#moon be like OIO

[yeli-renrong]

I tried to reconstruct Proto-Mekeo from Alan Jones’s pan-dialectal wordlist, but I couldn’t find any sound changes for West Mekeo. Other than loss of *r, which is a cover symbol for the correspondence NW 0 : W 0 : N 0/l : E l, but Jones says this /l/ is intrusive, and instances of “*r” in N could just be loans from E. (N lapu-lapu <? POc *qapuk.)

In NW, *b > β - also allegedly *l > e but I think that loses you more regularity than it gets with Jones’s wordlist, so absent better information I’d call it sporadic. In N, p > f. In E, p k > f ʔ, b g w > p k f.

That doesn’t line up with the attested inventories, but neither do Jones’s wordlists. N should only have six consonants, /b k m ŋ v l/, but if I run the slightly phonemicized (e.g. [ts n] > /k ŋ/ since they’re the palatalized allophones) data through a frequency counter, I get /ŋ b k m g f l/ with >10 occurrences and /w p v t n ʔ β/ with <10. (Some of that, at least, is not failure of phonemicization; the word for ‘red’ is perfectly regular except that it has to be reconstructed as *bitoŋa.)

[v] looks like it should be /b/ -- velo ‘good’ < *belo, ivi ‘river’ ~ W ubi, NW ui (there’s some vacillation between i/u, o/u, and e/i, so *ubi/*ibi works here), and... ivi ‘water’!

[p] corresponds to E [p] in ‘dust’ and ‘heart’ and to E [f] in ‘few’ and ‘hold’. Clearly irregular, possibly errors of transcription or hearing in all cases.

[w] is entirely regular but could potentially be an error for a vowel.

[β] occurs once and corresponds to E [p], so it’s probably an error for /b/.

[ʔ] appears in eŋaiaeŋaʔiŋa ‘that’, which looks like garbage.

But it really looks to me like there’s a k/g contrast, which would put every dialect at seven or eight consonants: NW /p β k g m ŋ l/, W /p b k g m ŋ l/, N /f b k g m ŋ l/, E /f p ʔ k m ŋ l/, possibly + /w/ in all but E.

If E is the only dialect with a consonant merger, that’d make it the least useful for external comparison (anyone have a dictionary of Motu?), but of course it’s the standard dialect. Jones cites some forms from the nearby language Kuni to show that one dialect apparently had unconditional *d > g (maybe also *t > k), but it’d be nice to have outside corroboration. OTOH, ear is W aiŋa <? POc *taliŋa.

A quick search for potential POc cognates:

bite: gaŋa < *kaRati- bone: uŋia < *suRi breast: kuku < *susu come: mai < *lako mai drink: iŋu < *inum dust: N lapu-lapu < *qapuk ear: aiŋa < *taliŋa eat: aŋi < *kani eye: ma < *mata father: ama < *tama-ña feather: bui-ŋa < *pulu five: ima < *lima four: baŋi < *pat(i) (ba-ŋi?) fruit: bua < *puaq good: lobia < *ma-pia (*lo-pia?) good: belo < *paliji I: E lau < *au kill: au-buŋu-a < *puŋuq leaf: ŋaŋau < *rau (*ra~rau?) live: mauŋi < *maqurip liver: ake < *qate louse: E uʔu < *kutu moon: puia < *pulan name: aga < *qajan nose: gu < *ijuŋ road: gia < *jalan see: ia < *kita smoke: agu < *qasu suck: mika < *miji they: ia < *ira three: oio < *tolu

Not only are most of these probably wrong, a lot of them are mutually exclusive! Better methods will be necessary to figure out how the Mekeo consonant inventory happened - comparison with more closely related languages, or getting ABVD into a format that can actually be queried, or something.