A lot of IE conlangs I have tended to be from sub families found in europe, so I decided to make a conlang related to the Indo-Iranian languages. Because there isn't a proto-indo-iranian dictionary out there, I have to estimate what the word would be like when I can't find the word. Though an etymological dictionary of Persian will be released next year, so hopefully that will allow me to make some changes. PK will have one or two things on the PII stage that will make it different from what actually happened and I will chalk this up to it being a specific thing of the dialect of PII that PK developed from. PK will be most closely to the Iranian languages sharing some key changes (h > s, treatment of thorn clusters, retaining diphthongs, loss of aspirates). I will also look at some initial grammatical changes as well. However, PK will have a stronger Uralic (specifically Samoyedic) influence on vocab, and somewhat with morphology and phonology. I havent decided how much influence there will be with the morphology at this point. I'm not sure where to put this but I'm thinking about the potential autonym being *gārā́rya (*gār- "mountain" + *ā́rya "Arya") as oppose to the iranians who are the *pərtā́rya (*pərta- "flat" + *ā́rya " Arya).
When and Where?
The dating for Proto-Karasuk is after the break up of the Andronovo culture and the rise of the karasuk culture. The ancestors of the PK speakers migrated east to the area north of the Altai mountains. Since the exact nature of the language of the people of the Karasuk culture (some saying indo-european, others turkic or mongolian), but since later cultures near by (Tagar and Pazyryk cultures) seem to have either strong scythian influence and/or genetic connections to other indo-european groups. For future development I'm going to have to fudge a couple of things. Proto-Karasuk would be spoken from about 1500BCE to 700BCE.
Sound Changes
Symbols used:
K = any voiceless velar (including palatals)
G = any voiced velar (including palatals)
R = any resonant
V = any vowel
C = any non resonant consonant
P = any plosive
F = any fricative
N = any nasal
$ = syllable boundary
# = word boundary
(these are my initial sound changes and I will update them when they change)
Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Indo-Iranian(ish)
1. Satem Shift
- ḱ ǵ ǵh > ĉ ĵ ĵh
- kw gw gwh > k g gh
2. l/r merger
- r, l > r
- ṛ, ḷ > ṛ
3. syllabic nasals loss
- ṃ,ṇ > a
4. Bartholomae's law
- example: *Hewgh-to- > Haugdha-
5. RU(P)KI rule
ruki rule included labial stops
6. palatals lenition before dentals and /s/
- ĉt > śt
- ĵd(h) > źd(h)
- ĉs > šš
7. 1st thorn cluster change
tk > kš
tĉ > ĉš
d(h)g(h) > g(h)ž
d(h)ĵ(h) > ĵ(h)ž
8. second palatization of velars
- k g gh > č ǯ ǯh / _i/ī, e/ē, y
9. brugmann's law
- o > ō in open syllables
10. e/o merger and laryngeal merger
- e, o > a
- ē, ō > ā
- h1 h2 h3 > H
11. voiceless plosives + laryngeals > voiceless aspirates
Proto-Indo-Iranian to Proto-Karasuk
11. high vowel desyllabification before laryngeals when stressed
- íH > yə́ / _$
- ī́H > yə̄́ / _$
- úH > wə́ / _$
- ū́H > wə̄́ / _$
12. loss of voiced aspirates
- voiceless aspirates maintained though early dialect distinction occurs. Southern varieties follow the iranian change of /ph th kh/ > /f θ x/.
13. loss of the Laryngeal and loss of syllabic r
- VH > V̄ / _$
- VRH > V̄R
- Ḥ/Ḥ̄ > ə/ə̄
- ṛ/ṝ > ər/ə̄r
- H > null elsewhere (leaving vowels in hiatus when between vowels)
14. 2nd thorn cluster changes
- ĉš > š (word/syllable initial and final), šš (elsewhere
- ĵž > ž (word/syllable initial and final), žž (elsewhere)
15. debuccalization of s
- s > h
Unlike the Iranian languages, this change was much more complete with s becoming h in all positions.
16. loss of first palatals
- ĉ ĵ ĵh > s z z
- ś ź > s z
17. Cluster simplification
- F1F2 > F2 / $_, _$
- F1F2 > F2F2 / V_V
- P1F1P2 > F1P2
- F1P1P2 > P1P2
- P1P2P3 > P2P3
- N1N2 > N2N2
18. Initial cluster loss
With the exception of PR, FR, FP, and NR clusters, where R is not a nasal, an unstressed ə is inserted between the two consonants.
/h/+P[-voice] > Ph
19. regressive voicing
- C[-voice]C[+voice] > C[+voice]C[+voice] (this includes nasals)
- C[+voice]C[-voice] > C[-voice]C[-voice]
20. Plosive Lenition
- P1P2 > F1P2
21. wə/yə monophthongization
- wə, wə̄ > o, ō
- yə,yə̄ > e, ē
22. loss of word initial r
23. Misc incomplete changes
- unstressed Cya > Ce in affixes
*I'm not sure if the first part of these changes took place in PII, but it doesnt really affect the outcome I think.
I am also not sure on the exact chronology of the changes from PIE to PII.
The above changes have resulted in the following inventory:
Code: Select all
m n ŋ*
p t k
pʰ tʰ kʰ
b d g
č
ǯ
s š h
z ž
l*
w r y
i i: u u:
e e: ə ə: o o:
a a:
Some preliminary ideas for changes that take place to samoyedic loan words.
ü > yu
ö > yo
æ > ya
ɯ > i
ɤ > ə
ə > ə
ə̈ > ə
I don't have any examples to demonstrate this just yet, so as I work through my dictionary of Proto-Samoyedic and choose loan words, I might change this.
Here is a sample text with just the sound changes, no other changes applied.
Schleicher's Fable
áwai yahmái ōrnā́ ná áht, há áswām darst. há gə̄rúm wázam wazad; há máza báram; há žámana ā́su barad. áwiš ákaibeh waučad: "žámana phásyā áswām-ča ázati, sā́r mai agnutar". áswāh tu waukand: "srudí awai! tád phásyamah, ahmái agnutár sā́r: žamā, pátiš, hā áweh ōrnā́ ǯarmam waft, áwibeh tu ōrnā́ ná ahti. tád sasruwā́h áwiš azrám buǯad.
Nouns will be next, most likely thematic nouns but this will take awhile as I need to debate how much influence the samoyedic languages will have on the nouns.
EDIT: made some changes to the sound changes and changed the example text.