Dothraki Historical Linguistics

Proto-plains to Dothraki Sound Changes

The information that is known relates to the sound changes that occurred from Proto Plains to Dothraki, and the rules are listed below:

Abbreviations

• _: indicates the phoneme's place in a phonological environment
• (): indicates an optional phoneme in a phonological environment
• #: word boundary
• $: syllable boundary
• ∅: null, elision
• V: vowel
• C: consonant
• N: nasal
• P: plosive, stop
• L: liquid

Unprompted sound change

• /ɬ/ > /θ/
• /p/ > /f/
• /b/ > /v/
• /u/ > /o/

The alveolar tap becomes the alveolar trill when at the beginning of a word and followed by a vowel, as well as when at the end of a word

• ɾ > r / #_V, _#

Central vowels become deleted when at the end of a word

• V[-front, -back] > ∅ / _#

/ɨ/ > /i/, /ə/ > /e/ / elsewhere

The central vowels realize to /i/ and /e/ respectively when in any environment other than the end of the word

• #C(C)VC{ɨ, ə} > #C(C)VC{i, e}

A consonant followed by the phoneme /h/ will realize to the continuant of the same place of articulation or one approximate to it.

• C/h/ > [+cont]

/ph/ > /f/

/th/ > /θ/

/tʃh/ > /ʃ/

/kh/ > /x/

/qh/ > /x/

A sonorous, non-syllabic consonant at the beginning of a word becomes a continuant

• C[+son, -syl] > [+con] / #_

/ɣ/ is deleted when following a vowel or when intervocalic, and becomes /j/ when at the beginning of a word.

• ɣ > ∅ / V_(V)
• ɣ > j / #_