Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread [2011–2018]

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Frislander
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Frislander »

/p t~s k k͡p ʔ/
/d~z~ɾ g͡b/
/m n/
/w j/

The alveolar plosives are palatalised to sibilants when adjacent to front vowels on either side. The non-palatalised voiced alveolar plosive is realised as a flap inter-vocalically. The glottal stop is restricted to appearing in absolute-coda and word-initial position in root words, however some compounds do show it intervocalically.

/i ɨ u/
/e ə o/
/a/
/ai au/

All vowels may appear as either oral or nasal.

Syllable structure is CV(ʔ). Some parts of the morphology use single-consonant affixes, and some roots show other consonants root-finally - these potential clusters/coda consonants are supported by epenthetic /ɨ/

There is a simple pitch-accent system with three pitch-patterns - first syllable low with rest high, first syllable high with rest low and second syllable high with rest low.

Porphyrogenitos wrote: 19 Oct 2018 07:00 What were the sound changes for each of those versions? I'm curious, especially with that single stop series.
Well it's kinda funky caus there's several things going on.
  • Satemisation, with the eventual outcome being /s/ (not merging with original *s, see below)
  • The ruki sound change probably happens as well (see "nest") with its eventual outcome being retroflex
  • Any remaining PIE *s is debuccalised to /h/ and subsequently lost in many contexts
  • Palatalisation of the merged velar series from the velars and labio-velars. This results in the palato-alveolar sibilant
  • Cr clusters also turn into the retroflex sibilant
  • The stop merger is mostly fairly simple, however with the additional complication that not only did the voiced aspirates become voiceless they must have passed through a stage with strong velar frication, to the point where *dʰ > *tx > *(t)k, with /tk/ being the realisation between vowels, which from the indications of the word list below would likely end up being restricted to verbs and maybe some frozen compounds
  • There might be Grassman's Law, but I think I forgot to use it in my last example so I mightn't bother
  • The non-high vowels merge as schwa, as do syllabic *r/*l
  • Syllabic nasals are turned into nasal ɑ̃, while coda nasals and vowels become long ɑ̃ː
  • The glides are lost from merging with all these schwas to create new high vowels (see "wolf", "water", "name" and "three". "root" shows metathesis of the glide and rhotic), and the diphthongs do the same (see "sky")
  • *l is lost, with "wheel" and "lake" showing that it may end up as any of /r/, /j/ or zero
  • There are also one or two other compensatory lengthenings that happen (see "name")
  • The "long schwa" is fronted to /ɛː/
  • Stress ends up being mostly word-initial, though a solitary word-initial schwa might be lost if the second vowel of the word is non-schwa (see "horse")
The previous version with voiced stops was basically "let's voice intervocalic stops except these aspirated ones", but if I'm honest I think the current version would be good enough to work off of as a proto-language for a potential branch of its own.
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Omzinesý »

p t t͡s k
b d g
m n ŋ
s x
l ʟ
r
ʋ j
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Nortaneous »

/p b t d tɕ dʑ k g/
/ts tʂ/
/f v s z ʂ ʐ ɕ ʑ x ɣ h/
/m n ɲ ŋ/
/l ɭ ʎ r j/
/æ ɑ ɒ e ø o i y ɯ u/ + length and glottalization, also /ə ɨ/ in unstressed syllables

Sound changes need work, but here's about what they currently give:
fəˈteˀɭ "father" < *ph2tēr
kejn "woman" < *gʷēn
ɲaːb "cloud" < *nebʰos
piŋ "five" < *penkʷe
jaːtʂʼ "horse" < *eḱwos
vɔlək "wolf" < *wl̩kʷos
ˈjoˀɣəd "name" < *werdʰo-
tʂʼut "hundred" < *ḱm̩tom
ɣɔŋ "goose" < *ǵʰans-
tsajˀ "three" < *treyes
ɲiːs "nest" < *nisdos
ˈkjɔkəl < *kʷekʷlos
ˈɲendʑɨʂ "mind" < *mentis
bɭɔˀs "root" < *wreh2ds
ˈhyːj "sky" < *deiwos
tʼɔŋk "tooth" < *h3donts
døˀʐ "earth" < *dʰeǵʰom
ˈvɔsər "water" < *wodr̩
ˈsaːntʂʼ "tongue" < *dn̩ǵweh2s
ˈlæmɨn "lake" < *leymon

Note that the /s/ in the reflex of *nisdos is in fact from /d/. Presumably this is due to contact with the Proto-Tocharians when they were hanging out in Greece.
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

/p t k/
/b d g/
/s h/
/r l/
/w j/

/i iː e eː a aː o oː u uː (ə)/

Initial stress

Some words:

oːk 'dog'
na oːk 'the dog'
oːkd 'dogs'

kim 'cat'
na kim 'the cat'
kimd 'cats'

heːb 'son'
na heːb 'the son'
heːbd 'sons'

kud 'man'
na kud 'the man'
kudəd 'men'

- Nasal assimilation
- Progressive voicing assimilation of word-final clusters
- Postvocalic lenition:

p t k > f θ x
b d g > v ð ɣ
s r j > r j ∅

- Deletion of vowels in unstressed final syllables (and more general reduction/deletion)
- Loss of /h/
- Devoicing of word-final clusters
- Shortening of long vowels before a multiconsonantal coda
- Simplification of word-final [θθ] to [θ]
- k g x ɣ > t͜ʃ d͜ʒ ʃ ʒ / _[e/i]
- eː oː > iː uː
- i u > ɪ ʊ
- e o a > ə
- iː uː aː > i u a (i.e. length distinction becomes quality/tenseness distinction)
- θ ð > s z
- single consonant following stressed lax vowel is lengthened; glottal stop inserted into empty word-final coda following stressed lax vowel

New inventory:

/p t t͜ʃ k (ʔ)/
/b d d͜ʒ g/
/f s ʃ x/
/v z ʒ ɣ/
/r j w/

/i ɪ u ʊ a ə/

The outcome:

ux uux 'dog'
nux n'uux 'the dog'
ʊxt uxt 'dogs'

t͜ʃɪmː čim 'cat'
nə‿ʃɪmː na-šim 'the cat'
t͜ʃɪnt čint 'cats'

iv iiv 'son'
nə‿iv na-iiv 'the son'
ɪft ift 'sons'

kəzː kaz 'man'
nə‿xəzː na-xaz 'the man'
kəsː kas 'men'
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by wintiver »

Porphyrogenitos wrote: 23 Oct 2018 21:53 New inventory:

/p t t͜ʃ k (ʔ)/
/b d d͜ʒ g/
/f s ʃ x/
/v z ʒ ɣ/
/r j w/

/i ɪ u ʊ a ə/

The outcome:

ux uux 'dog'
nux n'uux 'the dog'
ʊxt uxt 'dogs'

t͜ʃɪmː čim 'cat'
nə‿ʃɪmː na-šim 'the cat'
t͜ʃɪnt čint 'cats'

iv iiv 'son'
nə‿iv na-iiv 'the son'
ɪft ift 'sons'

kəzː kaz 'man'
nə‿xəzː na-xaz 'the man'
kəsː kas 'men'
I'm a fan of the surface level phonemic realizations of related words. It's awesome. I sincerely hope you run with this.

I also like the straightforwardness of the phonemic inventory and I wonder if, over time there may be a sort of high/low vowel harmony? Nii has it IIRC and it is pretty cool.

I have been practicing some finer distinctions in the coronals and I was thinking about something like -

/m n̪/ <m n>
/p t̪ t̲͡s̠ t͡ɕ k/ <p t c ć k>
/b d̪ g/ <b d g>
/s̪ s̲ ɕ x h/ <s s̲ ś x h>
/l̪ r j/ <l r y>

I was thinking of a vowel system like -

/i y ɯ u/ <i ü ï u>
/ɛ œ ʌ ɔ/ <e ö ë o>
/a/ <a>

Though vowel system has a fully symmetric front/back rounded/unrounded distinction in all but the open vowels, there is no more functional vowel harmony as it was destroyed by reduced vowels in unstressed syllables with only /ɛ ʌ a/ available in unstressed syllables.

I do have one small question if anyone cares to answer it: is likely for a language to have retracted set of alveolars like this? My pronunciation feels somewhat retracted, but not like a full on /ʃ/. So yeah, is it unlikely for the default alveolar to be a bit retracted?

Also, what would you all use orthographically for /s̪ s̲ ɕ/?
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by shimobaatar »

wintiver wrote: 24 Oct 2018 16:55 Also, what would you all use orthographically for /s̪ s̲ ɕ/?
I guess the underline is meant to show retraction?

Anyway, looking at what you have already, <z s ś>.
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Vlürch »

Something weird I came up with, that I have a feeling is similar to something I've posted before:

/m͊ n͊ ɲ͊ ŋ͊/
/m̥ʰ n̥ʰ ɲ̊ʰ ŋ̊ʰ/
/ᵐb ⁿd ᶮɟ ᵑg/
/pʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ/
/ʔ/
/ⁿd͡ʫ/
/t͡ʪʰ/
/s/
/j h/
/h̃/
/ɾ~ɺ/

/a i u/
/ã ĩ ũ/
/ḁ i̥ u̥/
/ḁ̃ ĩ̥ ũ̥/

Syllable harmony:
1) the denasalised nasals can only occur before voiced oral vowels
2) the prenasalised plosives can only occur before voiced nasal vowels
3) the aspirated nasals can only occur before voiceless nasal vowels
4) the aspirated plosives can only occur before voiceless oral vowels
5) the rest of the consonants can occur before any vowels

In practice, that could mean that all the nasals and plosives are actually allophones of just /p t c k/ or whatever, or that there are only the vowels /a i u/ and the rest are allophones. All syllables are CV(N), where N is a nasal that assimilates to the following consonant's place and manner of articulation and does not occur before the denasalised nasals or prenasalised plosives (or the prenasalised plosives always have said nasal before them, depending on analysis); before fricatives, the tap and the glottal stop, it only lengthens (and nasalises) the previous vowel, and is [ɰ̃] word-finally. /h̃/ causes adjacent oral vowels to be nasalised.

Random meaningless example words:
/m͊ãⁿd͡ʫĩ/ [m͊ãnd͡ʫĩ]
/m̥ʰḁ̃Nt͡ʪʰḁʔu/ [m̥ʰḁ̃n̥t͡ʪʰḁʔu]
/pʰi̥Nʔaɺũ/ [pʰĩ̥ːʔaɺũ]
/tʰu̥h̃aɲ͊i/ [tʰũ̥h̃ãɲ͊i]
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Birdlang »

shimobaatar wrote: 24 Oct 2018 17:25
wintiver wrote: 24 Oct 2018 16:55 Also, what would you all use orthographically for /s̪ s̲ ɕ/?
I guess the underline is meant to show retraction?

Anyway, looking at what you have already, <z s ś>.
Same here. I agree with you. Also, I’d romanize the affricates as <c j> to make it a bit more symmetric.
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Birdlang »

Ok another language
/p b t̪ d̪ t̠ d̠ k g ʔ/ p b t d ť ď k g ʔ
/m n̪ n̠ ŋ/ m n ň ŋ
/f v s̪ z̪ s̠ z̠ x ɣ ʕ h/ f v s z š ž x ʒ ğ h
/l̪ l̠ j w/ l ľ j w
/r̪ r̠/ r ř
/ɬ̪ ɬ̠/ c č

/i e/ î ê
/ɨ ə a/ i e a
/u ʊ̜ ʊ o ʌ ɒ/ û y u ô o â
This is inspired by wintiver’s sketch. I think the retracted ones would have palatal allophones. The vowels have harmony between high, low and central.
I’ve completed Pigeonese and the phonology and orthography
/p b t d c ɟ k g ʔ/ p b t d ť/ţ ď/ḑ k g ɂ/ˀ
/ɸ β f v~w θ ð s z ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ç ʝ x ɣ X ħ ʕ h/ ᵽ/ṗ ƀ/ḅ f v ŧ/ṭ đ/ḍ s z š ž ś/ŝ ź/ẑ ꞩ/ş ƶ/ȥ ꝁ/ḳ ǥ/ġ ḫ/x ɦ/ḥ ꜥ/ˁ h
/ʦ ʣ ʧ ʤ ʨ c͝ç ɟ͝ʝ~ʥ k͝x g͝ɣ/ c ʒ č ǯ ć/ĉ ꞓ/ç ꜩ/ʒ̂ ḱ/ǩ ǵ/ǧ
/ɓ ɗ ɠ ʄ/ ꞗ/ƀ ɗ/đ ɠ/ǥ ỳ/ỵ
/m ɱ n ɲ ŋ ɴ/ m ɱ n ỹ/ņ ŋ g̃/ñ
/ʋ~ɰ~ɥ j/ ʋ/ṿ j
/ɾ/ r
/r r̝/ ɍ/ṙ r̈/ŗ
/ɬ/ ɬ ~ƚ/ḷ
/l ʎ/ l ľ/ļ

/i y ɨ~ʊɪ̯ ʉ ɯ u ʊ e ø ɵ ɤ o ə ɵ̞ ɛ ɔ~ʌ æ a/ i ü y ư/ŭ ï/ĭ u w é/ê ö ơ/ø ë/ĕ o e ȯ/ŏ è å/ă æ a
With length and nasality. Length is marked by a macron or circumflex in the first and an acute in the second. Nasalization is written with a raised n for the first and the second, the letter ƞ.
Diphthongs are marked with a breve over the second vowel in the first and a dot under in the second.
/ai au ei ou ie io iu ia ue ui ua uo ae ao oe ou oi oa/ aĭ/aị aŭ/aụ eĭ/eị oŭ/oụ ĭe/ịe ĭo/ịo ĭu/ịu ĭa/ịa ŭe/ụe uĭ/uị ŭa/ụa ŭo/ụo aĕ/aẹ aŏ/aọ ŏe/ọe oŭ/oụ oĭ/oị ŏa/ọa the breve marks the semivowel placement.
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Frislander
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Frislander »

Have multiple mutually unintelligible varieties of Pigeonese, then have them come into contact and make... a pigeon pidgin!
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Birdlang »

Frislander wrote: 27 Oct 2018 01:53 Have multiple mutually unintelligible varieties of Pigeonese, then have them come into contact and make... a pigeon pidgin!
Awww, that’s a cute joke! That’s such a great story for making a pigeon pidgin that will evolve into a creole. But this one is for multiple dialects.
Ok. For foreign sounds or dialects, I forgot to mention, these sounds are used too. Many dialects have the uvular stop and affricate, a few have the retroflex, which are normally found in loanwords as a result of the rhotic approximant found in Standard Birdish and Standard Bartalonian (2 main national languages in Pigeonland as well as Pigeonese, Bartalonian due to minority populations in some areas), plus a consonant, which can also affect the vowel quality by making the vowels rhotic/retroflex approximant r-colored.
/q qX ɖ ʈ ɳ ʂ ʐ ʈ͡ʂ ɖ͡ʐ ɽ ɭ/ q ꝗ/ɋ ḍ/ḏ ṭ/ṯ ṇ/ṉ ṣ̌/s̱ ẓ̌/ẕ č̣/c̱ ǰ/ɉ ṛ/ṟ ḷ/ḻ
To answer your question, yes, I have made some dialectal sounds more common.
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Four frontness/height-based vowel harmony systems:

A

/i e a o u/

Front/high: /i e/
Front/low: /e a/
Back/high: /u o/
Back/low: /o a/

(in accordance with the convention I use for D below, you could also describe it as...)

/i e¹ e² a o¹ o² u/

Front/high: /i e¹/
Front/low: /e² a/
Back/high: /u o¹/
Back/low: /o² a/

B

/i e ə u o a/

Front/high: /i ə/
Front/low: /e a/
Back/high: /u ə/
Back/low: /o a/

C

/i e ə u ɨ o a/

Front/high: /i ɨ ə/
Front/low: /e a/
Back/high: /u ɨ ə/
Back/low: /o a/

D

/i e ə¹ ə² u ɨ o a/

Front/high: /i ɨ ə¹/
Front/low: /e ə² a/
Back/high: /u ɨ ə¹/
Back/low: /o ə² a/
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Creyeditor »

Porphyrogenitos wrote: 28 Oct 2018 04:37 Four frontness/height-based vowel harmony systems: [...]
Could you elaborate on how you would imagine them to work? I am not used to this way of writing down vowel harmony. E.g. Does A mean that each word can either have only /i e/ or only /e a/ or only
/u o/ or only /o a/ but no other combinations are allowed. Btw, I really appreciate people putting effort in things other than phoneme inventories.
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Creyeditor wrote: 28 Oct 2018 12:06Btw, I really appreciate people putting effort in things other than phoneme inventories.
Thanks!
Creyeditor wrote: 28 Oct 2018 12:06 Could you elaborate on how you would imagine them to work? I am not used to this way of writing down vowel harmony. E.g. Does A mean that each word can either have only /i e/ or only /e a/ or only
/u o/ or only /o a/ but no other combinations are allowed.
Sure! And yes, that's essentially correct.

So, for A, in a word with the front/high harmonic group /i e/, a suffix -eba will assimilate to -ibe, and so on, as shown below:

inen +
-eba = inenibe
-uso = inenise
-alo = ineneli

So really, we could generalize the suffixes as having two archiphonemes, a high vowel and a low vowel, perhaps notated /Y/ and /A/:

inen +
-YbA = inenibe
-YsA = inenise
-AlY = ineneli

And with the low/back group:

atapo +
-YbA = atapooba
-YsA = atapoosa
-AlY - atapoalo

My notation with /e¹ e² o¹ o²/ was to show that /e o/ in the high harmonic groups corresponds with /A/, and corresponds with /Y/ in the low harmonic group:

assimilates to... front/high - front/low - back/high - back/low
/Y/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - /i/ - - - - - /e/ - - - - - /u/ - - - - - /o/ - -
/A/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - /e/ - - - - - /a/ - - - - - /o/ - - - - - /a/ - -

And the other systems work in a parallel fashion. They were all inspired by the Warlpiri vowel harmony system, which has just three vowels, and two harmony classes: /a i/ and /a u/. These just introduce height into the mix (height harmony is attested but it is very rare), and varying numbers of additional neutral vowels, or in the case of A, no neutral vowels.

So, for example, harmony classes with D:

assimilates to... front/high - front/low - back/high - back/low
/Y/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - /i/ - - - - - /e/ - - - - - /u/ - - - - - /o/ - -
/V/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - /ɨ/ - - - - - /ə/ - - - - - /ɨ/ - - - - - /ə/ - -
/A/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - /ə/ - - - - /a/ - - - - - /ə/ - - - - - /a/ - -
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Creyeditor »

Wow, that looks really different from the height harmony systems I know from European and African languages. To be fair, a lot of the African ones actually involve ATR. Did you think about transparent and opaque vowel too?
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Oh yeah, you're right, I wasn't thinking of African or European type height harmony systems. I was thinking of a completely bifurcated height system, like with two groups /i u ə/ and /e o a/, which is apparently attested in some Mayan language, IIRC. As for transparent and opaque vowels - I guess for most of these I was imagining that even with the "neutral" vowels, every instance is actually underlyingly assigned to one class or another (thus the notation e¹, e², etc.). But without that analysis I guess I'd say the neutral vowels are all transparent. Though, of course, you could also tweak these systems slightly and have the neutral vowels be opaque.
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Creyeditor »

Very nice. I wanted to read the an article on Warlpiri vowel harmony some time ago but then I forgot about it. I should get to it some time.
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Osia »

A Finnish inspired inventory that I immediately fell in love with. A tentative name right now is something like "Kááhtin" if I decide to develop it further.

/m n/ <m n>
/p t k ʔ/ <p t k ‘>
/s h/ <s h>
/ʋ ð̞ ɣ̞~ɰ/ <v d g>

/a e i o u/ <a e i o u>
/ː/ <VV>

Syllable structure is limited, and there are many restrictions on medial consonant clusters.
Syllable structure is something like C(i, u)V(ː)(V)(ʔ, h, n, p, t, k), but word finally /n/ is the only allowed coda.

Allowed diphthongs and tripthongs are shown in the table below.

Code: Select all

       ie(ː)  ia(ː)  io(ː)                                       
e(ː)i                       e(ː)u                   
a(ː)i  a(ː)e         a(ː)o  a(ː)u                     
o(ː)i                                                  
u(ː)i  u(ː)e  ua(ː)  

ia(ː)u ie(ː)u 
ua(ː)i ue(ː)i  
Allowed medial clusters are in the table below

Code: Select all

   ʔ    h    n    p    t    k
p| ʔp  [ʰp] [mp]  pp        kp
t| ʔt  [ʰt] [nt]       tt   kt
k| ʔk  [ʰk] [ŋk]            kk
ʔ|           nʔ   pʔ   tʔ   kʔ
s|      hs  [n̥s] ps   ts   ks
h|          [n̥] [pʰ] [tʰ] [kʰ]
ʋ| ʔʋ  [f]  [mb]
ð| ʔð  [θ]  [nd]
ɣ| ʔɣ  [x]  [ŋg]
m| ʔm  [m̥] [mm]
n| ʔn  [n̥]  nn
Some sample words:
hatte
kooi
‘ahpaa
neesa
vaenasi
hoo’
tiesa’
she/her/hers
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[<3] Navajo, Tlingit, Polysynthesis, Semantics
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cedh
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by cedh »

Nice!

I think I'd personally like to have more geminates and metathesis of /ʔ/, as in this partial table (h₁ and h₂ are alternative options for clusters involving /h/):

Code: Select all

     n    p    t    k
p         pp  [pp] [pp]
t        [tt]  tt  [tt]
k        [kk] [kk]  kk
ʔ    ʔn   ʔp   ʔt   ʔk
h₁   [n̥]  [f]  [θ]  [x]
h₂   [nn] [pp] [tt] [kk]
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Frislander
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Re: Random phonology/phonemic inventory thread

Post by Frislander »

/t t͡ʃ k ʔ/
/ⁿb ⁿd/
/s x/
/w ɾ j/

Prenasalised stops are realised as plain nasals before nasal vowels.

/i ĩ ɨ ɨ̃ u ũ/
/e ə o/
/ɛ ɛ̃ ã ɔ ɔ̃/

Syllable structure is CV.

There are three word-tones: high-level, falling and rising/low-level (the last one varies between speakers). In monosyllables the falling (and rising) tones are realised as contours, while on polysyllables the falling is realised as a high on the first syllable followed by all lows, while the rising (where present) is realised as a low on the first syllable and high on all following syllables.

Porphyrogenitos wrote: 28 Oct 2018 18:23 Oh yeah, you're right, I wasn't thinking of African or European type height harmony systems. I was thinking of a completely bifurcated height system, like with two groups /i u ə/ and /e o a/, which is apparently attested in some Mayan language, IIRC. As for transparent and opaque vowels - I guess for most of these I was imagining that even with the "neutral" vowels, every instance is actually underlyingly assigned to one class or another (thus the notation e¹, e², etc.). But without that analysis I guess I'd say the neutral vowels are all transparent. Though, of course, you could also tweak these systems slightly and have the neutral vowels be opaque.
The system reminds me most of Chukchi actually, and I think also Kusunda does this.
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