Feb28 –  A Constructed Language

Feb28 Phonology and Orthography

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

Letters and Sounds

The tables show the relevent phonetic symbols (in APA) with the corresponding orthographic (romanization) symbols. The 33 letters used in the orthography are:
a â b c ĉ d e ê f g h i î j k l m n o ô p q r s ŝ t u û v x z ẑ ' — w y are not used.

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

Vowel Qualities and Quantities

Then there are 5 oral vowel qualities (short and long), 4 long nasal vowels, and 2 diphthongs. The diphthongs are «ai» ai and «au» au.

Oral Vowels

	front										central		back
high	i i:	i î	-								-		-								u u:	u û
high-mid	-		e e:	e ê	-						-		-						o o:	o ô	-
low	-										A\ A\:	a â	-

Long Nasal Vowel Phones

	front										central		back
high	i:~	in	-								-		-
low-mid	-						E:~	en	-		-		-		O:~	on	-
near-low	-										A\:~	an	-

Consonant Qualities

There are 23 onset phonemes and 20 coda phonemes (21 phones).

Onset Consonants

		labial				coronal						dorsal								guttural
nasal	voiced	m	m	-		-		n	n	-		-								-
stop	voiceless	p	p	-		-		t	t	-		-		k	k	-				?	'
	voiced	b	b	-		-		d	d	-		-		g	g	-				-
affricate	voiceless	-				t)K	q	t)s	c	t)S	ĉ	-								-
	voiced	-				-		d)z	z	d)Z	ẑ	-								-
fricative	voiceless	-		f	f	-		s	s	S	ŝ	-						X	x	h	h
	voiced	-		v	v	-						1	j	-						-
rhotic	voiced	-				-		r	r	-		-								-
vocoid	voiced	-				l	l	-				-								-

Coda Consonants

		labial				coronal						dorsal								guttural
nasal	voiced	m	m	-		-		n	n*	-		-		N	n*	-				-
stop	ejective	p%	p	-		-		t%	t	-		-		k%	k	-				-
	voiceless	-				-						-								?	'
	voiced	b	b	-		-		d	d	-		-		g	g	-				-
affricate	ejective	-				t)K%	q	t)s%	c	t)S%	ĉ	-								-
	voiced	-				-		d)z	z	d)Z	ẑ	-								-
fricative	voiceless	-		f	f	-		s	s	S	ŝ	-						X	x	-
rhotic	voiced	-				-		r	r	-		-								-
vocoid	voiced	-				l	l	-				-								-

Phonotactics

Onsets

• An onset is a single consonant.
• The historical approximants j, v, and h never follow any consonant, having undergone metathesis with any preceding non-approximant.

Rhymes

The following rhyme types appear (VV is a long vowel or diphthong):

light: -V
heavy: -VC, -VV

• When not followed by a vowel, the historical approximants combine with the preceding vowel to form diphthongs, most of which appear as long vowels.
• When followed by r, l, or a fricative, a vowel + a nasal coda appears as a nasal vowel.
• The nasal coda is written m when «m».

Geminates

Each geminate is written by doubling the consonant letter.

• Most geminates manifest as long consonants, e.g. «p:».
• For a geminate affricate, the stop part is long, e.g. «t:)K».
• However, a geminate voiced obstruent may appear as just an onset consonant, with the preceding short vowel lengthened, e.g. «i:g» instead of «ig:».

Morphophonology

Some History

Historically, there were only 4 vowels: i, &, A, and u, all short. How they appear depends on what follows, which is either an approximant, a resonant, or otherwise (the resonants are r, l, and the nasals). The case of the approximants has already been covered. Before a resonant, the vowels manifest as i, e, a, and o, respectively. In all other cases, the vowels manifest as i, a, o, and u.

Diphthong Manifestation

i	u	&	A
î	î	ê	ai	j	(j)
û	û	au	ô	w	(v)
ê	ô	â	â	8	(h)

Vowel Deletion

Another historical process is vowel deletion. This may occur within a phonological word between VC and CV or when final following VC. The result is that both roots and affixes usually have more than 1 morph. For example a CVCVC root may become CVCC or CCVC (along with additional morphs due to metathesis and infixing). Note that some analogy may be involved, not just sound change.

page started: 2022.Mar.04 Fri
current date: 2022.Mar.05 Sat
content and form originated by qiihoskeh

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