Phonology
Phoneme Inventory & Orthography:
I'm introducing these two components side by side because the orthography as it stands is about as straightforward as they get. On account of its simplicity, I think there's no need to give it its own section. I have linked a rudimentary table of characters natively used for Taahu here.
This writing system lacks punctuation entirely in its most casual form. Spaces are left between words, but other than that, notes and signs leave out any indicating marks of that type. Official documents and writing for school assignments typically marks boundaries between sentences with an interpunct or dash-like character, and paragraphs/large blocks of text are ended with a character consisting of two concentric circles, which is placed in lieu of the script's "period", or used accompanying it, lying under the lowest line of text instead of next to it (which is the typical place for punctuation marks in this language). The script is written from left to right, unicameral, and as is hopefully clear from the table above, an abugida. It indicates all phonetic contrasts except for the system of tone and stress (which is technically a system of pitch accent). Since that is a very important part of the phonology, and also because it is a pain to write everything out by hand and upload that to the internet, I have developed a romanization which will be used for all examples of the language in this thread. Now, let's talk about the phoneme inventory. It can be seen in the table linked previously in my short description of the orthography, but I'll re-elaborate again since we haven't discussed the pitch accent system properly yet.
Code: Select all
p t t͡s k ʔ
θ s ʃ h
m n ŋ
b d g
w j
i u
e
aVowels can appear long or short; with long vowels distinguishing three different tone patterns in stressed syllables: falling <áa>, high <áá>, and rising <aá>. Falling tone is the most common, while rising is quite rare, appearing only in a small fraction of lexical items (and almost entirely absent from verbs, as a result of the various morphophonemic processes they undergo that I will describe in (a) later section(s)). Short vowels, in contrast, only exhibit a binary stressed versus unstressed pattern, which is realized phonemically as high-versus-low tone.
Phonotactics:
The maximum syllable theoretically allowed in Taahu is CCCV:C, although in practice 3-consonant clusters are very rare. Even so, onset clusters are rare outside of stressed syllables, occurring almost exclusively as a result of stress movement induced by some morphemes. Additionally, even medial clusters do not reach past this boundary, with clusters of more than 3 consonants banned in that environment as well.
The full set of onsets is as follows:
-Any of the 17 phonemic consonants. This includes /ŋ/, which appears far more commonly as a coda, but nonetheless appears initially in a significant amount of lexical items and roots, such as ŋapí (tuber).
-Any consonant except the fricatives and /ʔ/, preceded by /h/. It's tempting to add a set of phonemic pre-aspirates as a result of this, but several pieces of evidence suggest this is not the best analysis. For one, pre-aspirated voiced stops; cf. hgé (belt; ring), are extremely unusual. Additionally, they do not pattern as individual units wrt. other clusters.
-/p t k ʔ m n b d/ + /w j/, plus /tsw θw sw hw/. Presumably more clusters involving glides were permitted, but they have merged with other phonemes.
-The phonemes /p k/ + /θ s ʃ/. This is a fairly small set, but it makes up a large portion of the clusters actually encountered in words.
-Clusters of stops with each other (this includes /ts/). Generally /p/ or /k/ is the first element of the cluster, but a few words with /t/ initial clusters have been observed; e.g. tkáŋ (yoke). No stop clusters with /ts/ as the first element seem to exist.
-The only 3 consonant clusters permitted initially are /h/+/p k/+/j w/.
Besides those structured groups, there are several sporadic instances of words that have /ʔ/ before or after another consonant. Examples are s'ááte (mountain) and 'píma (badger). It may be important to note that these clusters always begin stressed syllables.
I don't think nuclei really need to be discussed in detail, they are simply one of the four vowels, long or short, with possible stress. So we'll just move directly onto codas. The set of word-final codas is quite small, consisting of any of /n ŋ ʔ w j/, or possibly excluding the glides if you prefer to think of Taahu as having diphthongs. Word medially this group is larger, allowing any of the fricatives including /h/ preceding another consonant as well. Other word medial clusters need not be looked at as exceptions to previously described rules, as they can be explained as a combination of existing codas and clusters. Word medial 3-consonant clusters, however, are limited to the same set as they are initially.
In spite of the large number of clusters permitted, words tend to be of the form CV(CV)(CV).... Nasal and glide codas appear fairly freely, but the glottal stop is more commonly a coda in stressed syllables. Long vowels tend to only appear once in uninflected lexemes, but are not limited to stressed syllables, appearing in unstressed ones just as frequently. Other common word forms are CVC, often with a long vowel, or (C)VCVC, with the first consonant being the glottal stop. CCVCV and CVCCV words usually appear with short vowels in both syllables. The vowels /e u/ are more likely to be stressed at the end of words; that is, unstressed, final, short vowels are much more likely to be /a i/. Many of these tendencies and limitations on word structure are likely artifacts of the stress system that has developed.
Allophony:
Allophony in Taahu is pretty basic. Among the consonants, a few different processes can be observed. The stops /p t ts k/ are aspirated word initially as well as in stressed syllables, and also before other consonants. Between vowels, when not subject to the previously described aspiration, they are pronounced with light voicing. In this case they are still distinguished from the phonemically voiced plosives, which are fully voiced and sometimes glottalized or tensed. Some speakers also voice fricatives in the previously described conditions. Another common allophonic change is to palatalize consonants adjacent to /i/. /h/ is typically articulated as [ç] or [x] before consonants, depending on the consonant in question as well as the individual speaker.
Vowels are subject to a little bit more variation. Typically /e/ is phonetically [ɛ], but long it is frequently realized as [e:] and sometimes merges into /ej/. /a/ retains the same value value short or long, but both /i/ and /u/ are centered when short and/or unstressed. /a/ is sometimes fronted after the palatals /j ʃ/, going as far as [æ] for some speakers. The typical realization of /a/ is in the general area of the low right hand corner of the IPA chart, and /i u/ are also usually realized pretty much like their cardinal values in most cases.
Taahu also possesses a system of pitch accent. Each word in the language (except for some particles and such) has a single stressed syllable, which as mentioned before, can be pronounced with high, falling, or rising tone. This determines the tone that every other syllable in the word has. No matter what tone the stressed syllable has, any existing syllable directly before it has low tone. Syllables preceding that one will alternate from low to mid-high. Syllables after the stressed one will either all be low tone, or in the case of stressed high/rising tone syllables, slowly falling until the last syllable which is invariably low. Short stressed vowels act the same as long, high syllables wrt. this process, except when they have a glottal stop coda, in which case they are pronounced with a sharply rising tone, and following syllables act as if the stressed syllable was falling (i.e. they are all pronounced low). Note that this effect does not occur if the glottal stop is intervocalic.
That's about all I've got on phonology for now, unless something's unclear or you'd like something else to be described. Coming up whenever: Morphology. Specifically, noun inflection.
