Feb26 –  A Constructed Language

Feb26 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 21 letters used are:
a c d e f g h i j k l m n o p s t w x y ' — b q r u v z aren't used.
Digraphs are shown in the appropriate subsection.

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

Vowel Qualities

There are 4 short vowels, 4 long vowels, and 2 diphthongs. The diphthongs are: [ai] ay, and [au] aw. There are no other vowel sequences.

Vowels

	front										central		back
high	i iː	i ii	-								-		-
high-mid	-				eː	ee	-				-		-				o oː	o oo	-
low-mid	-						ɛ	e	-		-		-
low	-										-		ɑ ɑː	a aa	-

Consonant Qualities

There are 22 consonant phonemes using 24 phones.

Consonants

		labial				coronal						dorsal								guttural
nasal	voiced	m	m	-		-		n	n*	-		ɲ	ny	ŋ	n*	-				-
stop	voiceless	p	p	-		-		t	t	-		-		k	k	kʷ	kw	-		ʔ	'
	voiced	-				-		d	d	-		-				gʷ	gw	-		-
affricate	voiceless	-				t͡ɬ	tl	-		t͡ʃ	c	-								-
	voiced	-				-				d͡ʒ	j	-								-
fricative	voiceless	ɸ	f	-		ɬ	sl	s	s	ʃ	x	ç	hy	x	h	-				-
rhotic	voiced	-				-		ɾ	l	-		-								-
vocoid	voiced	-				-		l		-		j	y	-		w	w	-		-

Phonotactics

Onsets

• The onset is either a single consonant phoneme, or a cluster.
• The onset clusters are: pl, kl, hl ([xɾ]), my, py, ky, 'y, nw, and 'w.
• The onset l is [ɾ] between vowels and before y or w; otherwise, it's [l].
• A number of onsets, including y and w, don't appear before i.

Rhymes

The following rhyme types appear:

light: -V
heavy: -Vː, -VV, -VC
extraheavy: -VːC, -VVC, -VCC

• A coda cluster may consist of l or a (homorganic) nasal plus a voiceless stop or affricate (excluding the glottal stop).
• An extraheavy simple coda must be an obstruent.
• The consonants [j] and [w] don't appear as codas, being vocalized.

• Coda n (mostly) assimilates to the following non-glottal onset: the allophone [n] appears before t, tl, c, d, j, n, h, the allophone [ɲ] appears before hy, and the allophone [ŋ] appears otherwise.

Prosody

Words of 3 or more syllables stress the antepenult unless the penult is heavy, in which case they stress the penult.

Words of 2 syllables ....

Words of 1 syllable are stressed if heavy and unstressed if light.

Morphophonology

Long vowels and diphthongs in open syllables alternate with sequences of short vowels + consonants, the latter appearing before a vowel. The following table shows the possible alternations.

Vowel Alternations

Vː, VV	ii	ee	ay	oo	aw	aa
VC-	oy-	ey-	ay-	ow-	ew-	aw-

Consonant Alternations

Coda nasals alternate according to the following non-glottal onset: m appears before p and m, while n appears otherwise.

The consonants y, w, and l may combine with a preceding consonant to form a single consonant or onset cluster:

Palatalization

base	m	n	p	t	k	'	d	s	h	l
base + w	m	nw?	p	kw	kw	'w	gw	f	f	lw?
base + y	my	ny	py	c	ky	'y	j	x	hy	ly?
base + l	-	-	pl	tl	kl	-	-	sl	hl	-

page started: 2017.Mar.05 Sun
current date: 2017.Mar.10 Fri
content and form originated by qiihoskeh

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