Senu Yivokuchi

Genetics \ Phonology changes

Vowel changes

Proto-Itrumi had a relatively complicated vowel system that distinguished tenseness, with a total of nine vowels (five tense and four lax):

    high    i I     U u
    mid       e E O o
    low          a

In what was to be Senu Yivokuchi, the language then suffered a vowel shift (known as the Heightening Shift) that transformed the middle tense vowels /e/ and /o/ into /i/ and /u/ respectively. The lax vowels were in principle unaffected, but lax /E/ and /O/ soon began to move to occupy the place of their tense counterparts.

In the meantime, the vowel system remained unbalanced. A great number of homophones had appeared due to the merging of high and middle tense vowels. The high lax vowels did not contrast well with their tense counterparts, and the ongoing tensing of the middle lax vowels also damaged the lax-tense distinction.

Then came the so-called Tensing Shift. In order to balance the vowel triangle and avoid further homophonic confusion, the high lax vowels /I/ and /U/ merged with /E/ and /O/, which were already becoming tense. After a brief lapse (linguistically speaking), the lax-tense distinction had disappeared, leaving us with the modern five-vowel system.

Some linguists affirm that /I/ and /U/ changed directly to tense /e/ and /o/, generally after the tensing of /E/ and /O/ but sometimes even before the Heightening Shift. This theory is supported by the existence of dialectal variations systematically distinguished by the presence of a high vowel where a middle one appears in the standard dialect instead. These dialects probably experienced the beginning of the Tensing Shift some time before the beginning of the Heightening.

Standard / Dialectal / English

  bejh      bijh       'rise'
  dokal     dukal      'write'
  ghew      ghiw       'diminish'
  seke      siki       'change' (n)
  kof       kuf        'taste' (n)

Diphthongization

More or less at the same time as the above changes were being produced, long vowels started to turn into diphthongs. We do not know the order of these facts, but a posteriori there is a clear correspondence between ancient long vowels and modern diphthongs, whatever the intermediate stages. The most likely reconstruction divides the change into three stages, Old, Middle and Modern, as follows:

In some dialects, the falling diphthongs [u_0] and [i_E] still exist as such, and contrast with [wo] and [je] when stressed.

Consonant changes

The ancient language allowed a great number of consonant clusters which were later simplified.

Old clusters of nasal + stop were common, both medially and terminally. In the modern language, the only stops of this kind allowed are medial, generally after a short vowel, except in newer words (native or borrowed). Initial and final nasal-stop pairs where simplified to a voiced stop:

    /mpaj/ > /baj/
    /ntadam/ > /dadam/
    /lalomp/ > /lalub/

Besides, medial clusters of this kind were also simplified like this when the preceding vowel was long (a diphthong in the modern language).

    /?e:nt/ > /?e:d/ > /ajd/
    /do:mp/ > /do:b/ > /dawb/

The above change produced some irregular pairs when short-long vowel alternation was involved in the formation of the stem:

    /kont/ > /kunt/  'drive'
    /ko:nt/ > /ko:d/ > /kawd/  'passage'

The verb stem never appears without inflection, so the cluster in /kunt/ was never final, but medial, and survived the change: e kunte 'I drive'. However, the noun stem, even when it was added a syllable for inflection, suffered this change because Senu Yivokuchi abhors over-long syllables (those involving a diphthong and a sonorant), so clusters of diphthong plus one of /m n l r w j/ are exceptional.