Oct17A –  A Constructed Language

Oct17A Phonology and Orthography

Legend: Definitions, Terms, <Text>, «apa», -Tags-, and "Glosses".

Letters and Sounds

The writing system used here is a phonemic transcription using ASCII letters (romanization).

The tables show the relevent phonetic symbols (in APA) with the corresponding romanization symbols. The 32 letters used in the romanization are:
a ā æ b č d e ē ë f g h i ī k l m n o ō p r s š t tl u ū v z ž ' — c j q w x y are not used.

In the following tables, an asterisk * indicates letters with allophones.

Vowel Qualities and Quantities

There are 6 short oral vowels (10 phones) and 6 long oral vowels; there are no diphthongs.

Short Vowel Qualities

	front										central		back
high	i	i*	-								-		-								u	u*
high-lax	-		I	i*	-						-		-						U	u*	-
high-mid	-				e	e*	-				@	ë	-				o	o*	-
low-mid	-						E	e*	-				-		O	o*	-
low	-										A\	a	-

Long Vowel Qualities

	front										central		back
high	i:	ī	-								-		-								u:	ū
high-mid	-				e:	ē	-				-		-				o:	ō	-
near-low	-								&:	æ	-		-
low	-										-		A:	ā	-

Consonant Qualities

There are 21 onset consonants (23 phones) and 19 coda consonants (19 phones).

Onset Consonants

		labial				coronal						dorsal								guttural
nasal	voiced	m	m	-		-		n	n	-		-		N	ŋ	-				-
stop	voiceless	p	p	-		-		t	t	-		-		k	k	-				?	'
	voiced	b	b	-		-		d	d	-		-		g	g	-				-
affricate	voiceless	-				t)K	tl	t)s	s*	t)S	č	-								-
	voiced	-				-		d)z	z*	d)Z	ž	-								-
fricative	voiceless	-		f	f	-		s	s*	S	š	-								h	h
	voiced	-		v	v	-		z	z*	-		-								-
rhotic	voiced	-				-		r	r	-		-								-
approximant	voiced	-				l	l	-				-								-

Coda Consonants

		labial				coronal						dorsal								guttural
nasal	voiced	m	m	-		-		n	n	-		-		N	ŋ	-				-
stop	aspirate	ph	p	-		-		th	t	-		-		kh	k	-				-
	voiced	b	b	-		-		d	d	-		-		g	g	-				-
affricate	voiceless	-				t)K	tl	-		t)S	č	-								-
fricative	voiceless	-		f	f	-		s	s	S	š	-		x	h	-				-
	voiced	-				-		z	z	Z	ž	-								-
rhotic	voiced	-				-		r	r	-		-								-
approximant	voiced	-				l	l	-				-								-

Phonotactics

Onsets

• An onset is a single consonant or (initially only) null.
• The glottal stop and ŋ are complementary, with the former appearing after consonants and the latter after vowels. Neither appears initially.

Rhymes

The following rhyme types appear, where VV is a long vowel or diphthong:

light: -V
heavy: -VV, -VC

• The non-low vowels are lowered in any closed syllables. Otherwise, the higher vowel allophones are appear.
• The schwa is deleted whenever possible; this includes
  • initially
  • after non-initial v (see Morphophonology)
  • between a nasal and a homorganic plosive, e.g. ntl
  • between a pair of voiceless consonants, e.g. sk
  • between a voiced fricative and a voiced consonant, e.g. zb
  • between a liquid and most consonants, e.g. rm
  • finally after most valid coda consonants
  • in a few other cases
  However, initial clusters, final clusters, and clusters of 3 consonants can't occur.

Geminates

• Because roots can't have the same consonant sequentially, the only geminates are affricates: ttl, ts, tč, dz, dž.

Prosody

The ultima is stressed if heavy; otherwise, the penult is stressed.

Morphophonology

In coda position, v is deleted, lengthening the preceding vowel. The vowel correspondence is shown in the following table:

Vowel Correspondence

i	e	ë	a	o	u
ī	ē	æ	ā	ō	ū

page started: 2022.Oct.18 Tue
current date: 2022.Oct.20 Thu
content and form originated by qiihoskeh

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