The evolution of Medzor, is usually divided into the following steps:
Sinal (SIN)
Early Protomedzor (EPM)
Late Protomedzor (LPM)
Old Medzor (OM)
Modern Medzor (MM)
In the following sections the individual stages will be described. Sound changes and the evolution of the grammar will be introduced in sufficient detail to understand where the modern Medzor language comes from.
From Sinal to Protomedzor
Vowel raising
After palatalized consonants:
e → i
o → u
Everywhere:
aa → a
oo → o
ä → e
Loss of palatalized consonants
The palatalized consonants were lost:
dj → z
tj → s
mj → m
nj → n
rj → l
kj → š
gj → ž
pj → f (at first bilabial, later labiodental)
bj → w → v
hj → x
The š and ž sounds were probably alveopalatal (as in Polish).
Umlaut
If the second syllable of the SIN word included a front vowel (e or i) and the first one a back vowel or a, then the first vowel was fronted:
a → ä
o → ö
u → ü
á → â
ó → ô
ú → û
For example:
SIN *dabjen → EPM *dävyn
SIN *putetj → EPM *pütys
y represents a schwa.
â, û and ô are the long variants of the vowels with umlaut:
SIN *umi, highlighted stem uumi → EPM ûmy
The newly created umlauted vowels work as front vowels in the later evolution of the language. Please note the pronounciation of ä, â merged soon with e, é, but the ortography is preserved for historical reasons.
Reduction of unstressed syllables
The end of Sinal and begin of Protomedzor is marked by the reduction of unstressed syllables. In Sinal, every even syllable of a word was unstressed, the odd syllables had either primary (at the beginning of a word) or secondary stress, which blocked the reduction.
In Protomedzor, the even syllables reduced to schwa.
For example:
SIN *redon > PM *redyn
SIN *redan > PM *redyn
This also caused homonyms to appear from words which only differed in the second vowel.
From Early Protomedzor to Late Protomedzor
Clipping of grammatical and frequently used words
The Protomedzor auxiliaries and some other frequently used words have undergone clipping, i.e. shortening. The processes are similar to those of The Great Shift, i.e. deletion of schwa, asimilation and fusions, but it started earlier.
Interestingly, the process was quite irregular and allowed for previously vorbidden consonant clusters even at the start of the word.
New repair strategy
The consonantal repair strategy in LPM was already different than the repair strategy of SIN. Instead of dropping the preceding consonant in a consonant cluster, the Protomedzorians pronounced both consonants linked together with the new neutral vowel of Protomedzor – schwa.
EPM *davyn daly > LPM *davynyda
For vowels, the old repair strategy was preserved, but with a new twist, i.e., the second vowel in a hiatus was deleted, but not in case the hiatus began with a schwa. In that situation, the schwa was deleted instead. This process is explained by the fact, that schwa was very unstable and weak already at this stage, therefore the following vowel was able to override it. This process undergoes a regularization in colloquial Modern Medzor (every final "e/ö" is treated as a fronted schwa).
From Late Protomedzor to Old Medzor
The Great Shift
The so-called Great Shift was the main phonological process, which caused the language to change drastically. The effects of the Great Shift can be observed in the non-concatenative morphological features of Medzor.
Schwa deletion
The schwa was deleted, where possible.
CyC > CC
Cy > C word finally
The deletion of schwa word-finally only happened, if the coda of the previous syllable with the added consonant was „pronouncable“ – more on this in the section on repair strategy.
This schwa deletion had various effects, which we describe below.
Change of phonotactics
The schwa deletion went hand in hand with a change in phonotactics of the language. Consonant clusters were legal under the following conditions:
There was a syllable boundary between the consonants or the cluster of maximum two consonants was word-final:
VC.CV or
VCC.CV
VCC#
In the case of VCC.CV and VCC# the two consonants in the same syllable were ordered according to sonority: liquid – nasal – fricative – stop. Two consonants of the same category were not allowed. A category could be ommited.
The consonant cluster was uniform in voicing, i.e., all consonants were either voiced or all were unvoiced, regardless of the syllable boundary.
The consonant cluster was uniform in softness, i.e., if either all consonants were hard, or all soft (soft consonants were ž, š and the newly formed č and dž).
In clipped particles, #CCV was allowed.
The rules played together with assimilations and fusions of consonants (further below). Please note that after the deletion of schwa, often the two consonants fused and no consonant cluster remained.
If an illegal cluster would have appeared after the deletion of schwa (and if the mergers did not resolve it), the cluster was broken by a schwa added after the second consonant:
VCC.CV → VC.Cy.CV
VCC# → VC.Cy#
Note this only happened in the above mentioned cases, as an VC.CV cluster could always be made legal by assimilation.
Merger of consonants
In some cases the two consonants after the deletion of schwa merged, introducing new phonemes to the language:
/n/+ /g/, /k/ > /ng/ (velar nasal)
/m/ + /g/, /k/ > /ng/
/g/, /k/ + /n/ > /ng/
/g/, /k/ + /m/ > /ng/
In the next step, if a velar nasal was in contact with a front nasal (i.e., n + ng), or with k or with g then these merged into the velar nasal.
/t/, /d/ + /s/ > /ts/ (affricate - written c)
/t/, /d/ + /∫/ > /t∫/ ~ /tć/ (alveopalatal affricate - written č)
/d/, /t/ + /z/ > /dz/ (affricate - written dz)
/d/, /t/ + /ž/ >/dž/ (alveopalatal affricate - written dž)
/r/ + /s/, /z/, /∫/, /ž/ > /ř/ (as ř in Czech, written ř)
If both consonants surrounding the schwa were identical or only differed in voicing and or softness, the two consonants merged into one, voicing the same as the second consonant and soft if any of the two consonants was soft.
Note the new phonemes which were born in this process: ng, c, č, dz, dž and ř.
Assimilation of voicing
If a consonant cluster appearing after the schwa deletion included consonants of different voicings, then the voicing/devoicing of the last consonant in a syllable spread across the whole cluster. This process took place during the whole period and is still productive in Modern Medzor.
Note: /h/ works as a voiced consonant and /x/ as an unvoiced one. /x/ is the unvoiced counterpart of /h/. /m/, /n/, /ng/, /m/, /l/, /r/ are themselves unaffected by devoicing. The nasals and liquids also cause voicing.
Assimilation of softness
Soft consonants are /š/, /ž/, /č/, /dž/, their hard counterparts /s/, /z/, /c/ and /dz/ (/č/, /dž/, /c/, /dz/ evolved during this period). If consonants of these two types appeared in a cluster, the softness spread on the hard consonants, usually also causing the two consonants to merge into one. The same as assimilation of voicing, this process also took place during the whole Great Shift period and is active even in Modern Medzor.
Bilabialization of /v/
The consonant v turned w (bilabial v) in the following environments:
before a consonant and after short back vowel or short a
at the end of the word after a short vowel
after b, m
If after b or m, then the consonants switched places:
/bw/ > /wb/
/mw/ > /wm/
Between two consonants, /v/ turned into /u/, written u.
Then following changes happened after high vowels:
iw > í
üw > û
If an /u/ followed a vowel and /w/, the /u/ merged with the /w/, written w. (Vwu → Vw).
Fronting of remaining schwas
The schwas, which remained after all the Great Shift processes were completed, were fronted:
y → e
This way, the schwa sound dissapeared from the phonology.
Particles turn into suffixes
In Old Medzor, some of the clipped auxiliary particle words also started to turn to suffixes. Others remained standalone or agglutinated with other particles.
From Old Medzor to Modern Medzor
Loss of nasals after vowels
After vowels and before another consonant or at the end of a word, /m/ and /n/ were deleted, lengthening the preceding vowel:
VC[+nasal, -velar]C > V:C
If another nasal followed, then the second nasal remained in place. If a long vowel preceded, the nasal was preserved. (This can be explained by the fact, that the process was actually not so direct as described here. The nasal after a short vowel turned first into a nasalised ũ, forming a diphthong. Only then the diphthongs turned to long vowels. A long vowel + ũ would have been too long and as such wasn’t tolerated.)
Loss of h, x after non-velars
After consonants, which were not velars, the h and x phonemes dissapeared.
Palatalization of velar consonants before front vowels
Velar consonants palatalised before front vowels i, e, í, é:
k > č
g > dž
h > ž
x > š
Lenition of p and b
Before another stop (also m and n) or fricative, p and b turned into f and v:
p → f
b → v
Before f, p was dropped:
pf → f
Shift of velar nasals
Velar nasals were lost before front vowels, non-velars and at the end of the word. The palatal nasal was introduced:
ng > ň/_V[+front] or _# or _C[-velar]
Metathesis of ň and m
ňm > mň
Creation of affricates by metathesis
st → c
zd → dz
žd → dž
št → č
Loss of s, z, š, ž, t, d before and after affricates
Before and after affricates (č, c, dz, dž) the consonants s, z, š, ž, t, d were deleted.
Rounding harmonization
Rounded vowels (o, u, ó, ú, ö, ü, ô, û) caused the following vowels in a word to round:
e, ä → ö
é, â → ô
i → ü
í → û
The rounding spreads from the first rounded vowel of the word and stops at the end of the word or at an a or á. The vowel a itself is unaffected by the rounding and doesn’t cause any rounding.
This introduced partial rounding-vowel harmony into the language.
Devoicing of word-codas
Voiced consonants at the end of the word were devoiced (if they have a devoiced counterpart).
Note on romanization
The sound /x/ is written „ch” in MM, and /ng/ is written „ng“.