NewLang/Phonology

Phonology Inventory

Consonants

Stops

Rom.	IPA
b	/b/
p	/p/
d	/d/
t	/t/
g	/g/
k or c	/k/
'	/ʔ/

Affricates

Rom.	IPA
dz	/d͡z/
ts	/t͡s/

Fricatives

Rom.	IPA
v	/v/
f	/f/
z	/z/
s	/s/
lz	/ɮ/
lh	/ɬ/
zh	/ʒ/
sh	/ʃ/
x	/x/

Nasals

Rom.	IPA
m	/m/
n	/n/

Liquid/Tap

Rom.	IPA
l	/l/
r	/ɾ/

Vowels

Monophthongs

Rom.	IPA
i	/i/
u	/u/
e	/e/
o	/o/
a	/ɑ/
'	/ə/

Long Vowels

There are three vowels for which length can be phonemic.

Rom.	IPA
ii	/i:/
uu	/u:/
aa	/ɑ:/

Diphthongs

Rom.	IPA
ya	/ja/
ay	/aɪ/
wa	/wa/
au	/aʊ/

Phonotactics

Syllable Shape

Syllables are (C)V(C)

Syllable Weight

Syllables can either be light or heavy.

(C)V syllables are:

• ...light when V is a monopthong of medium length.
• ...heavy when V is a long vowel or a diphthong.

(C)VC syllables are:

• ...light if the nucleus is ' .
• ...heavy otherwise.

Consonant Rules

Consonant Clusters

• Consonant clusters only occur word-medial.
• In morphological operations, if consonant clusters are created of different voice quality, the second consonant takes on the voice of the first.

Vowel Rules

• Vowel hiatus is not allowed between identical monophthong vowels - ' is inserted. Word-medially this is written. Across word boundaries, the sound is often inserted, but never written.
• In terms of vowel hiatus, a diphthong adjacent by a monophthong that is identical to the closest sound of the diphthong counts as an identical vowel for the previous rule. For example: a followed by ay will have a ' inserted between them: a'ay. So would the sequence of ya and a: ya'a.
• ' as a vowel never appears in a stressed syllable.

Misc. Rules

• The apostrophe only appears in the following environments and is pronounced differently depending on its location/:
  • word-medially, between two consonants (as a syllable nucleus), it is pronounced as the vowel [ə])
  • between two vowels, as an onset, it is pronounced [ʔ]
  • word-initial as an onset, followed by a vowel, it is pronounced [ʔ]

Prosody

Stress

Stress is lexical, and does not shift due to morphological operations. Ed. note: this feature may change as the conlang is developed.

Prosodic Foot

The primary prosodic foot is an trochee, that is, a heavy syllable followed by a light one. This has implications for word shapes:

• In multisyllable words that are derived, inflected, and/or compounded, the word will end in a complete prosodic foot. Morphological operations will include adapting elements that ensure the shape.
• Words that are bare stems (unaffixed, uncompounded, etc.) can end in any type of syllable.

Romanization Notes

The orthography is mostly just a simple phonemic romanization. There are a few variations

• I use digraphs for a few phonemes for aesthetic reasons.
• The same for the use of the apostrophe for both the schwa and glottal stop - I like how that looks on the page better.
• /k/ is represented by c at the end of a word - once again just because I like the way it looks better.