Dothraki Historical Linguistics

From The Languages of David J. Peterson
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History of the Plains' Language

The Dothraki language, as any natural language does, was not one that remained stagnant throughout the history of the people of the plains of Essos. The language that the Dothraki speak is descendant from an older proto-language that David J. Peterson named Proto-plains. Proto-plains is the ancestor language to the Dothraki and Lhazareen languages. Currently little is known about Proto-plains, as no details have been officially published by David J. Peterson, but information has been reconstructed from comments made by David on blog posts, examples from lectures and interviews that he conducted.


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 / #_


Vocabulary