I have been considering how Chavakani's common ancestor with the other Chondru languages would have looked. This is hardly set in stone and will probably change somewhat, but I've got a tentative sketch and would like your input. This uses a rough non-IPA transcription to give certain sounds some fudge factor.
The consonant system is as follows:
Nasals: m n (ñ) ŋ
Prenasalized stops: mb nd ñj ŋg
Voiced stops: b d j g
Voiceless stops: p t c k
Fricatives: f s
Glides: w r y
"Laryngeal": x
Most of these have their IPA values. Those that don't are as follows:
- y represents [j].
- ñ represents [ɲ]. This segment may or may not have been an independent phoneme; I'm not sure yet whether I want it to occur outside of ñj.
- j and c represent "palatal" consonants of a somewhat uncertain nature. They may have been dorso-palatal or alveopalatal stops, or they may have been postalveolar affricates of some kind.
- r is a liquid. It may have been any number of rhotics, or possibly a lateral approximant.
- x is a segment that surfaces as a glottal consonant or zero in most descendants but appears to have merged with [k] in some environments in one branch of the family. It may have been a velar fricative or some variety of uvular or other postvelar consonant, or the [k] realizations may result from "coloring" of a glottal consonant by neighboring vowels.
Full vowels: i u e o a å
Reduced vowels: ĭ ŭ ă
- a and å are both open to open-mid vowels, with å being probably more back than a.
- The reduced vowels occur only in "minor" syllables and thus are arguably allophonic mergers of the full vowels. They may have been centralized and/or shorter in duration. They have wide ranges of possible qualities, respectively being "non-open unrounded front vowel", "non-open rounded back vowel", and "open-ish vowel".
Minor syllables had no defined tone (if the A-B distinction was tonal) and only had reduced vowels as possible nuclei. They may have been unstressed. In many of the descendants they are partially or fully lost, leaving changes such as new consonant clusters, consonant mutations, new tone contours, or vowel quality changes via umlaut.
Proto-Chondru allowed syllables of the form (C)(w/r/y)V. Vowel-initial syllables were only allowed word-initially. Consonant clusters were almost never encountered in minor syllables.
A few sample words:
*(nĭ)dråA "fire"
*tyuBtyaB "father"
*weAgă "ox, cow"
*ciB "here"
Later I'll post the sound changes to Chavakani I've decided on so far.
Any questions or suggestions?