Notes on Lkal sik
Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2016 9:11 am
Motivated by Travis B. mentioning egophoricity in his Middle Tshyak thread, I thought that I should perhaps also post something on one of my side project languages that includes egophoricity in its evidential system. The language is called Lkal sik and is yet another one of these conlangs that draws inspiration from the Tibetosphere. I'm hoping, though, that as I develop the language, it'll pick up influences from a wider area. I'll, for example, probably give the language a defunct classifier system and watch how it erodes away, since I've recently found myself thinking a lot about the grammar of classification. The bits for that are already in place already since the prefix l- in the language's name can be found in many nouns related to sound or the mouth. The name of the language's native state is Skal, on the other hand, which uses the same root kal but with an areal prefix s-.
The language exists in its world as two versions. There's the classical literary language, that was standardised maybe 700 to 900 years before the present time, and the modern spoken variety. The reality is, of course, much more complicated than this since the literary language written on later times is always affected to a certain degree by the contemporary spoken language. There's probably also a variety of distinct dialects which I don't expect to have the time or motivation to flesh out. I'll also leave the description of the modern language to some later time since working out satisfying sound changes for large tables of consonant clusters is painfully tedious. What you'll get now are descriptions of Classical Lkal sik
Phonology
The consonant and vowel phonemes of Classical Lkal sik and the orthography I'll use for them are
/p t k q/ <p t k q>
/b d dʑ g/ <b d dź g>
/f s χ/ <f s h>
/v r ʑ ʁ/ <v r ź ř>
/m n/ <m n>
/l j w/ <l j/i w/u>
/a e i o u (ə)/ <a e i o u (e)>
/ae ei ao ou/ <ae ei ao ou>
The glides /j w/ are written as j w at the start of the word or after vowels and as i u when they come after consonants. The off-glides on the low diphthongs /ae ao/ are something around [e̝ o̝] or [i̞ u̞]. They are lower than the off-glides on the high diphthongs but higher than /e o/ or the base vowels of /ei ou/. A big reason for deciding this was simply that when these diphthongs are preceded by glides, writing iae and uao instead of iai and uau looks much more pleasing. The vowel [ə] never appears on the main syllable and its phonemic status is up for debate. The word initial voiceless stops tend all to be aspirated when followed by a vowel or a glide.
The typical allowed word shapes are ((Cə)C(C))V(C(s)), ((Cə)C(C))VCV(s,n), and ((Cə)C(C))VCVCV(s,n). That's to say that a word may begin with a two consonant cluster and on top of that have a prefixed syllable of the form C[ə]-. Here the vowel [ə] is epenthetic and fully predictable and so I won't be writing it down. The allowed consonant clusters at the start of the main syllable are
/sp st sk sq/
/br dr gr/
/bʑ gʑ/
/Cj Cw/ (except for double glide clusters)
A prefix may end up forming an allowed cluster with the initial consonant of the main syllable. In these cases a true cluster is formed and no epenthetic [ə] is interted after the prefix consonant.
Words that have only one full syllable may end with the consonants /p t k s χ m n l/ or the clusters /ps ts ks ns/. In these places the nasal /n/ has the allophone [ŋ]. On longer words all consonants may appear between two vowels but no clusters are allowed and at the end of the word /s n/ are the only allowed consonants. The vocalism of the suffixal syllables following the main syllable is also reduced. Only /i u [ə]/ may appear there. I'll write the suffixal [ə] as e but it's probably better described as an allophone of /a/.
The language exists in its world as two versions. There's the classical literary language, that was standardised maybe 700 to 900 years before the present time, and the modern spoken variety. The reality is, of course, much more complicated than this since the literary language written on later times is always affected to a certain degree by the contemporary spoken language. There's probably also a variety of distinct dialects which I don't expect to have the time or motivation to flesh out. I'll also leave the description of the modern language to some later time since working out satisfying sound changes for large tables of consonant clusters is painfully tedious. What you'll get now are descriptions of Classical Lkal sik
Phonology
The consonant and vowel phonemes of Classical Lkal sik and the orthography I'll use for them are
/p t k q/ <p t k q>
/b d dʑ g/ <b d dź g>
/f s χ/ <f s h>
/v r ʑ ʁ/ <v r ź ř>
/m n/ <m n>
/l j w/ <l j/i w/u>
/a e i o u (ə)/ <a e i o u (e)>
/ae ei ao ou/ <ae ei ao ou>
The glides /j w/ are written as j w at the start of the word or after vowels and as i u when they come after consonants. The off-glides on the low diphthongs /ae ao/ are something around [e̝ o̝] or [i̞ u̞]. They are lower than the off-glides on the high diphthongs but higher than /e o/ or the base vowels of /ei ou/. A big reason for deciding this was simply that when these diphthongs are preceded by glides, writing iae and uao instead of iai and uau looks much more pleasing. The vowel [ə] never appears on the main syllable and its phonemic status is up for debate. The word initial voiceless stops tend all to be aspirated when followed by a vowel or a glide.
The typical allowed word shapes are ((Cə)C(C))V(C(s)), ((Cə)C(C))VCV(s,n), and ((Cə)C(C))VCVCV(s,n). That's to say that a word may begin with a two consonant cluster and on top of that have a prefixed syllable of the form C[ə]-. Here the vowel [ə] is epenthetic and fully predictable and so I won't be writing it down. The allowed consonant clusters at the start of the main syllable are
/sp st sk sq/
/br dr gr/
/bʑ gʑ/
/Cj Cw/ (except for double glide clusters)
A prefix may end up forming an allowed cluster with the initial consonant of the main syllable. In these cases a true cluster is formed and no epenthetic [ə] is interted after the prefix consonant.
Words that have only one full syllable may end with the consonants /p t k s χ m n l/ or the clusters /ps ts ks ns/. In these places the nasal /n/ has the allophone [ŋ]. On longer words all consonants may appear between two vowels but no clusters are allowed and at the end of the word /s n/ are the only allowed consonants. The vocalism of the suffixal syllables following the main syllable is also reduced. Only /i u [ə]/ may appear there. I'll write the suffixal [ə] as e but it's probably better described as an allophone of /a/.