Frislander wrote:In a follow-up to my previous phonology.
/t̪~θ (t)s (t)ɬ (t)ʃ k~x/
/t̪’ t͡s’ t͡ɬ’ t͡ʃ’ k’ ʔ/
/n r j/
/i a o/ in mid, high or low tone.
Syllable structure is CV(C), where any consonant may appear in the onset or coda, except that /j/ may not appear after /i/.
The plain plosives/affricates are realised as fricatives escept when following another member of the same class, when they take their stopped pronunciation. Additionally between vowels the same consonants are realised as voiced (fricatives).
Vowels are normally short but are allophonically lengthened in the following environments (which are definitely not just a clone copy of Scottish English
):
- Before a word-boundary
- Before a morpheme boundary
- Before a voiced fricative
- Before /r/
Ooh! I love the feel of this. The allophony between the stops and fricatives is lovely, along with the lateral affricates without an /l/. I also like the vowel lengthening rules.
A conlang I've been thinking of developing, based on Dravidian and Australian languages, but with heavy influences from Dyirbal and Arrente in particular. A tentative name is Mbirundhing, or something similar.
/m ŋ n̪ n ɳ ɲ/ <m ŋ nh n rn ñ>
/p k t̪ t ʈ c ʔ/ <b g dh d rd j '>
/ⁿb ⁿg ⁿd̪ ⁿd ⁿɖ ⁿɟ/ <mb ng ndh nd nrd nj>
/h/ <h>
/w l̪ l ɭ j/ <w lh l rl j>
/ɾ ɽ/ <ṙ rṙ>
/ð̞ z̞~ɹ ɻ/ <ð z r>
There is partially productive retroflex harmony, where dentals are neutral.
/a i u ɚ/ <a i u er>
With retroflex harmony, /a/ alternates with /ɚ/.
Allophony:
Vowels are nasalized before prenasalized, and adjacent to nasals and /h/.
The glottal stop is likely non-phonemic, as it only serves to seperate vowels across syllable and word boundaries, and before/after vowels phrase initially and finally.
Unvoiced stops are only devoiced at the beginning of an utterance, elsewhere they are voiced but unapproximated.
The distinction between /z̞~ɹ/ and /ɻ/ could be said to be allophonic, as they are only conditioned by harmony if there are alveolars or retroflexes elsewhere in the word, and if there are none, the two are in free variation.
The /a/ is realized as /ɔ/ adjacent to peripherals and /ɛ/ adjacent to palatals.
The /t/ may be optionally realized as /s/ before /i/.
The /h/ is realized as [ç] before /i/, [xʷ] before /u/, and [ʂ] before /ɚ/.
Syllable structure is something like CV(N,D), where N is a homoorganic nasal, and D is any stop. The coda nasal only occurs word finally, and varies with vowel nasalization. This may prenasalize initial consonants in the following word. Stress is word intial.
Grammatically, if I develop this further, it will be ergative and agglutinating, with noun like adjectives and SOV syntax.
Some sample words
rdirdi onomotapoeia for rainfall
-ŋu- to go
-mbaha- to walk
-zaziṙu- to hunt, to fish