In High Kyol, while there’s root-pattern morphology, it’s not particularly complicated yet. Given the massive vowel deletion that’s happened, there’s generally going to be one or fewer vowels within the root stem. In New Kyol, the descendant language, the complex consonant clusters in High Kyol will be broken up.
Syllabic Consonant Lenition
The first thing that’s going to go is the syllabic consonants. These will soften into new vowels! Syllabic /ʎ/, and /ʝ/ will become /i/. Syllabic /ɣ/ will probably become /ɯ/ (the closest vowel). We can say that some other consonants also become /ɯ/: /l/, which has a tendency to become back vowels, and /m/, which has a tendency to become close vowels. Other syllabic consonants, /ŋ/, /n/ and /r/, will probably become /ə/.
In summary:
- {ʎ,ʝ} [+syllabic] → i
- {ɣ,l,m} [+syllabic] → ɯ
- {ŋ,n,r} [+syllabic] → ə
This produces an interesting consequence: Last post, we discussed how a combination of metathesis and vowel assimilation can replace a vowel in a word with /ɣ/. That /ɣ/ will turn into /u/, producing a new potential form. Applied to our root, this gives us ksut as a form, alongside forms like ksatga and kəstarga.
Epenthesis
After syllabic consonant lenition, some of the complicated word-initial and word-final clusters can get broken up. Complex word-initial clusters are broken up with a copy vowel. (That is, the vowel of the tonic syllable is copied in the pretonic syllable.)
- ‘ksagt → ka.’sagt
Notably, this will also affect our new u-form:
- ‘ksut → ku.’sut
Sometimes forms that would normally be affected by this change are modified by a prefix that makes them unaffected.
- shə-.‘ksagt → shə-.’ksagt (no change)
Complex coda clusters will get broken up with ə. This will transform the -g- infix created by metathesis into something more substantial.
- ka.’sagt → ka.’sag.’ət.
A -gə- infix is thus produced.
Conclusion
Let’s take a look at the final root forms produced by these sound changes:
kosatga → ksagt → kasagət
shokosatga → shəksagt → shəksagət
kosatagra → kəstagr → kəstagə
kosatghi → ksght → kusut
ankosat → anksat → ankəsat
For fun, let’s also apply them to another made-up root with different vowel layout: tikoz.
tikozga → tkogz → tokogəz
shotikozga → shətkozg → shətkogəz
tikozagra → təkzagr → təkzagə
tikozghi → tkghz→ tukuz
antikoz → antkoz→ antəkoz
This can be generalized into some root-pattern forms. (The symbol @ will be used here for thematic vowels.)
1@2@gə3, shə12@gə3, 1ə23agə, 1u2u3, an1ə2@3
With that, we’re done with the sound changes for High and New Kyol! (For now – I may revisit them at some point.) I’ll probably post a list of all the sound changes without my thought process so you can see everything chronologically. After that, it’s time for brainstorming some grammar!