Historical phonology of Proto-Northern Jê

Andrey Nikulin (University of Brasilia, andre.n.guzman@gmail.com)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 14/3-4, 2016 - p.165-185

Abstract: This is the first paper in a planned series on the historical phonology of Macro-Je languages. The Je languages constitute the largest and the most diverse family within the Macro-Je stock; for this reason, all comparative Macro-Je studies depend heavily on Je data. However, the only attempt at a systematic reconstruction of Proto-Je phonology and lexicon (Davis 1966) has been severely criticized in subsequent works (Ribeiro and Voort 2010, Nikulin 2015b). In this paper, I propose a reconstruction of the proto-language of Northern Je, the largest branch of the family.

Keywords: Je languages, Macro-Je languages, language reconstruction, comparative method

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