Dictionary:About Middle Airananwe

This page documents the dictionary's practice for Middle Airananwe (code YAR-AI), the medieval stage of Airananwe, descended from Gaillean. Its native name is Hayraanye.

Middle Airananwe is not a halfway point between the two attested stages. It has a phonology of its own, and departs from both: a phonemic palatal series, three prenasalised stops, vowel length written by doubling, and final devoicing with a live alternation.

Entry conventions

• Entries live at their Middle Airananwe spellings, with estimated pronunciations from Module:Auphen/YAR-AI.
• Nouns carry a declension table ({{YAR-AI-decl}}). There is one declension and no gender.
• Each entry names its Gaillean source, and the Gaillean entry names it in return.
• Forms are derived word by word rather than by rule. Where two Gaillean words fell together, the entry gives one etymology and pools the senses.

Orthography

Alphabet: a b c d e f g h i k l m n o p q r s t u v x y z

Digraphs: mb nd ng · bh gh ph th dh · ch · gu · ty dy ny ly sy zy ky gy · aa ee ii oo uu

There is no sh and no j: their work is done by sy and zy, so the language has no plain postalveolars, only the alveolo-palatals. ⟨y⟩ after a consonant palatalises it; elsewhere it is /j/, and after a consonant outside the eight digraphs above it is simply a glide (vy [vj], ry [rj]). Long vowels are written double — a convention neither neighbour uses. ⟨gu⟩ is /gʷ/ before a vowel and /gʷu/ elsewhere.

Phonology

Consonants. Plain p b t d k g; the labiovelars q /kʷ/ and gu /gʷ/; the prenasalised mb /ᵐb/, nd /ⁿd/ and ng /ᵑg/; the affricates c /ʦ/, ch /ʧ/, ph /p͡ɸ/ and x /kʃ/; the fricatives f v bh /β/, th /θ/, dh /ð/, s z, gh /ɣ/ and h; the nasals m n; the liquids l r; and the glide y /j/.

The palatal series — ty dy ny ly sy zy ky gy /tʲ dʲ ɲ ʎ ɕ ʑ c ɟ/ — is the language's signature and the source of the palatals of the modern language. dy, ky, gy and dh are rare, and are expected to be lost or generalised by the languages that follow.

Vowels. Short a e i o u; long aa ee ii oo uu.

Allophony.

• The coronals palatalise of themselves before i: t d s z n l are [tʲ dʲ ɕ ʑ ɲ ʎ]. Before any other vowel the palatal must be written, which is what makes the series phonemic.
• Short vowels lax in any closed syllable — zyerta [ˈʑɛrta], artus [ˈärtʊs], phaaton [ˈp͡ɸaːtɔn] — a going to [ä]. The long vowels are untouched, and a prenasalised stop counts as one consonant, so embaa keeps its [e].
• e weakens to [ə] after a vowel and word-finally; the long ee does not.
• n is [ŋ] before a velar. r is [ʀ] word-initially and [ɾ] between vowels, a trill elsewhere; h is [ɦ] between vowels. An h between vowels does not otherwise occur.
• A voiced obstruent is voiceless word-finally and voiced again before a vowel-initial ending, the spelling keeping the voiced stem throughout, so the citation form always shows the stem.
• Stress falls on the penultimate syllable and is never written.

Development from Gaillean

Two shifts do most of the work.

The diphthongs became long vowels. Not one of Gaillean's eight survives: ae > ai, ay or aa; oe > oo; ei > ee; eu and ou > uu; ao > aa. Some 265 of the 503 words carry a doubled vowel as a result, which is what gives the written language its look.

The sibilants and the palatal lateral became the palatal series. zh and zw > zy; ll > ly or l. Meanwhile th, bh, gh and ph largely survive, and the prenasalised mb and mp survive almost intact — Middle Airananwe keeps what Gaillean had and the modern language lost.

Other regular outcomes: mb- and mp- lose their nasal word-initially; k before a back vowel is written c; c before a front vowel is written ch; initial h- is lost; w becomes u initially and gu after a consonant; aw becomes o; and a prothetic y- appears before some initial i- and o- (oempa > yoompa, iaha > yaaghe).

The ending system is the reason the stage matters:

Gaillean	Middle	modern
noun in -a	-a or -e	silent -e
noun in -e	bare consonant, or -e	bare consonant
noun in -uz	-is	various
verb in -ei	-ee /eː/	-é

Middle contrasts a short noun -e, weakened to [ə], against a long verb -ee. Every one of the 82 Gaillean verbs in -ei is written -ee here, and 81 of them appear in the modern language with -é. The modern acute therefore marks a vowel that has been long since this stage — á and é are long in the modern language too, and it is here that the length is first written.

Adpositions are still free words here. Their attachment to the noun, and the prothetic vowel that comes with it, belong to the modern language: Gaillean petc gives Middle pec and only then modern -epech.

Nouns

One declension, no gender, four cases in two numbers — Gaillean's vocative is lost, and its three genders and nine stem-classes with it. The ending attaches to the bare lexeme, taking a linking -e- after a consonant; the dative singular needs none, being vocalic itself, and a word-final -e is discarded before it (ghale > ghali).

	after a vowel		after a consonant
	sg	pl	sg	pl
NOM	—	-r	—	-er
GEN	-n	-rn	-en	-ern
DAT	-i	-ri	-i	-eri
ACC	-s	-rs	-es	-ers

See also

• Dictionary:About Gaillean — the ancient stage
• Middle Airananwe language