Central Morehead River

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Situation

[under construction]

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

[under construction]

Sources

[under construction]

Historical phonology

[under construction]

Proto-Central Morehead River had 19 or 20 consonants and 10 vowels as follows:

*m
*t̪ *tʃ *k *kʷ
*mb *n̪͜d̪ *ɳ͜ɖ [*ndʒ] *ŋg *ŋgʷ
*w *j
*i *u
*e *o

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/.







Pronouns

[under construction]

Verbal morphology

[under construction]