Mar22 –  A Constructed Language

Mar22 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 29 letters used are:
a æ b c č d e è f g h i k l m n ň o p r s š t u w y z ž ' — j q v x aren't used.
Digraphs are shown in the appropriate subsection.

Note: the long low-mid vowel has been eliminated!

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

Vowel Qualities

There are 6 short vowels, 6 long vowels, and 3 diphthongs. The diphthongs are: [ɔi] oi, [ai] ai, and [au] au. There are no other vowel sequences.

Vowels

	front										central		back
high	i iː	i ii	-								-		-								u uː	u uu
high-mid	-				e eː	e ee	-				-		-				o oː	o oo	-
low-mid	-						ɛ ɛː	è æ	-		-		-
low	-										-		ɑ ɑː	a aa	-

Consonant Qualities

There are 24 consonant phonemes using 26 phones.

Consonants

		labial				coronal						dorsal								guttural
nasal	voiced	m	m	-		-		n	n*	-		ɲ	ň	ŋ	n*	-				-
stop	voiceless	pʰ	p	-		-		tʰ	t	-		-		kʰ	k	kʷʰ	kw	-		ʔ	'
	ejective	p'	b	-		-		t'	d	-		-		k'	g	-				-
	voiced	b		-		-		d		-		-		g		gʷ	gw	-		-
affricate	voiceless	-				t͡ɬ	c	-		t͡ʃ	č	-								-
	voiced	-				-				d͡ʒ	ž	-								-
fricative	voiceless	ɸ	f	-		ɬ	z	s	s	ʃ	š	ç	ç	x	h	-				-
rhotic	voiced	-				-		ɾ r	r	-		-								-
vocoid	voiced	-				-		l	l	-		j	y	-		w	w	-		-

Phonotactics

The ejective allophones appear in codas.

Onsets

• The onset is either a single consonant phoneme, or a cluster.
• The onset clusters are: pl, bl, kl, gl, my, py, by, ky, gy, 'y, and 'w.
• The onset y doesn't appear before i or ii and the onset w doesn't appear before u or uu.

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 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, c, č, d, ž, n, h, the allophone [ɲ] appears before ň, ç, and the allophone [ŋ] appears otherwise.

Prosody

The stress rules for words of 3 or more syllables are as follows:

• if the ultima is extraheavy, stress it;
• else if the penult isn't light, stress it;
• else stress the antepenult.

The stress rules for words of 2 syllables are as follows:

• if the ultima is extraheavy, stress it;
• else if the penult isn't light, stress it;
• else if the ultima is heavy, stress it;
• else stress the penult.

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

Morphophonology

Vowel Alternations

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	au	aa	oo	uu
VC	iy	ey	ew	aw	ow	uw

Also, i and u alternate with y and w, respectively.

Consonant Alternations

Coda nasals alternate according to the following non-glottal onset: m appears before p, b, 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:

Consonant Alternations

base

m

n

p

t

k

'

b

d

g

s

h

r

l

base + w

m

nw?

p

t

kw

'w

b

d

gw

s

f

ur

ul

base + y

my

ň

py

č

ky

'y

by

ž

gy

š

ç

ir

il

base + l

-

-

pl

z

kl

-

bl

c

gl

-

-

-

-

page started: 2017.Mar.26 Sun
current date: 2017.Mar.28 Tue
content and form originated by qiihoskeh

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