Man in Space wrote: ↑Sun Oct 08, 2023 12:32 pm
Proto-Malayo-Polynesian to Muna
Source
van den Berg, René (1991). "Muna historical phonology".
NUSA: Linguistic Studies of Indonesian and Other Languages in Indonesia 33(3 –28). In Sneddon, James, N. (ed.),
Studies in Sulawesi linguistics Vol. II
Transcribed by: Man in Space
Reviewed by: (none)
Ordering ★★☆
Exhaustivity ★★☆
Detail ★★☆
Consensus ★★☆
Transcription ★☆☆
A few preliminary notes:
- The author notes that he didn't present any reflexes of *c, *r, or *g because he couldn't find any words that he felt comfortable deeming as inherited with these proto-phonemes; he further notes "that these proto-phonemes are rejected by Wolff (1974, 1982)."
*e > o / when not _j# (This is the regular reflex of PMP *e. I'm guessing it must have had to have been more schwa-like for the straight backing)
*{a,e}j > e / _#
*uy *iw > i u ("evidence for *-iw is very meagre since it rests on one form", to wit *kahiw >> sau; "[a]nother PMP etymon with *-iw, [sic] is reflected as
bhei < *baRiw 'tainted, spoiled (of food)', but here I believe that the
i is the result of fronting")
*aw > {o,u} / _# (seems to have been subject to other processes discussed here; the table that provides the correspondences doesn't really go into the specifics about which reflex could be found where)
*aCi *iCa > eCi {eCa,iCe} (the former seems to be more common) (called out as an ongoing and incomplete change)
*{a,i} > e / _Cu (called out as an ongoing and incomplete change)
*a > {o,u} / in the antepenult—that is, pretonic (seems to have been sensitive to surrounding consonants? A reflex of /u/ seems to be common in the environment of *b, but that doesn't explain all of it; van den Berg suggests that the o~u contrast may be becoming neutralized in Muna, at least here)
A few sporadic changes due to special circumstances and coalescence; contraction of *VhV into something else seems to have been attested)
The following don't apply to homorganic NC clusters, which are dealt with later:
*q regularly became /ɣ/
*d/*D both became /r/
*h was regularly lost
All final consonants were lost, though not without occasional cheshirization:
*p > f / _V(V)# and / #_VUU(U),
i.e. before a final vowel or pair thereof and initially in the antepenult or the syllable before that; van den Berg explains that this basically boils down to "*p spirantized when it's in an unstressed syllable"
Also, *pVfV was disallowed and became fVfV
*b just straight-up became ɓ before all vowels except *u
*k > s / _"a (some exceptions are apparently due to metathesis)
*b > b, ɓ, w (no obvious conditioning)
*z, *Z > s
*ɲ, *ŋ > n
*s > h / #_a
*s > h / medial unless an initial /s/ blocks it
*j (probably "a post-palatal affricate", *dʒ?), *R, and *y (*j) fell together and were then dropped, but left traces; I will use the cover symbol <Y> for these sounds:
*-i{dʒ,R} > -ij
*-ədʒ > -ej
*-uR > -uj
These then became -i if high and -e if low.
Medially, it seems like they all became a common sound and then caused vowel affectation before dropping (some of these are extended based on analogy):
*aYa *aYe *aYi *aYo *aYu > ea/ia ae ai eo/io eu
*eYu > ou
*eY{aw,e} > eo
*iYa > ia
*uYa > ua
*uYi iYi > ui ii
The pattern is essentially *-aj- (< *-aY-) > -e- / _{a,o,u} and *-ojo- (< *-oYo) > -eo-, with *-j- (< *-Y-) dropping elsewhere.
Medial *-R- seems to have become *-g- unless in a cluster, wherein it dropped.
*w was lost except for a few sporadic retentions (van der Berg identifies retentions in the words for 'eight' and 'nine')
Final *-V{h,q}i(C) dropped the *h/*q and merged the vowels
Prenasalized consonants may have been derived from reanalysis of the root for certain plosive-initial words