====== Central Morehead River ======

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

===== Situation =====
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The Central Morehead River family consists of five languages spoken …

Names for Central Morehead River languages are drawn from the terms meaning “just, only” in each respective language (q.v. Carroll ed. 2015.)

===== Subclassification =====
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===== Sources =====
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===== Historical phonology =====
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Proto-Central Morehead River had 19 or 20 consonants and 10 vowels as follows:

|< - 60px 60px 60px 60px 60px 60px >|
|  *m   |          |   *ɳ   |          |  *ŋ   |        |
|       |   *t̪    |   *ʈ   |   *tʃ    |  *k   |  *kʷ   |
|  *mb  |  *n̪͜d̪  |  *ɳ͜ɖ  |  [*ndʒ]  |  *ŋg  |  *ŋgʷ  |
|  *ɸ   |    *θ    |   *ʂ   |          |       |        |
|  *w   |          |   *ɽ   |    *j    |       |        |


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|  *i  |      |  *ʉ  |  *u  |
|  *e  |  *ə  |  *ɵ  |  *o  |
|  *æ  |  *ɐ  |      |  *ɒ  |

Like Bensbach River to the west but unlike Arammba to the north and Nambu to the east, Central Morehead River has no plain voiced stops, as proto-Morehead's plain voiced series has merged with the voicless row, leaving a contrast between only plain and prenasalized stops.\\
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Central Morehead River has two series of apparant affricates, [*ts *ndz] and [*tʃ ndʒ]. The first of these reflects retroflexed stops, which are likewise affricated in several East Morehead River languages. The second arises from the palatalization and devoicing of Proto-Morehead River velar plain voiced stop /*g/, which is invariable, and the apparently vowel-conditioned fronting of prenasalized /*ŋg/, an areally-driven change shared with the central and southern members of East Morehead River. These two series are distinguishable in Anta and Wérè, where the retroflexes are merged with apicals in a trend shared with Arammba and Bensbach River (but not Warta Thuntai) while the latter are reflected as [tʃ] and [s] respectively. The other Central Morehead River languages have merged the two sets.\\
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Retroflexed non-stop /*ɽ/, while very common medially and finally, is found initially in only one (apparently) native free nominal, /*ɽ uŋg/ “pig.” Otherwise, it is found only in verb stems, where it is most typically prefixed, in a few interrogatives, and in loans.\\
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Only a very small number of roots have initial vowels. Each of these is demonstrably a loan or is suspected to be one. Proto-Morehead River had no initial vowels.\\
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Phonetic diphthongs [*eⁱ *æⁱ *ɐⁱ *æᵘ *ɐᵘ] are found, but only in a handful of roots. As most these occur in open final syllables, and there are otherwise no final glides /*w *j/, we interpret these as sequences /*Vw *Vj/.\\
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===== Pronouns =====
**[under construction]**\\
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===== Verbal morphology =====
**[under construction]**\\
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