Wugu Diachronica

For Wụūgụ, I am trying out a new system of Diachronica (the historical aspect of the language, showing how the language has changed over time).

Previously, I've only used non-historic methods, because I've found when I try to use the standard mechanisms in the conlang community for diachronica, I hate the results. The standard method is to define a proto-lang's phonology, then a series of sound changes. Then you coin terms in the proto-lang, and mutate them to get the modern lang.

I find (for me) the method is too tedious and rigid, the phonology I get feels more generic and pulled-out-of-thin-air than if I had just invented one from scratch. But I think I've found the solution I need to make the historic method work for me.

The Method
The key to this method is that it is not simply starting with a proto-lang, making a list of sound changes, and then getting the modern lang from those sound changes. Rather, it has 5 phases: snapshots of a period of linguistic stability, followed by a sequence of sound changes to get to the next phase. Then, rather than having words be defined in the proto-lang, words are actually coined in one of the middle phases, and the sound changes are applied both forwards (to get the modern word) and backwards (to get the reconstructed proto-word, which might then be used for coining other terms).

These phases also give me an easy pathway for defining etymology/changes in a word's meaning over time.

This list also includes "soft" changes - changes that happen with common words, but not with uncommon ones. This is essentially intended to give some interesting inconsistencies and history to words, if possible.

I have never tried this method before, so the results could be disastrous, but let's find out together!

Phase 1 - Ancient Wugu (approx. 2,000 ya)
Knowledge of Ancient Wugu is very patchy and inconsistent. More details tbd.

Phase 2 - Old Wugu (approx. 1,000 ya)
Tbd.

Phase 3 - Middle Wugu (approx. 700 ya)
Middle Wugu is where much of the language is initially defined, before being pulled forward and stretched back. This is also where the Mountain dialect diverges.

Vowels
Vowels can be short or long - long vowels can only occur with tone contours.

Middle Wugu (currently) has no diphthongs.

Tones
Middle Wugu has 2 underlying tone levels (high and low). Each tone must attach to a single mora. At the underlying level, only three contours are allowed to attach to a multi-morae syllable: HL, LH, and HLH.

At the surface level, there is an additional Mid tone - within a word, if the same tone would appear in 2 adjacent morae, the second tone becomes mid (so HH -> HM, LL -> LM, etc). The HLH contour becomes HMH.

When assigning underlying tones to surface level ones, the following steps are followed:


 * 1) From start-to-end, assign each Tone to each Mora.
 * 2) If there is an extra tone left over, attempt to add the extra tone to the last syllable.
 * 3) If this forms a legal contour (i.e. HL, LH, HLH), and the syllable's vowel is short, then the syllable gets an extra mora (the vowel is extended) and the tone attaches.
 * 4) Otherwise (if the syllable is not stressed), attach the tone and force the previous tones to shift over to the previous syllable. Follow this whole step again to attempt to add that tone to the previous syllable, continuing to shift tones until either the tones are all attached or the first tone "falls off" the start of the word.
 * 5) If the tones are shifted such that a tone "falls off" the start of a word, then that tone is lost.
 * 6) If instead there is an extra mora left over, then the last tone is doubled and added to this mora.
 * 7) Finally, after all the above steps are done, Mid tones are created - going from start to end, if there is any mora with the same tone as the previous one, it becomes a Mid tone.

TBD: do a demonstration of this procedure somewhere.

Phonotactics
Syllables are structured as (C₁)(J)V(C₂), with a strong preference for open syllables (i.e. no final consonant).

C₁ can be any consonant.

J is one of /j/, /ɾ/, /w/. The J consonants are only allowed after: aspirated and voiced stops, nasals, affricates, and fricatives.

C₂ can be any one of:
 * 1) /p/, /t/, or /k/ (realized as unreleased [p̚], [t̚], or [k̚].)
 * 2) /s/ or /ʃ/
 * 3) /m/, /n/, /ŋ/

Middle Wugu has coronal harmony between /s/ and /ʃ/, which acts root-internally from start to finish. In other words: if a (root) word has an /s/ in it, then it can not have /ʃ/, and visa versa. These rules extend to the affricates /ts/ and /tʃ/.

Sound Changes
Here are the (WIP) sound changes to get from Middle Wugu to Early-Modern Wugu. Note that the Mountain dialect splits off from the River and Lake dialects here - changes are in all dialects unless otherwise noted.


 * ɠ → ᵑgʷ / _{i,e}
 * (Mountain) eː → ei / _˥˩
 * (Mountain) e → ɛ
 * (River-Lake) tʰ → tʷ
 * /j/ is lost in a few contexts:
 * between short vowels /o/ and /i/, forming the diphthong /oi/
 * between short vowels /a/ and /i/, forming the diphtong /ai/
 * (River-Lake) between short vowels /e/ and /i/, forming the diphthong /ei/
 * between a consonant and the short vowel /u/
 * aː → au

Sound Changes
Here are the (WIP) sound changes to get from Early-Modern Wugu to Modern Wugu. Sound changes are in all three dialects unless otherwise noted.


 * (River) ɠ → g / _o
 * u → ɯ (Except after labialized consonants (/w/, /kʷ/, etc))