User:Soap/East

The parent language. Had only /h/ using internal reconstruction, but this could have been several fricatives that merged.

Bilabials:       p    b    m
Alveolars:       t    d    n    l    r
Postalveolars:   č    ǯ
Palatals:                       (y)
Velars:          k    ġ    ŋ    (Ø)       h

Vowels were /a i u ə/.

The syllable structure is CVC, with final consonants restricted to /t n l r č k ġ ŋ/; the "g" was probably [ɣ] in this position and might have actually arisen from earlier /h/ or from the fricatives that themselves led to /h/. Underlying root-final voiced stops are possible, as is /-p/, but they were not realized as such.

Notes on diachronics

Ideally, User:Soap/Birch is a branch of this which splits off after the lenition of /č ǯ/ to /s y/ (conditionally) and probably also after a re-shaping of the vowel system to /a e i o u/ but before most of the other shifts that make Birch what it is.

Motherport branch

Ideally, as above, this is closely related to Commercial/Birch but without its most characteristic shifts. Thus the shifts shared with Birch are placed as high up as possible. This is a sonorant-rich branch, ideally with a nasal for every stop, but unlike Birch it begins with no palatals and the only postalveolars are /č ǯ/ with no nasal member.

This is meant to evolve into a branch where all of the stops are voiceless in word-initial position, and have allophones as either voiced approximants or voiceless fricatives depending on whether they are fundamentally aspirated or not. The distinction will be asymmetric, and often a stop's allophones will come from a different phoneme. For example, since /g/ disappeared word-initially but mostly evolved to /k/ medially (even if it never stopped being [g~ɣ]), it does not merge with the reflex of word-initial /k/, which is /kʰ/~/qʰ/. Instead, a new sound must appear in word-initial position to pair with this medial /k/. A similar situation exists with labials since the parent language distinguished /p b/ but Motherport quickly shifts /b/ > /w/ word-initially as does Birch.

1. The vowels i u shifted to e o in closed syllables except those ending with one of /r ŋ/. If /e o/ later shift back to /i u/, this shift could even be skipped, but they must have been at least allophonically different in order to trigger uvularization and palatalization.
2. The voiced stops b g shifted to w ɣ in initial position (in Birch they shifted to /w Ø/ everywhere, but this may have been stepped). Initial gʷ shifted to w as well. Note that Birch shifted the labiovelars to labials early on, which means this branch might need to as well, which would remove them from the language.
3. The voiceless velar stops k kʷ shifted to q qʷ before any /e a o/.
4. The coda nasals n ŋ (and /m/ if it had survived previous shifts) merged as -n.
5. Remaining g shifted to k, even in situations where the expected allophone was [ɣ]. This saves the language from having more /q/ than /k/.
6. Possibly tl tr shifted to ʈ (retroflex). (There is no convenient notation for this in the usual writing system I use.)
7. Maybe čd shifted to ʈʈ (retroflex geminate); This cluster would have been rare however.
8. In word-initial position before a schwa, the alveolars t d n l shifted to ʈ ɖ ɳ ɭ. A retroflex flap /ɽ/ is unlikely; however it is a very likely allophone of the voiced stop at a later stage of the language.

   Note that both Dravidian and Australian lean towards not having retroflexes word-initially, but that some of this may be due to their originating from consonant clusters.

9. The alveolar sequences l nl shifted to dentals ḷ ṇṇ (briefly [ṇḷ]) before any /u/. This is the opposite of Birch, where the /l/ protected the /n/ from vowel coloring instead. The dental /ṇ/ likely exhibits cluster-like behavior for most of the history of the language.
10. The sequence nl therefore must have shifted to nn.
11. Medial h became an allophone of k; this was pronounced [ɣ~g] and was never actually [k]. (It is possible that it did a staircase shift, or at least /h/ > /f/ before /u/, which would make it an allophone of /p/ in that position.)

later shifts

1. The sequences əi əu shifted to i u.
2. The schwa vowel ə disappeared in initial and final position. This meant that the retroflex /ɳ/ was now common in word-final position.
3. The vowels e ə o shifted to i a u unconditionally. This means that /qi/ exists, but its surface realization remained near [qe]. There was no phonemic palatalization before /i/, but since /ki ke/ > /ki qi/, it can still arise even after this shift.

   NOTE: It may be possible to write this timeline without using /e o/.

A daughter branch of this might shift /k q/ > /ć k/ and then /ć > ṭ/ like in Birch, but with different conditions, so they would only overlap rather than matching.

Gender marking

Motherport has the typical Repilian system; the feminine inherent gender is -n, the feminine possessive gender is -r, and there is a neuter gender marker -l, but all of the masculine gender markers merged as glottal stops and then disappeared. Therefore the masculine markers are innovative and more complicated, although it may be that in some cases, perhaps in nouns for persons, the masculine can be marked with -Ø, thus making it shorter than the feminine some of the time. Dropping word-final schwas would create new final consonants that could serve as masculine gender markers.