MNCL6 –  A Constructed Language

MNCL6 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 27 letters and consonant digraphs used are:
a b ch d e f g i j k kh l m n o p r s sh t th u v y z zh ' — q w x aren't used.

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

Vowel Qualities

There are 6 short vowel phonemes, 5 long vowels, and 3 diphthongs. The diphthongs are: [ɔi] oi, [ai] ai, and [au] au. All other vowel sequences are disyllabic. Note that the schwa is not written, but inserted between consonants when needed.

Vowels

	front								central		back
high	i iː	i ii	-						-		-						u uː	u uu
high-mid	-		eː	ee	-				ə		-				oː	oo	-
low-mid	-				ɛ	e	-				-		ɔ	o	-
low	-						a aː	a aa	-		-

Consonant Qualities

There are 22 consonant phonemes using 24 phones.

Consonants

		labial				coronal						dorsal								guttural
nasal	voiced	m	m	-		-		n	n*	-		ɲ	n*	ŋ	n*	-				-
stop	voiced	b	b	-		-		d	d	-		-		g	g	-				-
	voiceless	pʰ	p	-		-		tʰ	t	-		-		kʰ	k	-				ʔ	'
affricate	voiced	-				-				d͡ʒ	j	-								-
	voiceless	-				-				t͡ʃ	ch	-								-
fricative	voiced	-		v	v	-		z	z	ʒ	zh	ʝ	y	-						-
	voiceless	-		f	f	θ	th	s	s	ʃ	sh	-		x	kh	-				-
rhotic	voiced	-				-		r	r	-		-								-
vocoid	voiced	-				-		l	l	-		-								-

Phonotactics

• The onset is either a single consonant phoneme or null.

The following rhyme types appear:

light: -V
heavy: -Vː, -VV, -VC

• There are no coda clusters.
• Some consonants don't appear finally.
• The consonants v and y don't appear as codas, being vocalized.
• A schwa may be inserted between a consonant and one of the following consonants: b, d, g, j, z, zh, v, and y.

• Coda nasals assimilates to the following onset: the allophone [m] appears before p, b, and m, the allophone [ɲ] appears before y, and the allophone [ŋ] appears before g, k, fricatives (except th), and liquids; otherwise, the allophone [n] appears.

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 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	aa	oo	uu	au	ai	oi
VC-	iy-	ey-	av-	ov-	uv-	ev-	ay-	oy-

page started: 2017.Jan.03 Tue
current date: 2017.Jan.03 Tue
content and form originated by qiihoskeh

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