausible.

yeah, i could have the /ʈ/ be a laminal retroflex, then have it velarise.

Anybody know of anything like /r:/ > /dr/ or /l:/ > /dl/?

roninbodhisattva wrote:Anybody know of anything like /r:/ > /dr/ or /l:/ > /dl/?

[lː] > [tl˳] happened in Icelandic (and also [nː rn rl] > [tn˳ (r)tn˳ (r)tl˳]).

cedh audmanh wrote:

roninbodhisattva wrote:Anybody know of anything like /r:/ > /dr/ or /l:/ > /dl/?

[lː] > [tl˳] happened in Icelandic.

True story, I forgot about that. I'm thinking of doing this, in the end:

*hr- > sr- > ʂ-
*-r:- > -dr- > -ɖ-
*hl- > ɬ-
*-l:- > dl > (d)ɮ > ɬ-

The dashes showing the position of vowels.

This isn't a sound change, but....

My conlang Tazic has a vowel system /a i 1 u a: i: u:/. Stress falls on the first syllable with a long vowel, but I have this other rule: on either side of the stressed syllable, vowels must match in length. So you could have CaC1'Ca:Cu but not CaC1'Ca:CuCi: or whatever.

Does this seem plausible?

^ My gut reaction is no, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned up somewhere. Come up with sound changes that would lead to that and it'll be fine, I'd say.

I need a good way to keep the dynamic negative copula forms in Arve distinct. Right now they're formed by the (very suppletive) negative auxiliary san/zigg/sambe + gerund(?) form (also the citation form) of the dynamic verb trei, although massive amounts of reduction has left the forms mostly indistinct. For example, the active singular, active plural, and passive plural are zigg trei, ziggs treis, and zeijer trei, pronounced [t͡sɪˈʈ͡ʂʌi̯], [t͡sɪʂˈʈ͡ʂʌi̯s], and [t͡sɪçˈʈ͡ʂʌi̯]. I was thinking I could introduce tone, but I'm not sure how much it'd appear outside the verb forms, since it'd obviously come from syllable reduction. For example, since zigg and ziggs only have one syllable in their full forms, but zeijer has two ([ˈt͡sɛh], [ˈt͡sɛç], [ˈt͡sʌi̯jɐ]), some sort of pitch accent thing could come in and make zeijer trei something like [t͡sɪç˥˩ˈʈ͡ʂʌi̯] or [t͡sɪçˈʈ͡ʂʌi̯˩˥]. I'd obviously prefer the second option, since it seems much less messy to have tone only appear on stressed syllables.

How realistic is that?

Mbwa wrote:Stress falls on the first syllable with a long vowel, but I have this other rule: on either side of the stressed syllable, vowels must match in length.

In other words: the syllable after the stress must have a short vowel, unless the stress is word-initial. You can't have L"LL mid-word because the stress would move to the first of the long vowels, so it's always S"LS mid-word. This seams fairly reasonable: V: → V / "V:C_ and not the second syllable. (Or always -- your post didn't make clear how the "match in length" applies to the word boundary.)

hito wrote:

Mbwa wrote:Stress falls on the first syllable with a long vowel, but I have this other rule: on either side of the stressed syllable, vowels must match in length.

In other words: the syllable after the stress must have a short vowel, unless the stress is word-initial.

No, I mean you can have short vowels or long vowels on either side of the stressed syllable, but no side can have a combination of the 2. So you can have [short][short][stress][long]long] or [long][long][stress][short][short] but not [long][short][stress][long][short]

Mbwa wrote:Stress falls on the first syllable with a long vowel

Mbwa wrote:[long][long][stress][short][short]

Wouldn't the stress be word-initial then?

Also, pitch contour: high pitch became long vowel, or something like that. The stressed syllable is where the actual contour was. Words could start high and stay high, or change to low at one point, and so on.

If a language has ejectives, and somehow loses them, what would the ejectives usually turn into?

Thanks in advance.

Does this come off as strange?

g -> ɣ -> j

My entire phonology has been, for the most part, sufficiently worked on, but I'm thinking of making /g, ɣ/ illegal before all consonants (/ɣ/ already becomes /x/ before voiceless stops), so a sequence like magret would be pronounced /maj.ɾet/, etc. Essentially, I'd be forcing /g, ɣ/ to create a falling diphthong.

Apart from that, I'm thinking of distributing allophones to unstressed vowels, such as /e/ becoming [ɨ] when immediately preceding and succeeding a stressed vowel, such as hiándenighy would be pronounced /ˈjan.dɨ.ni.jɪ/.

I'm probably going to make the above changes occur either way, but I'd like to hear some feedback.

No, that's not at all a strange sound shift.

dude, that definitely works.

A very similar change happened in English, except the ɣ became j or w depending on the environment. If the preceding vowel was front, ɣ had already become j by the Old English period. If ɣ followed a back vowel, it became w. That's why we have words like "bow" (as in "bow and arrow"), where German has "Bogen".

Other English (Old English) vs German examples:
day (dæg) vs Tag
rain (regn) vs Regen
eye (eage) vs Auge
-y (-ig) vs -ig

So yeah, very reasonable change.

I thought of a way I could justify it: an earlier form of the language had 2 tones: high and low. There was a sort of tone harmony, with basically the same rules I described. stress fell on the first high tone syllable, and EXCEPT FOR this stressed syllable, adjacent vowels must match in tone.

high tone > +length

My conlang Alakan has a set of pharyngeals (ʕ and ħ to be precise) and I've been trying to think of interesting things to do with them, specifically, I'm trying to imagine what processes could create them from other consonants. The full set of consonants are (in IPA):
Plosives: p t̪ tʃ k kʷ ʔ
Implosives: ɓ ̪ɗ
Nasals: m n ŋ
Fricatives: f v s z ʃ ʒ x h ħ
Laterals: l ɬ
Trills: r
approximant: j w ʕ

The vowels are a very basic five cardinal vowels, and there is productive raising, fronting, and backing patterns of ablaut, along with quite a bit of consonant mutation (which is what I want to create some kind of pharyngealization effect going).

ʕ isn't a semivowel; j and w are because they're the equivalent of i and u in consonant form. You want the term "approximant".

finlay wrote:ʕ isn't a semivowel; j and w are because they're the equivalent of i and u in consonant form. You want the term "approximant".

Right. Sorry about that.

finlay wrote:ʕ isn't a semivowel

I sometimes wonder if it could be possible to say that ʕ is a consonant ɑ though...

Renaçido wrote:

finlay wrote:ʕ isn't a semivowel

I sometimes wonder if it could be possible to say that ʕ is a consonant ɑ though...

Mii thuu.

My protolang has a set of voiceless stops: p t k q. T was sometimes pronounced ɾ intervocally, especially in informal/quick speech. Eventually, t shifted completely to ɾ. I want this to cause a chain shift with k becoming t and q becoming k to fill in the gaps. I understand something similar happened in Hawaiian. Is this plausible?

Yes.