Jun04 –  A Constructed Language

Jun04 Phonology and Orthography

Legend: Definitions, Terms, <Text>, [IPA], -Tags-, and "Glosses".

Letters and Sounds

The tables show the relevent phonetic symbols (in IPA) with the corresponding orthographic (romanization) symbols. The 23 letters and (consonant) digraphs used are:
a b ch d e f g h i j k kh m n o p r s sh t u v y — l q w x z aren't used.

In the following tables, an asterisk * indicates that the letter is used for more than one sound.

Vowel Qualities

There are 5 short vowels, 5 long vowels, and 6 diphthongs. The diphthongs are: [ai] ai, [au] au, [ɔi] oi, [ɛu] eu, [ui] ui, and [iu] iu.

The vowel sequences [i.e] ie, [i.a] ia, [i.o] io, [u.e] ue, [u.a] ua, and [u.o] uo are disyllabic.

Vowels

	front						central		back
high	i i:	i ii	-				-		-				u u:	u uu
high-mid	-		e e:	e ei	-		-		-		o o:	o ou	-
low	-				a a:	a aa	-		-

The phones [o] and [u] are not fully rounded.

Consonant Qualities

There are 18 consonant phonemes using 21 phones.

Consonants

		labial				coronal						dorsal								guttural
nasal	voiced	m	m	-		-		n	n*	-		-		ŋ	n*	-				-
stop	voiced	b	b	-		-		d	d	-		-		g	g	-				-
	voiceless	p	p	-		-		t	t	-		-		k	k	-				-
affricate	voiced	-				-				d͡ʑ	j	-								-
	voiceless	-				-				t͡ɕ	ch	-								-
fricative	voiced	-		v	v	-						-								-
	voiceless	-		f	f	-		s	s	ɕ	sh	-						χ	kh	h	h
rhotic	voiced	-				-		ɾ - r	r	-		-								-
vocoid	voiced	-				-		l		-		j	y	-						-

• The allophone [ɾ] appears between vowels and the allophone [l] appears as any other onset; the allophone [r] appears in coda position.
• The allophone [ŋ] appears only in pre-dorsal coda position.

Phonotactics

• The onset is almost always a single consonant phoneme; there are no onset clusters and no onset may be null except within the vowel sequences listed earlier.

The following rhyme types appear:

light: -V
heavy: -V:, -VV, -VC

• There are no coda clusters.
• Codas are limited to r, m and n, and the voiceless fricatives, excluding h; also, the fricatives never appear before a voiced consonant.
• The phonemes y and v are vocalized (to i and u, respectively) in coda position.
• The short vowels i and u are devoiced between a voiceless stop or affricate and another voiceless consonant.

Prosody

Words are mora-timed, with a terrace-toned accent. The accented syllable (the last syllable before a drop to low tone) must be one of the last 3, and can't be the ultima if it is light.

Morphophonology

Vowel Deletion

A stem-final u or i may be deleted before vowel-initial suffixes; this is specified lexically.

page started: 2016.Jun.11 Sat
current date: 2016.Jun.18 Sat
content and form originated by qiihoskeh

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