Taalen Phonology

Phonology

Consonants

Taalen's phonetic inventory is fairly simple, and should be familiar to any English speaker, with a few exceptions. The voiceless nasals, bilabial fricatives (as well as palatal and velar fricatives), and the lateral fricatives are likely familiar from languages such as Welsh, Japanese, and German. Note also the presence of syllabic resonants.

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	/p/ /b/			/t/ /d/			/k/ /g/
Nasal	/m̥/ /m/			/n̥/ /n/			/ŋ̥/ /ŋ/
Fricative		/f/ /v/	/θ/ /ð/	/s/	/ʃ/		/ɣ/	/h/
Approx.		/w/				/j/
Flap				/ɹ̥//ɾ/
Lat. App.				/l/
Lat. Fric.				/ɬ/

The voiceless stops are usually aspirated; in narrow transcription, [pʰ tʰ kʰ].

Continuants (excluding voiceless nasals, liquids, voiced nasals, and fricatives) may be geminate (i.e. long), with onset in the coda of one syllable and release in the onset of the next.

Vowels

Basic description/intro will be here.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	/i/ /ɪ/		/ʊ/ /u/
Close-mid	/e/ /ø/		/o/
Open-mid	/ɛ/ /æ/	/ə/
Open	/a/		/ɑ/

Some resonants may also be syllabic: /m̩/ /n̩/ /ɹ̩/ /l̩/ as in <bottom>, <button>, <butter>, and <bottle>.

Vowel length is not phonemic, though stressed vowels tend to be held longer, and unstressed vowels tend to be weakened.

Diphthongs

Taalen possesses seven diphthongs, all falling: /aɪ eɪ oɪ əɪ aʊ oʊ əʊ/.

Allophones

• [ç] and [x] are allophonic variants of /h/, the former appearing only near a front vowel, and the latter before a consonant or finally.
• /f/ appears as [ɸ], and /v/ as [β], in free variation.
• [ɬ] and [ɮ] also appear in free variation.
• [ʌ] alternates with /ə/ in stressed syllables.
• [ɾ] surfaces as [ɹ̩] when syllabic.

Stress

Taalen words are regularly stressed on the penultimate syllable. The only exception is when an unvoiced plosive ([p t k]) appears non-initially, in which case that syllable is stressed.

Cadarina /ˌka.də.ˈɾi.nə/ : normal stress, with normal Taalen spelling
Catarina /kə.ˈtʰa.ɾi.nə/ : spelling closer to standard, and exceptional stress placement

Mutation

Taalen is rich in mutation, partly a result of its polysynthetic typology. There are three primary types of mutation, lenition, nasaliszation, and vocalization. None of the mutations are strictly grammatical in nature, instead resulting from the morphophonology. Because of the nature of some morphemes, it can be difficult to see this, as the surface realization of a particular marker might only be mutation in the majority of cases.

Lenition

Historically, lenition arose most often from sibilants or liquids + stops initially, intervocalically, and from geminate stops. It also arose in syllabic codae, but only affected stops. It creates fricatives from stops, nasals are unvoiced, and fricatives tend to be weakened to approximants.

Nasalization

Arising from nasal assimilation, nasalization mutates unvoiced stops into voiced stops, and voiced stops into nasals.

Vocalization

The most common and complex mutation, vocalization is the primary means by which medial clusters are simplified in Taalen. In addition to voiced consonants becoming vowels, unvoiced consonants usually cause other changes. Some vowels arise simply as a result of compensatory lengthening, which is not technically vocalization, but has been classed as such by the Elder grammarians. In a similar vein, some consonants do not vocalize, but aspirate or otherwise mutate eiether themselves of consecutive consonants or vowels, and these are classed as vocalization mutations as well.

The diphthong-rich vocabulary of Taalen owes much of it's existence to this mutation historically. Many of the non-voiced phonemes caused compensatory lengthening (noted as Long in the summary below), prior to the breaking of long vowels into diphthongs. Here is a characteristic example:

rag- 'to carry'

with

-de a resultative suffix

becomes

raede /ɾəɪ.dɛ/ : stative verb 'to be borne, carried'

Summary of Mutation

Phoneme	Lenition	Nasalization	Vocalization
p	ph or f	b	...
t	th	d	...
c	h	g	...
b	bh or v	m	u
d	dh	n	i
g	gh	ñ	Long
m	mh		u
n	nh		i
ñ	ñh		Long
mh		m	u + devoicing
nh		n	i + devoicing
ñh		ñ	Long + devoicing
f	null	v	Long + aspiration
th	h	dh	Long + aspiration
h	null	gh	Long + aspiration
v	u		u
dh	y		i
gh	Long		Long
s	sh		Long + aspiration
sh	h		Long + aspiration
y	hi	ni	i
r	rh		Long + aspiration
rh			Long + aspiration
l	lh		Long + aspiration
lh			Long + aspiration

Empty cells indicate that no change occurs.

Phonotactics

Syllabic onsets may consist of any consonant. In addition, the following clusters are permitted:

• voiced stops + liquids: /bɾ bl dɾ dl gɾ gl/ only root initially
• stop + glide: /pj bj tj dj kj gj/ (only word initially)
• nasal + glide: /nj ŋj mw ŋw/ (*/nw mj/ are not allowed)
• /sv lj/

Syllabic nuclei consist of a single vowel or diphthong. Vowels cannot remain in hiatus (*/aɛ/) but instead become a diphthong or introduce a glide: */iə/ -> /ijə/. The lax vowels /ɪ ʊ æ ø/ cannot appear without a coda finally, and create geminate consonants following (runn /ɾʊnː/ vs. run /ɾun/). Y cannot appear as a vowel in a stressed syllable, unless it is a monosyllable. Note that it can be the only orthographic "vowel" in a syllable, to indicate a syllabic resonant (ynda /'n̩.də/).
The coda of a syllable can only be a continuant (though the nasals, liquids, and sibilants are much more common than fricatives) or null. Immediately preceding an onset cluster, no coda is allowed. In compounding, codae often vocalize before a cluster: /tam/ + /bran/ -> /taʊbrən/ (with unstressed /a/ -> /ə/). Geminate consonants are limited to continuants.
Cross-syllable (i.e. medial) clusters are limited.

• nasal + homorganic voiced stop: /mb nd ŋg/
• nasal + glide: /nj ŋj mw ŋw/
• /l/ + heterorganic nasal: /lm lŋ/
• liquid + glide: /lj lw rj rw/
• /ɬ/ + voiceless stop: /ɬp ɬt ɬk/
• certain fricative + liquid clusters: /fɾ vɾ θɾ ðɾ ʃɾ xɾ ɣɾ θl ðl/
• velar fricative + homorganic glide: /çj xw/
• /h/ + voiceless stop: /hp ht hk/

Syllables are therefore ON, NC, or ONC, where O is onset, N is nucleus, and C is coda. Words tend to be 3 syllables or less.

Orthography

	Phoneme	Romanization
Stops	/p t k b d g/	p t c b d g
Nasals	/m̥ m n̥ n ŋ̥ ŋ/	mh m nh n ñh ñ
Fricatives	/f v θ ð s ʃ ɣ h/	f v th dh s sh gh h
Sonorants	/w ɹ̥ ɾ j l ɬ/	u rh r y l lh
Vowels	/i ɪ ʊ u e ø o ɛ æ ə a ɑ/	i y u u e eu o e ea y a aa
Diphthongs	/aɪ eɪ oɪ əɪ aʊ oʊ əʊ/	ai ei oe ae au ou ao

The letter y is also used to mark syllabicity on the four resonants: yn = /n̩/, ym = /m̩/, yr = /ɾ̩/, and yl = /l̩/. It is also used to indicate /ə/, as can the simple vowels in unstressed syllables. These syllabics can only appear word finally.

U before a vowel is /w/, which never occurs before a back vowel (o or u). In the case where composition brings u before such a vowel, it becomes v: -au + o- = -avo-.

Though vowels cannot remain in hiatus (two sequential vowels which do not indicate a diphthong), they do appear frequently with understood glides between. For example, ia represents two syllables, /i.jə/, and uan can be one or two syllables, /wan/ or /u.wən/. The two syllable reading is usually distinguished with y, which is not a primarily stressed vowel unless in a monosyllable, making uan and uyn (exactly as the native script does). It can also be indicated in romanization with ', so that the two could be distinguished as uan and u'an.

The digraph ch does not appear, replaced in mutation by h. The phoneme /ŋ/ is always represented by ñ, even in a cluster: /ŋg/ ñg.

Because Taalen does not allow stops finally, stems or words ending in stops aspirate them, and mark them with ' to indicate their origins:

ragh /ˈɾaɣ/ 'mist'	ragha /ˈɾa.ɣə/ 'mists'
rag'h /ˈɾaɣ/ 'he carries'	ragen /ˈɾa.gɛn/ 'I carry'

A newer romanization is gaining ground, in which such distinctions are not written, and left to the reader to clarify. The use of the apostrophe therefore has acquired an antiquated, victorian feel to its use.

Geminate consonants (such as ll /lː/) are generally represented by doubling. In the native writing system, a special symbol is used for this (as well as in aa). The geminate digraphs are represented by tth, ddh, ggh, nng, ssh, and llh, (ph and bh only appear as the result of mutation, and thus won't appear geminated).

Links

Taalen Ethnography
Taalen Morphology