Dialects in TbKt

Based on a reddit post, here's some info on a couple TbKt dialects:

So island speech! First thing to talk about is the changes to the phonetic inventory, which has undergone some series changes.

• The ejectives have merged with the plain stop series (except [qʼ] which shifted to [ʔ]).
• The palatal-alveolar series has shifted to a pure palatal (under Knǝnʔtəəʔ's influence) while /ʃ/ merged with /s/.
• The alveolar affricates have lenited to the fricatives, with [z] then merging with [s].
• The pharyngeal fricatives shifted to [h]
• /ɹ/-> [r]
• The vowels have stayed relative the same, except that /i/ has shifted to [e] and /u/ to [ʉ] (with it losing rounding in some speakers as well).
• some changes in sequences and the various assimilation/sandhi rules, most notably /h/->ø /VV (if both V are of the same quality), loss of nasal assimilation and intervocalic lenition, and allowance of syllabic consonants. {+syllabic, -long}>ø/[𝛂,+long]C or _C[𝛂,+long] is also found in the dialect, for root words at least.

These changes mostly reflect that the native Kntic languages have a much smaller consonant inventory and even greater tolerance for consonant clusters. Anyway, these changes alone can result in very different words, for example bāfaw [bɑ:ħəɹ] to bār [bä:r] or zhōjos [tʃʼo:dzɔs] to zōs [co:s], but also very little change at all, like pījūp [pi:dzu:p] to pīsūp [pi:su:p] and gīsto [gi:stɔ] to gīsto [gi:stɔ]
The next important differences are morphological and include:

• Many of the imitative reduplications are instead known only by the second part of the word, that is the echo.
• Full reduplication is instead replaced with left-bound back-reduplication (very much a feature of the local languages)
• The aspects are done with adverbs instead of affixes, with the perfective taken as a default instead of the imperfective.
• Possessed nouns are not marked as such anymore, instead possession is shown simply through juxtaposition.
• Compounds aren't marked anymore

Syntax is changed as well, mostly the shift to a more topic-prominent structure and VS being used in intransitive sentences instead of SV.
Semantics is a major difference, with lots of words being loaned from the local languages, for example kwīs "seaweed" and krnaí "canoe". Other words have shifted in meaning as well, though I'm not sure how right now. Also (combined with pragmatics, I guess), the semantic differences between the human and non-human nouns and verbs (such as "to eat (human)" vs "to eat (non-human)") have been lost and replaced with one or the other.
Pragmatics is another area where the dialect differs from the standard. Much of the formality system is lost, with only the familiar pronouns being used now (or sometimes pronouns borrowed from Kntic languages, in which the Kntic ones generally act as informal and the TbKt ones as formal). As previously mentioned, it is much more topic-prominent than the standard.

Of course there are other differences as well, but that gives a decent over view. Now, some comparisons.
fīs mlodi-mlodizun [ħi:s nlɔðɪmlɔðɪtʃʊn] "she is very beautiful" demlode mā [demlɔde mä:] "s/he is very beautiful"
yānolūs khotiúja īn ryītuāb cōmum [hɑ:nɔlu:s kʼɔθɪwʣi:n ri:θʊɑ:b ʦo:mʊm] "I (formal) have eaten (formal) the ox tongue" rītu sōmum yān līrūl [ɾi:tʉ so:mʉm hä:n li:ɾu:l] "The ox tongue, I've eaten it"
Fīs fazīxūf owāxc [ħi:s ħətʃi:ʃu: ħɔɹɑ:ʃts] "S/he is reading some writing" mā zīsūnamos orās* [mä: ci:su:nəmɔ sɔɾä:s] "S/he is reading some writing"

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The mountain dialect is mostly notable for some unusual phonological features, namely "suprasegmental semivowels". Basically, in contrast to the standard (and most other dialects), the semivowels /j/ <í> and /w/ <ú> do not turn into long vowels after consonants or put between two consonants. Instead, they have lost most of their features, including being a full segement, except intervocalically. Also, final close vowels (long and short) have turned into their respective semivowels (while /i/->/e/ elsewhere and some other vowel mergers have left it with a six vowel, lengthless system overall). For example kmuri [kŋʊrɪ] "mountain range" is kmurí [kŋurʲ] and dīkholu [di:kʼɔlʊ] "weather" is dikhålú [dikʼɑlʷ]. These are generally barely audible in isolation. However, it usually surfaces on the following word, either as a full semi-vowel (when vowel initial) or as palatalization/labialization on the last consonant of the cluster, often with /ə/ <a> or an echo vowel added where the semivowel once was. Some examples:
kmurutlíachí [kŋurutlʲətʃʼ] which is composed of kmurí and tlachí "big". The semivowel attaches right, and the CCC cluster is broken up as CVCC with an echo vowel.
dikhålúitwå [dikʼɑlwitɹɑ] "cold weather", where itwaw "weather" begins with a vowel.
lúuní "island" (which comes from úlunī [u:lʊni:], there is metathesis (or rather, segment shifting) because of the initial semivowel) combines with pozåh [potʃɑʔ] "boat (from pōzoq) to be lúumpíozåh as in "islands and boats" or more completely yan pehma lúumpíozåh "I see islands and boats"

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Other features often found in TbKt dialects:

• changed vowel systems, especially the development of [e]
• consonant stuff, including more fricatives, loss of one of the series or things like that. The uvular and pharyngeals are especially commonly lost
• loan words (which the standard is very resistant too)
• simply different constructions
• different pronouns

It a lot of things like that. It's late and I'm tired, so I'll be done for now, but I hope you learned a bit about some of the many Kikxotian dialects.

Knənʔtəəʔ: Ergativity and Relative clauses

So last night I realized that Knənʔtəəʔ is sort of ergative and I decided to go with that. So I needed to redo its relative clauses. And uh, I ended up getting exactly what I started with. Anyway, since relative clauses are interesting, I'll post my final explanation, where I basically justify what I already have. It's not all of my internal and external dialogue trying to figure it out, but it is something

"So I think I've figured out what was going on. There's two competing rules that I did realize I had going on until some analysis...Or maybe none of this makes sense and more research is need

anguishes

Let's analyze sentences together and see what happens:
bmis [so kaalbaa] dɨwõ kwiis
bmis so=k<aa>lbaa d<ɨ>wõ kwiis
man 3S=<REL>be.clean <CONT>eat seaweed
"the clean man is eating seaweed"
So we have a head which is the absolutive argument of the relative clause (which if not relativized would be kɨlbaa bmis "the man is clean". Since the relative clause technically takes a pronoun as its head, it works on a nom-acc alignment and fills the slot that would be occupied by the ergative pronoun, resulting in the pronoun preceding the relativized verb and everything being dandy. Let's work up to the next level of relative clause: non-stative intransitive verbs.

bmis [so lutɨhut] dwõ kwiis
bmis so=l<ut><ɨ>hut d<Ø>wõ kwiis
man 3S=<REL><PROG>sleep <PERF>eat seaweed
"the sleeping man has eaten seaweed"
Once again, the head is the absolutive argument of the relative clause, which free would be lɨhut bmis "the man is sleeping". Since the relative clause takes the pronoun as the head, it once again converts to nom-acc and fills the ERG slot(edited)

So far, so good. I've been maintaining the alignment (more or less :p) that I discovered yesterday

But then things get rough

"the man who ate seaweed is sleeping"
The relative clause is headed by a pronoun, so it goes nom-acc and should look something like :
Lɨhut bmis [so dwõ kwiis] or (Sï̵) bmis [so dwõ kwiis] lɨhut so (topic marking way to do it)
l<ɨ>hut bmis so=dwõ kwiis and (sï̵) bmis so=dwõ kwiis l<ɨ>hut so
<CONT>sleep man 3S=eat seaweed or TOP man 3S=eat seaweed <CONT>sleep 3S

Anyway, the restrictions with the way pronouns work basically mean (since agent incorporation isn't allowed and there are no voices) that relativization like this is limited to subjects=agent, despite the ergativity in main clauses. I guess technically these transitive ones could be interpreted either way, but that is abnormal for the speakers. However, part of the ergativity means that the main interpretation of a possessed verbal noun is that the possessor is the patient which allowed for a nice work around of which there are many ways to do it, based on topicality:

Kɨlbaa kwiis dnwõ so räp bmis or Sï̵ kwiis dnwõ so räp bmis kɨlbaa so so on and so forth k<ɨ>lbaa kwiis d<nØ>wõ so räp bmis
<CONT>be.clean seaweed <NOM>eat from man
"the seaweed the man ate is clean"
Notice that the possessor has to be removed from the possessive phrase to make the argument of the main verb clear. Other wise it could be translated as "The man's eating of the seaweed was clean" or "the man cleanly ate the seaweed"

Well, there you have it, something I should turn into a blog post. And it was all for nothing since it ended up looking the same as what I had originally anyway"

As for other things with ergativity, I plan on having deleted arguments follow an ergative pivot (basically "I hit the man and died" would mean that the man died, not that I died).