Irathient Historical Linguistics

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Throughout its evolution, Irathient underwent a large number of mergers, which were often conditioned by following segments. As Irathient is a heavily inflected language, these changes resulted in many alternations within paradigms.

Nasal raising

Before nasal codas, *e became ei, whereas *a and *ǝ both became ai when the coda was ny and o before other nasal codas.

Nasal cluster simplication

Word-finally or before a consonant, clusters composed of nasals followed by stops simplified into bare nasals.

Glide spirantization

The glide *w became v before u and o. Importantly, it still behaves as a glide and generally does not trigger voicing assimilation.

Voicing assimilation

After nasals, plain voiceless stops voiced and geminate voiceless stops became singletons. Voiced obstruents caused preceding consonants to voice.

*l-*w merger

The liquid *l merged with *w in codas, except before another *l.

Monophthongization

The diphthong */ɛi/ shifted to /e/, both are romanized as ei. The diphthongs *ǝw and *aw became o, whereas *uw and *ew became u. *iw also became u but triggered palatalization of the previous consonant.

Palatalization

When *iw became u, it caused preceding non-labial nasals and obstruents to become palatalized:

• *t, *ts and *k all merged with *ch
• *d, *dz and *g all merged with gy
• *s, *z and *h all merged with sh
• *n and *ng both merged with ny

Loss of affricates

The affricates *ch, *ts and *dz merged with sh, s and z respectively.

Loss of obstruent+*h clusters

The stops *p, *b, *k and *g were all deleted before *h. After all other obstruents, including itself, *h was deleted. Some mergers occurred in the process:

• *t and *d both merged with th
• *s and *gy both merged with sh

Vowel reduction

At the end of some words, especially function words and adverbs, *a and sometimes *e optionally merged with ǝ.