zompist bboard

After a while of working on my Anglo-Romance bogolang, I had the idea of taking the bogo up a notch, and I conceived a concept AU in which Northeast Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic etc.) were descendants of Proto-Indo-European.
I'd like ideas on how to kickstart the thing and some soundchange lists for Northeast Semitic langs (not correspondences, actual "A turns to B under condition C" soundchanges).

ÜberBen wrote:After a while of working on my Anglo-Romance bogolang, I had the idea of taking the bogo up a notch, and I conceived a concept AU in which Northeast Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic etc.) were descendants of Proto-Indo-European.
I'd like ideas on how to kickstart the thing and some soundchange lists for Northeast Semitic langs (not correspondences, actual "A turns to B under condition C" soundchanges).

Index Diachronica basically has these, though I don't remember how much detail it has on the Semitic langs.

Thanks Mate!
There's tons of info there, I'm indebted to you.

Well... Sh*t.
Yeah, there really isn't much info about the Semitic langs, and my first SCA testrun with the soundchanges (plus a few more that I've brewed myself/borrowed for historical accuracy, like the laryngeals becoming full vowels) failed horribly.
Although deriving all of the modern Semitlangs from Proto-Semitic is feasible, Applying soundchanges to a phonology that is very incompatible with them is not gonna work.
My previous Anglo-Romance project worked pretty well with slapping a slightly modified version of the Proto-Germanic -> Old English SCs onto Latin, since the phonologies of the two parent languages are pretty similar: Nasals and Overlong vowels could be ignored, and many other features could be dealt with- Romance!OE without /θ/ is fine by me.
However, have a gander at PIE vs. PS: Tell me- How on earth would soundchanges geared towards a language with emphatics and 14 fricatives work on a language with voiced aspirated plosives and syllabic sonorants?
Dangit, seems like I'll have to create most of the soundchange list out of the blue.
As a nooblanger, I require your assistance!

It seems that you have hit on the fundamental problem of bogolanging: The sound changes you are trying to apply to your starting language just don't fit because they presuppose a different phonology. And PIE and Proto-Semitic are not even close, they are almost as utterly different as they could be.

This thread might be useful.

If you want to use the West Semitic sound changes as written, you're going to have to make PIE look like PS first by hand. However, there's another snag: a great deal of the flavor of the Semitic languages comes from massive morphological analogy and leveling. An Indo-European language could easily develop a Semitic-like phonological inventory (just as Maltese, Neo-Punic, and [to some extent] Modern Hebrew developed Indo-European-esque phonological inventories), but it's still not going to look Semitic without the significant grammatical reanalysis that characterizes the Semitic languages.

I never even considered giving the Indo-Semitic bogolangs nonconcatenative morphology!
They're supposed to be descendants of PIE, and thus should have IE-like morphology, not the 3C root system of actual Semitic langs.

ÜberBen wrote:I never even considered giving the Indo-Semitic bogolangs nonconcatenative morphology!
They're supposed to be descendants of PIE, and thus should have IE-like morphology, not the 3C root system of actual Semitic langs.

But then PIE morphology does have quite a non-concatenative component anyway, I think you could have great fun working to enlarge its role.

The role of ablaut in PIE morphology is pretty overstated, imo. It's certainly nowhere near as prominent as in Semitic.

Leaving aside the morphological issues, I can think of some sound changes that might help:

• Make laryngeals 1-3 into [h x ħ] respectively, with allophonic voicing (and possibly also [h] versus [ʔ]) that becomes phonemic later. Then merge /e o/ into /a/. Insert /i/ or /u/ before formerly syllabic consonants. This gives you the PS back consonants and a more PS-like vowel set.
• Make voiced stops emphatic, then make the voiced aspirates simply voiced.
• Pseudo-satemize: shift [s] into [ʃ] in some or all environments, then shift the palatals to front sibilants or interdentals based on some conditioning factor. Lastly, shift the labialized velars to plain velars.

The one real stumbling block is I’m not sure how to generate the lateral fricatives.

KathTheDragon wrote:The role of ablaut in PIE morphology is pretty overstated, imo. It's certainly nowhere near as prominent as in Semitic.

Indeed not. But I once had the idea of an IE lostlang in contact with Semitic in which PIE ablaut developed into something like Semitic triconsonantal morphology, but as for now, I have no idea how to do that.

Another idea may be would be to keep the lRnygeals as is, nd shift /a o/ to grammatical identity with them, so that , essentially, all vowels come to behave az lagnrgeals and to this merges ablaut. E.g. Greek/ apator/ "fatherless " becomes a regular pattern, with the 2nd vowel of a noun u n noun always /o/ when that affix/prewfix i cix is added to the beginning.

Speaking of Semitic and Indo-European languages interacting, what would you say would be the effect of heavy, prolonged influence of a mix of Modern Arabic dialects on Modern English?

Chengjiang wrote:[*]Make voiced stops emphatic, then make the voiced aspirates simply voiced.

That seems possible but unlikely IMO. I think a more Armenian-esque shift would make more sense:
P > Pʼ
B > P
Bʱ > B

Chengjiang wrote:The one real stumbling block is I’m not sure how to generate the lateral fricatives.

That's easy: sl Hl > ɬ.

Zaarin wrote:

Chengjiang wrote:[*]Make voiced stops emphatic, then make the voiced aspirates simply voiced.

That seems possible but unlikely IMO. I think a more Armenian-esque shift would make more sense:
P > Pʼ
B > P
Bʱ > B

The reason why I suggested converting the plain voiced stops to emphatics is it preserves the relative markedness of the stop series better. The tenues are the least marked series in both PIE and PS, while the most marked series are PIE’s modally voiced stops and PS’s emphatics. Your suggestion does work, but you end up with certain sounds being strangely rare or common, e.g. /p/ being near nonexistent.

Also, leaving aside the potential truth of falsity of the glottalic model of PIE, if you use it you’ve basically already got the aftermath of my stop shift.

Chengjiang wrote:The one real stumbling block is I’m not sure how to generate the lateral fricatives.

That's easy: sl Hl > ɬ.

That works. Laryngeal + /l/ initial clusters are pretty common, so there’d be plenty of /ɬ/. I guess for the emphatic counterpart you could use post-satemization clusters of former voiced palatals and /l/? (With clusters of former voiced aspirated palatals and /l/ just yielding /l/?)

Chengjiang wrote:

Zaarin wrote:

Chengjiang wrote:[*]Make voiced stops emphatic, then make the voiced aspirates simply voiced.

That seems possible but unlikely IMO. I think a more Armenian-esque shift would make more sense:
P > Pʼ
B > P
Bʱ > B

The reason why I suggested converting the plain voiced stops to emphatics is it preserves the relative markedness of the stop series better. The tenues are the least marked series in both PIE and PS, while the most marked series are PIE’s modally voiced stops and PS’s emphatics. Your suggestion does work, but you end up with certain sounds being strangely rare or common, e.g. /p/ being near nonexistent.

Also, leaving aside the potential truth of falsity of the glottalic model of PIE, if you use it you’ve basically already got the aftermath of my stop shift.

Less of an issue because PS didn't have /pʼ/. So you'd actually have /t k/ > /tʼ kʼ/; /p b d g/ > /p p t k/; /bʱ dʱ gʱ/ > /b d g/. Still, I see your point.

Chengjiang wrote:The one real stumbling block is I’m not sure how to generate the lateral fricatives.

That's easy: sl Hl > ɬ.

That works. Laryngeal + /l/ initial clusters are pretty common, so there’d be plenty of /ɬ/. I guess for the emphatic counterpart you could use post-satemization clusters of former voiced palatals and /l/? (With clusters of former voiced aspirated palatals and /l/ just yielding /l/?)

Yeah, I was wondering how to get an emphatic lateral as well; that works.

I think the original values of the laryngeals were something like this (phonologically, no clue as to phonetically): /x χ xʷ/ (I believe that the palatovelars were actually plain and the "plain velars" were actually uvular)
According to Wikipedia, it has been suggested that /χ/ later became /ħ/ in most non-Anatolian branches. So it seems more likely that that would be the source of /ħ/.

Syllabic /x χ xʷ/ become reinterpreted as /a a o/. I think all of /e o a/ combining would make the resulting sound too common, and the classic Semitic solution to troublesome consonants is to add a schwa. So maybe /o/ merges with /u/ or /e o/ are merged either with /i u/ or with /a/ depending on the condition. And also vowel lengthening should happen with the remaining laryngeals in order to have the long-short contrast.

Chengjiang wrote:e.g. /p/ being near nonexistent.

/p'/ can shift to /p/ afterwards. It's debatable whether /p'/ even existed in Proto-Semitic.

I don't think the OP really needs to create lateral fricatives if the goal is to get to Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic.

Small aside on *h₃ - xʷ isn't very likely, since Anatolian doesn't display any rounding when the laryngeal is preserved, in constrast to the labiovelar stops which do. The actual labiovelar fricative in Anatolian is the reflex of *h₂w.

KathTheDragon wrote:Small aside on *h₃ - xʷ isn't very likely, since Anatolian doesn't display any rounding when the laryngeal is preserved, in constrast to the labiovelar stops which do. The actual labiovelar fricative in Anatolian is the reflex of *h₂w.

That's your opinion. It may be the case, but it may also be the case otherwise. I know that you don't believe in PIE *o having been rounded, but I haven't understood yet why you don't.

I mean the only evidence for a labialised *h₃ is a rounded *o, so... And my main reasons for not thinking *o to have been originally rounded (though I do concede it may well have been rounded at least after Tocharian split off) are precisely that I don't believe *h₃ to have been labialised.

I doubt that it's relevant because this conlang is not so far away from the rest as Tocharian and would therefore have labialisation.

It's only really relevant if they want to keep the laryngeals, which they probably do. My belief is that there is no solid case for a rounded *h₃, but a reasonable case against it, but it is ultimately up to OP. Besides, a discussion on *h₃ is better suited for elsewhere, don't you think?

KathTheDragon wrote:Besides, a discussion on *h₃ is better suited for elsewhere, don't you think?

Yep. It belongs to the Great Proto-Indo-European Thread, where we have already discussed it.