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/
- /t͡ʃh/ > /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 / #_