User:Soap/Birch

This is not the original Birch, but ratehr a languyage that ios spoekn in Mevumep.

Conosnnats

Rounded bilabials:    pʷ  mʷ  ɸ   w         /a i u ə/
Spread bilabials:     p   m                 /a     ə/
Linguolabials:        pʲ  mʲ                /a i u ə/
Dentals:              ṭ   ṇ                 /a   u ə/
Rounded alveolars:            sʷ      rʷ    /a i u ə/
Plain alveolars:      t   n   s   l   r     /a     ə/
Palatoalveolars:      č   ň   š   λ   ř     /a i u ə/
Palatals:                     ś   y         /a i u ə/
Palatovelars:         ć   ń                 /  i    /
Velars:               k   ŋ   h  (Ø)        /a     ə/
Labiovelars:          kʷ  ŋʷ                /a i u ə/

All four vowels could occur long, but unlike Play there were no superheavy syllables.

Northern Branch P

This is the most conservative branch of the family. It fills a gap early on and thus becomes stable.

1. The labialized consonants kʷ ŋʷ shifted to pʷ mʷ before /a ə/ (the "shadow" shift), and otherwise to k ŋ (thus filling the gap). At the surface level, the latter shift was about IPA [y] shifting to [i] and IPA [u] staying as it was; that is, kʷu > ku was just a matter of analysis.
2. Meanwhile the labial fricative ɸ shifted to h before any /i u/.
3. The labial approximant w became b before /a ə/ and possibly in limited circumstances also before /i/ or /u/ (note that it is very common before these high vowels but was usually not audible, as it simply produced a rounded vowel; the exceptions would be in vowel sequences).

Branch Y

This branch groups like rows of C and Cʷ together, seeing them as having different vowels, and it is thus somewhat like Old Japanese. The palatalized consonants may participate too but velars and palatals would not group together.

Macro-branch SS

This moves towards a sesquisyllabic root strcture since the functional load of unstressed vowels was very low. It remains as a single language for a long period of time, so there are no languages that complete the shift only halfway. SImilar shifts in other branches may occur independently.

1. The bilabial fricative ɸ shifted to f; it may have remained as a bilabial after /m/ long enough to reflex as /p/ after vowel nasalization, however.
2. Probably, all codas disappeared: -n caused long nasalized vowels, -l created long oral vowels, and -t created a checked tone comparable to Gold's, though this may have been rare and it may never have contrasted with a consonant sequence. Short nasalized vowels may have existed allophonically before nasals in open syllables, but were not yet phonemic.
3. The sequences ʲa ʷa shifted to ʲe ʷo. The coarticulations remained, and so the shift was not yet phonemic.
4. The palatoalveolars č ň š λ ř shifted to c n s l ž.
5. The labialized alveolars sʷ rʷ shifted to ṣ ṛ (pronunciation unclear; possibly velarized). If /ř/ becomes a fricative, /ṛ/ would simply shift to /r/.
6. Labialization disappeared before /u/; that is, ʷu became u. It probably disappeared before /i/ as well, but the resulting vowel would be [y], and so it is notationally convenient to continue to write it as /ʷi/. Since even /ʷu/ was [u] to begin with, this is more of a spelling change than a sound change.
7. Unstressed ə shifted to i. Some stressed /ə/ might also shift.
8. The unstressed vowel sequences ʲi i ʷi (including from earlier /ə/) shifted to y Ø w unconditionally. The coarticulations thus became full consonants. This allows for separate reflexes later on for pairs such as /kʷ wk/. These would soon cross syllable boundaries, phonemicizing the /e o/ of the earlier shift, but it happened conditionally and stepwise.
9. The sequences ʲə ʷə shifted to ʲi ʷu. This time, the labialization before /u/ was audible. Some stressed ə became i here, such as after /t/.
10. The true palatals ć ń ś shifted to č ň š; of these, only /š/ occurred before all three vowels.
11. The only unstressed vowel, a, shifted now to ə, which probably no longer occurred in stressed position; it came to be seen as a consonant.