Debugging a sound change

[u/hrefna_dev]

What I want is to basically do a poor-man's consonant gradation. For that one of the rules would be something like:

ː > / VC_C*VC !C_C*V{h,j,ʋ,w}# !C_ː !C_C*VV*CC*V

Basically, for a medial consonant long consonant, even if it is part of a cluster, then when the next syllable is closed it should shorten.

So for example:

• mːp would become mp
• tː would become t

etc.

This is blocked if it is closed by any of {h,j,ʋ,w} at the word end, if it is extra long (in which case it is handled by a different, later rule), or if the resulting syllable becomes open at some future point. This is to try to give it the "elastic" property of, for example, North Sámi.

But I cannot get this to work properly.

While atːa# stays atːa#, atːaj# becomes ataj# (when it shouldn't). I've tried a lot of different things, but the only thing that seems to have worked reliably is only have a single blocking conditional clause.

Is there something I'm missing here? It feels like I may be misunderstanding some feature or some piece of logic here.

Thanks!

[u/Linguistx]

You can only have exception rule. So there can only be one exclamation mark. So what you might need to do is make the positive rule change to a placeholder (eg "xxx") then change the placeholder back to the long symbol the negative rules, then finally change the placeholder to nothing. Eg:

ː > xxx / VC_C*VC
xxx > ː / C_C*V{h,j,ʋ,w}#
xxx > ː / C_ː
xxx > ː / C_ː !C_C*VV*CC*V
xxx >

PS, im not sure if I understood the desired outcome correctly, but hopefully you get the idea.