Poswa phonology

Poswa is a language spoken in the center of Rilola. It is spread over more territory than any other language. Poswa is in many ways similar to its closest relative Pabappa, but much more complex.

Phonologically, Poswa sounds like baby talk despite its many long words. The consonants p and b are particularly well represented, as in the sample sentences below:

Pappel poppepa₁ pwaepaba₂, puppypi, papopob, pypembaba₃ poppapwop₄ wa₅ poppupwop.₆

The teenager sat₂ in the bathtub₁ like an obstacle, wearing a shirt, and holding₃ two feathers₄ and₅ two knives.₆

Baby wa bebobo babaem bubwi, bububibepi wa bubožbabepi bibabi.

We jumped with our kids in the playground, licking four coconuts and five cantaloupes.

The above sentences could easily be expanded, the first by giving the teen in the bathtub other things to hold onto, such as a dandelion (pape), a snake (papap), a pineapple (one word is pappypa), and so on. Meanwhile the people in the playground could look around and realize their playground is full of mud (bebbo) and spiders (bibubby) and so return home (bibia).

Most words begin with a single consonant. Very few words begin with vowels, and there are only a few permissible initial clusters. However, note that Poswa considers labialized consonants such as /pw/, /bw/, etc to be single consonants rather than clusters.

Consonants

There are 33 consonants, all in pairs of plain vs labialized, except /w/, which is considered a labialized version of silence. The others are /p b m f v t n s l tš dž š ž k g r/ and their labialized counterparts.

/tš/ and /dž/

Sometimes /tš/ and /dž/ are not considered proper consonants, instead being analyzed as clusters, which would reduce the number of consonants to 29. This is because they cannot occur in word-final position. Nevertheless, word-initial /tš/ and /dž/ have survived, whereas the other clusters /ps/ and /pš/ have been reduced to /p/ in word-initial and often also medial positions. If /tš/ and /dž/ are analyzed as clusters, they are usually analyzed as /t/ + /š/ and /t/ + /ž/, because there is no /d/ in the language. However, this presents a problem, because Poswa does not allow dissimilar voicing in clusters.

Labiodentals

The consonants /f v/ are labiodental, but /fʷ vʷ/ are rounded and bilabial. /fʷ/ is very rare at the beginning of a word, except in loans, because the primeval /fʷ/ changed to a simple /w/. Likewise /g/ is rare in all positions because it changed to /dž/ in most environments and this change happened very recently. Presently most plain /g/ is either from /gʷ/ before a front vowel or is a loanword.

Sibilants

Poswa has six sibilants: /s š ž sʷ šʷ žʷ/. None of them assimilate in voicing when placed next to opposite-voiced consonants; however, such clusters are very rare in native words.

Note that Poswa allows unusual clusters which are difficult for foreigners to pronounce. For example, pušse "screw" contrasts with pusše "cave" and pušše "your screw".

Labialization in syllable-final position

Labialization is robust and can be contrastive everywhere: rulpu "face" /rulpu/ and rulpu "bandage, napkin" /rulʷpu/ are not homophones and not even considered a rhyme. Another such pair is peftum "tantrum, frenzy, spasm" and peftum "arrow, weapon".

Consonant gemination

In theory, all consonants can be geminated across syllable boundaries. However, this is only because Poswa considers the labiovelar approximant /w/ to be a labialized version of silence (/∅/), meaning that it is its own geminate. This analysis is common in neighboring languages that also have contrastive labialization, even those that are only distantly related to Poswa.

Any consonant cluster that is acceptable at the beginning of a syllable can have its first element become a geminate and still be a valid cluster.

Labialization can change across a syllable boundary, and therefore across an otherwise geminate consonant. For example, the word pappa "forest, grassland" is phonetically /papʷpa/, with a labialized /pʷ/ at the end of the first syllable but a plain /p/ immediately after it at the beginning of the second syllable. This is not distinguished in Romanization.

However, note that labialization cannot change within a cluster that does not straddle a syllable boundary. Thus, for example, a cluster like /pʷl/ at the beginning of a syllable is impossible; it would instead change to /pʷlʷ/.

Sound rules affecting consonant gemination

Poswa has a sandhi process that simplifies all geminate consonants in a word after the first. That is to say, words obeying this rule can have only one geminate consonant. This applies to all types of geminates, be they stops, nasals, fricatives, or liquids, but does not apply to other types of consonant clusters.

Thus, the compound of talap "face" and bavva "back section" is talabbava "later half of a period of time".

However, words can disobey this rule for any of several reasons:

• Words which are dynamic compounds, not intended to be common words, and are not perceived by listeners as indivisible concepts will often disobey the rule: nappapuppos, "circle lake dam", is not considered a unitary concept because there is nothing about such a lake that will make a dam built on it unique in a way that other dams are not. Indeed, a compound like this is more commonly seen as two separate words, nappa puppos, but may be united into a single word during a conversation about various local dams.

• Likewise, compounds in which the second element is perceived as more salient than the first may also keep their second gemination: puppuppo "my snow tire" has two geminates because the second element, puppo "my wheel" is considered more important to the meaning of the word than the first element, which means snowshoe.

• Compounds in which the first element is only one syllable long are usually not degeminated, unless the entire word is itself often used as the second element of a compound.

• Loanwords are usually not degeminated.

Consonant symbolism and expressive use of rare consonants

The most commonly used consonants in Poswa are /p/, /b/, and /m/. In general, the further forward in the mouth a consonant is, the more common it is. Thus, the velar stops /k/ and /g/ are very rare, and any words containing a /k/ or /g/ stand out sharply from the rest of any sentence they appear in.

Indeed, most occurrences of the Roman letter k or g in Poswa are actually examples of the phonemes /kʷ/ and /gʷ/, which are considered to be separate consonants in Poswa. Whereas labialized consonants in general are less common than their plain counterparts, for velar consonants, they are actually more common because sound changes have turned most /k/ into /t/, /p/, or /w/, and most /g/ into /dž/ or a vowel hiatus, but both sets of sound changes affected the labialized forms of these consonants less frequently.

Remnants of the Gold consonant gender system

In the Gold language, gender was indicated by the consonants in a word, and there were eight genders. Gender was used both literally and metaphorically at this stage. The word for husband was ṭutə; the word for wife was mumhə. These words have survived in modern Poswa as tuti and mumi respectively, and most Poswobs are aware that the resemblance of the two words is no coincidence. However, the gender system ceased operation thousands of years ago and nobody could coin a new word by changing consonants such as this and expect to be understood.

In the Gold language and its early descendants, the consonant gender system became increasingly messy due to sound changes, and it stopped being operative in Babakiam when a series of sound changes eliminated many intervocalic consonants entirely. The t and m shown above were preserved, but many other consonants were lost, and some sound changes caused certain consonants to merge with others, frustrating the gender system.

Use of consonants in early Poswa to show metaphorical gender-like traits

When the gender system ceased to be used for literal purposes, an extension of the setup used for metaphorical expressions remained. For example, the masculine consonants t and k were inserted into words with vowel hiatus to form a word describing a larger, sharper, or otherwise more dangerous version of the object being described. Few words coined in this manner remained in the language, since their ability to be understood was dependent on the listener mentally substituting one word for another while parsing the sentence.

Instead, a much more common process at this time was syntactic drift. Words containing the masculine consonants t and k, for example, tended to change meaning over time into describing objects that were seen as more inherently masculine. Likewise, the feminine consonants p and m took on the implied meanings of softness and delicateness.

However, as the language developed, its phonology changed more and more into the infantile setup seen today in modern Poswa. The Gold language had been fairly guttural, with six of its 19 consonants being velar or postvelar, and with the voiceless velar ejective /ḳ/ tending towards a uvular pronunciation in some dialects. But Babakiam lost the ejective series, softened the velar fricatives /x g/ into the postalveolars /š ž/, and lost the voiced velar stop /ġ/. Moreover, the only two remaining dorsal consonants, /k/ and /ŋ/, disappeared from many words due to many other sound changes. For example, /kʷ/ became /p/ unconditionally, and in many positions, the plain /k/ became /p/ too. For example, the Gold word ʕʷakmaḳ "snake" became Babakiam papap; every consonant in the word had been pushed into the same outcome: /p/.

Thus, from the standpoint of a speaker acquainted with the Gold language's consonant gender symbolism, it was very difficult in Babakiam to talk about anything strong or dangerous; everything seemed to be soft and feminine. When speakers of the Moonshine language invaded Babakiam's homeland about 4800 years ago, they found the Bābā soldiers adorable and promised to teach their children to speak Babakiam in the hopes that learning a soft, effeminate language would make their own people more peaceful in the future.

Remnants of the gender system in modern Poswa

As Babakiam developed into Poswa and Pabappa, its sound system changed far more than it had before. In Pabappa, velar consonants are entirely absent, and in Poswa they are very rare. But consonant symbolism has not died out; it has merely changed. Modern Poswobs no longer see the very rare velar sounds /k g/ as their preferred choices for describing something dangerous or aggressive; they are so rare that their presence makes a word sound foreign or remarkable, but not necessarily dangerous.

Unable to use their velar consonants, modern Poswobs have turned to other sounds to give a word an aggressive or dangerous feel. Primarily, these are taken from subconscious associations with words whose definitions are already associated with violence and danger; often these are words for weapons and other sharp objects. It has turned out that in modern Poswa, the consonants most clearly associated with violence are the labiodental consonants /f v/ and the rounded labiovelar approximant /w/.

The voiced labiodental fricative /v/ is entirely new to the language; even Babakiam had not had such a sound. Thus, /v/ is not a particularly common sound in Poswa, and due to the circumstances of the sound changes which caused it to arise, it is most common in word-internal position, and fairly rare at the beginning of a word. Since all words are stressed on the first syllable, modern Poswa's consonant symbolism relies heavily on the first letter of a word to give it its flavor. Thus, those few words beginning with /v/ have often come to take on violent associations even in those cases where their original meaning was less specific. This is especially true of verbs.

Examples of consonants used symbolistically to describe aggression

Below are some examples of words which have acquired aggressive meanings by subconscious associations with their consonants, particularly their initial consonants.

/v/

Babakiam did not have a /v/ sound; all /v/ in Poswa is due to recent sound changes. Most /v/ in Poswa is cognate to /n/, /d/, or /r/ in Pabappa, though the bilabials /p b m/ sometimes also correspond to Poswa /v/.

Vaffebi pispipypiep.

I destroyed the termites.

Vivi, bipos lattšop twifebi.

I cried when I hurt my thumb.

Vabžebi potibemwop.

I gobbled the candy.

Vubwab pummatšop pippibebel.

The alligator bit off my leg. (The word puswam also means alligator but is less commonly used.)

Although Poswa considers /vʷ/ to be a separate consonant from /v/, it still carries some of the same associations:

Levobampobiepi vwambebi.

I ate the strawberries rapidly.

For the other consonants mentioned, the association is also stronger when the word being used begins with that consonant rather than merely including it somewhere else:

/w/

Wiwibebi webabiep.

I blew on the leaves.

Sabas watubbwa.

The man is dangerous.

Wapiešo wiwafaba numbunia!

My opponent is hitting me too hard!

Wipipebi pwaepiap.

I broke the chair.

Mampum wawiebe?

Why did you beat me up?

Weswefi.

I stabbed him.

Warwatwebi žuftap.

I wiped the floor.

Poršo wumpsuffabo fupam.

My blood is spilling on the table.

Potwum wapfeži blampub.

The poison is killing the soldiers.

/f/

Baepopebi faepašo žysop.

I pressed hard on the glass.

Fompwafo!

I'm making a mess!

Fopabo papapatos.

I'm afraid of the snakes.

Fampem sašaepop pumpumpaba.

Somebody big is blocking the door.

Pwawam, swombwi potibemwop fefappwi.

Please, buy me the hard candy.

Fuvorbub!

Let me stab you!

The voiceless rounded bilabial fricative fw- is very rare in initial position in native Poswa words because it changed to w- unconditionally, and no other phoneme fell in unconditionally to replace it. Instead, word-initial /fʷ/ results from a few conditional changes. Thus, word-initial /fʷ/ is very rare and does not carry the same mental associations as word-initial /f/. The only commonly used native words beginning with /fʷ/ are fwulpwa "menstrual blood" and its derivatives.

/r/

Other consonants can have a similar appeal. For example, the voiced approximant r is sometimes considered a "violent" consonant as well. Most occurrences of /r/ in modern Poswa can be traced back to earlier words in the Gold language that had /l/. /l/ was never considered a particularly aggressive-sounding consonant, so the association in Poswa is new. R is less common in modern Poswa than it was in earlier times because much of what was once /r/ has changed over the years into /v/ or /b/.

Famambava rinweža.

Surprise is a weapon.

Pubambep pimpwop rašebel.

The bee stung the boy.

Pubuwas pumbawa bivibom ruviatwebel.

The tiger's paws left open wounds across my body.

Note that, while Poswa's /r/ often corresponds to the Gold language /l/, and Poswa's /l/ often corresponds to an earlier /r/, it is not generally claimed that the two sounds switched places because the /r/ of modern Poswa is a uvular approximant whereas the /r/ of the primeval language was an alveolar flap.

/pr/

Fessupwu prappubiba.

The pineapple is heavy.

Other consonants with symbolic meanings

/ž/

Many terms describing sex and intimate relationships begin with ž. For example, žašša "sexual intercourse"; žanam "sweetheart"; žam love; žabe "pillow"; žwa "mattress"; žuža "blanket"; žise "to devote oneself to another"; žužu "embarrassment, nudity"; žužužišaf "pornography"; žy "marriage".

This is no coincidence; far back in the past there was a root word, gi, which meant "bare skin; to feel, touch directly", and this turned into a simple ž- in most words in Poswa. Thus, many words for concepts related to the hands and feet also begin with ž, such as žiraes "handful". Note that words for intimate body parts such as the breasts, buttocks, and genitalia do not generally contain this ž- morpheme, as its original meaning referred to bare skin and the sensation of touching or feeling something with the hands and feet; the secondary meanings such as cuddling came later on.

/tʷ/

The voiceless labialized alveolar stop /tʷ/ occurs at the beginning of only a few words, mostly unrelated to each other.

Vowels

Poswa has a six-vowel system, /a e i o u ə/, with no distinctions of tone or length; a system that is common on their continent. For example, it is the same system found in Thaoa. The order of the vowels in the native Poswob alphabet is the same as above, an order taken from Pabappa.

The sixth vowel is spelled y but corresponds to a vowel similar to the IPA schwa /ə/. For convenience, it is here referred to as /y/ in phonetic notation as well.

The scarcity of /y/

The vowel y is mostly an allomorph of consonantal labialization, appearing when the reduction of a previously existing /o u y/ to simple labialization was not possible, generally due to being blocked by consonant clusters on one or both sides, or by occurring at the end of a word after a cluster. For example, the word puppypem has a true syllabic /y/ because the expected sound change to *pupppem could not occur. (Triple /p/ did briefly occur at one stage in the development of the language, but both before and after this stage, it was illegal, and remains so today.)

However, there are a small number of words that have /y/ in a position in which it could have collapsed to form a legally permissible consonant cluster but did not. One example is pampyte "(to) promise". One might expect the /y/ to reduce, since /mpʷt/ is a valid consonant cluster, and then for the /t/ to drop out due to the sound rule mpt ---> mp, thus leaving /mpʷ/. However, in this word the /y/ remains as a full vowel. Words like these are always either compounds or words that had previously had denser consonant clusters. Pampyte is of the latter type; it was earlier spelled pampfyte, a cluster from which the -y- could not be dropped.

Diphthongs

The only firm diphthong in Poswa is /ae/.

Poswa allows the vowel sequences /ia ie io iu/, which are pronounced by most speakers as falling diphthongs (that is, the /i/ part of the diphthong is longer), but by other speakers, particularly in the southern states, as vowel sequences. This is due to influence from Pabappa, where all such vowel combinations are pronounced as two-syllable sequences. The origin of these sequences is a mixture of previously existing diphthongs and previously existing vowel sequences.

In some border areas near the isogloss border, they are pronounced as two-syllable vowel sequences when the first vowel is stressed, but as falling diphthongs when the first vowel is unstressed. Since all words are accented on their initial syllable, this is equivalent to saying they are pronounced with hiatus when occurring in an initial syllable.

The consonant /rʷ/ is pronounced [w] after a vowel, and thus words like pwar "bubble" can be analyzed as [pʷaw], and thus as containing diphthongs. However this is a property of allophony and these words are not considered by most speakers to contain diphthongs because they cannot take additional consonants in the syllable coda. That is, a word like

Pwaem!

On the bottom!

Is a valid word, but a word like *pwarm cannot exist. Instead, the locative case of pwar "bubble" is

Pwarom!

In the bubble!

Likewise, the sequence -ea- occasionally occurs in Poswa, but this is just a nonstandard phonetic respelling of -er- in words such as peapup "name" and weaby "to surround"; that is, Poswa's /r/ sound has an allophone similar to [a] when occurring after the vowel /e/. But because this is still an /r/, there cannot be a further consonant in the coda of such a syllable; that is, a hypothetical words like *weamby could not exist.

Resolution of vowel sequences

Very few Poswa words begin with vowels due to a historical sound change which inserted a consonant which later became /b/ at the beginning of a vowel-initial syllable if that syllable was accented. At that time, most words were accented on the initial syllable. Nevertheless, a few native words beginning with vowels do exist, and when noun compounds are made with these words as the second element, sound rules apply in order to resolve the illegal vowel sequences. Below is a chart detailing these rules, with nouns as example words:

Vowel Sequences

	apa	etto	ipi	oba	umu
apa	afapa	apaetto	apaepi	afoba	apomu
pupe	puplapa	pupletto	puplipi	puploba	puplumu
ipi	iplapa	ipletto	iplipi	iploba	iplumu
etto	ettarapa	ettaretto	ettaripi	ettaroba	ettarumu
umu	ubrapa	ubretto	ubripi	ubroba	ubrumu
plae	plalapa	plaletto	plalipi	plaloba	plalumu

Note that the vowel /y/ is not on the chart because words that end in it are considered to end in an allophone of /w/, and because no native words begin with it. Likewise, very few native words begin with the diphthong /ae/, and those that do, such as aežo "expansion, buildability" behave fully as if they began with the simple /a/ vowel.

NOTE

There ma be cme residual of the "KARAOKE shift" whereby all vbowels become high before other vowe;ls. that is, they become /i/ or /u/.

Allophones

Allophones of consonants

Consonants are not affected by vowels in any way; the only allophones of consonants are those determined by the presence of other consonants. Thus one can say

Pupipupa pepo!

Universal foam!

And every /p/ will be pronounced the same. (The rare vowel /y/ can cause labialization, but this is considered sandhi, since the consonant actually changes from /p/ to /pʷ/, rather than shifting to a different allophone.)

The liquids /l/ and /r/

The liquid consonants /l/ and /r/ have voiceless allophones after a voiceless consonant (most commonly /p/, and often /s/). This is important because the mutated forms of these consonants are normally /ž/ and /b/ respectively, but when the original consonant is voiceless, the voicelessness spreads to the mutated forms as well, producing /š/ and /p/, a change which has become phonemicized.

When the triple consonant -ppp- appears in the underlying form of a word, the third /p/ is deleted. Thus, for example, the mutated form of the verb tšippra "to pick out one's reflection (in a mirror)" is tšippa-, not *tšipppa-. This oddly specific verb appears in one of the words for homosexuality, but can also be used literally:

Sampama tšippel.

The octopus recognized its reflection in the mirror.

Note that vowels have no effect whatsoever on the pronunciation of consonants. Every consonant is pronounced exactly the same regardless of which vowels come before and after it; allophones are determined only by the presence of other consonants.

Allophones of vowels

Vocalic allophones are primarily determined by their position with respect to labialized consonants.

Sandhi and other morphonological processes

Poswa does not have extensive sandhi. What exists is difficult to untangle from morphological processes, since analogy has led sandhi changes to extend to environments in which they did not originally occur.

Consonant mutation

Poswa has several active processes of consonant mutation. The most important by far derives historically from sequences of consonants followed by the vowel /i/ before another vowel. This is called batšies popožaliempa. These changed into palatalized consonants, and then gradually, by steps, changed into other consonants. Today there are no palatalized consonants in Poswa, and many of the formerly palatalized consonants are today pronounced in ways that give little evidence of their former pronunciation. For example, the regular reflex of the previously existing /rʲ/ is /b/.

Base	Mutated	Lab.	Lab. Mut.
p	f	pw	pi
b	b	bw	bi
m	v	mw	mi
f	f	fw	fi
v	v	vw	vi
	i	w	wi
t	f	tw	ti
n	v	nw	ni
s	š	sw	si
š	š	šw	ši
ž	ž	žw	ži
l	ž	lw	li
k	tš	kw	ki
g	dž	gw	gi
r	b	rw	ri

Labialized consonants could be affected by the palatal mutation, as well, but here the transformation was much simpler, since the labialization itself was palatalized, leaving the basic consonant sound unaffected. The result of this process was that the labialization disappeared, and the full vowel /i/ remained in its place. Note that although the sequence /wi/ is pronounced [wi] in most environments, when it occurs between two vowels the [w] is indeed swallowed, leaving a phonetic [j] sound that is not considered an independent phoneme in Poswa. Thus wawia "playground" is pronounced [waja].

Some consonants may seem to have more than one mutated form, because of sound changes that caused certain clusters to become single consonants, and because of voicing assimilation for liquid consonants following voiceless consonants. For convenience, in the table at left the basic consonants are each shown paired with their labialized counterparts.

Consonant clusters mutate according to the paradigm of their outermost member. In many cases, previously existing consonant clusters have become worn down through sound change into single consonants; these still faithfully behave as they originally did, although in most cases the mutated form of the cluster is also worn down into a single consonant. Nevertheless, the previously existing outer consonant shields the remaining inner consonant from the sound change. Thus, for example, the mutated form of a syllable-initial cluster /ps/ is /pš/, as one would predict from the table, but the mutated form of a previously existing syllable-initial /ps/ that has been worn down into /p/ is also /p/, because the same sound change that removed the outer -s also removed every outer -š. These are called wet syllables (see below).

Wet syllables

Wet syllables (pompamba twom) are syllables satisfying one of a few criteria:

• Syllables beginning with the voiceless bilabial stops /p/ and /pʷ/, but which historically began with the consonant clusters ps pš pf and their labialized counterparts.
• Syllables beginning with /ps pš pf/ in the present day, but which are susceptible to losing the fricatives in certain grammatical operations. In some environments, they lose the fricative offglide and retain just the p.

These syllables are called wet syllables because the consonant clusters /ps pš pf/ and their labialized counterparts are evocative of the sound of flowing water. In early Poswa, there was a word pys which indeed meant "flowing water", and many words began with /ps/ or one of the other clusters. In modern Poswa, however, the fricatives have mostly disappeared, and the word spoken of above survives only as part of a compound, pypo. Nevertheless, the fricatives do still sometimes appear, and the syllables are still spoken of as wet syllables because they behave differently in certain grammatical processes and were until recently spelled with a different row of letters in the native syllabary.

The loss of the fricatives is mostly a historical process, and speakers do not need to think of it, but it does come into play when conjugating verbs and forming certain compounds.

For example, papsa means "white", and one can say

Bibabatšo papsa.

The top of my tongue is white.

However, if used as a compound, the papsa word is unstressed, and therefore one says

Bibabappapwa.

White (top of) tongue. (A symptom of candidiasis).

Since color words are nearly always used as adjectives, and all have the same historical -(y)s- infix, analogy has led them to be sometimes used without the -(y)s- even in stressed form. Generally, the -s- is retained when a color word is used as a noun, for example

Apsa babuba.

The red one is hot.

Wet syllables are important to recognize, especially in nouns, because when the last syllable of the stem of a noun is wet, it conjugates differently than one would otherwise predict. For example, in early Poswa the commonest word for "world" was pupsipšu. Today, however, the last two syllables have become wet, meaning that the word has become pupipu. Many of the inflected forms of the word are the same as what one would expect from a typical noun with this final syllable; for example, the accusative is pupipup. But in other forms, where one might expect the final -p- to mutate to an -f-, it remains -p-, because the mutated form of -pš- has always been -pš- itself, and therefore both clusters changed to -p- in the modern language.

Wet syllables in initial position

Historically, the wet clusters ps- and pš- occurred in initial position, but they have both changed to a simple p-. On the other hand, pf- still exists. /ps/ and /pš/ are still considered valid syllable onsets, because Poswa allows all onsets that occur within words to also appear word-initially, but there are no words beginning with these clusters in modern Poswa apart from placenames and reborrowings from archaic dialects that did not undergo the shift. For example, a mountain in the southern extreme of the Poswob Empire is known as Psempsepos, "Camel Mountain", which would be Pempepos if it had been named in the standard Poswa dialect.

Similar phenomena

The consonant cluster -tf- behaves in a similar fashion to the wet syllables, but is not considered to be one of them because /tf/ can only occur over a syllable boundary, with no other consonant preceding it. That is, words like bampfa "gas" and blolpša "license, passport" exist, but a word like *bantfa or *boltfa is impossible.

Likewise, a similar phenonemon happens with the consonant cluster -nt- by itself; it is not considered to form wet syllables by itself, but its mutated version does: the present progressive form of peppanta "to be forced to move" is peppampa.

Spelling

Poswa is written with a very complicated syllabary, named Toppwe (or Pompoppwe to be more specific), in which some letters are drawn inside other letters. Not all possible syllables are represented, but all of the syllables that require two letters to spell are phonological reflexes of previously existing two-syllable sequences. Labialization, though not represented in the Romanized form of the alphabet, is distinguished in Toppwe. For instance the word pappa "medicine" contrasts with pappa "field" in that the second p in the second word is labialized. The first is spelled in Toppwe as pap-pa, the second as pabʷ-pa (because /bʷp/ is not a valid consonant cluster in the language, it is automatically read as /pʷp/). All in all there are about 1500 letters in Toppwe, including a small number of bisyllabic graphemes representing common sequences such as /bies/ and a few abbreviations.

Sound changes and vocabulary retention

Poswa does much better than Pabappa at retaining old monosyllabic vocabulary from the Babakiam language due to its larger phonology and slower rate of sound change.

With the Poswobs' strong knowledge of their written history, some words which would not be used in normal speech, such as i "bubble" and ti "dream" are nevertheless widely understood and can be used in abbreviations and poetic compounds. For example, mabem means soap, and mabemi is widely understood as meaning "soap bubbles, lather" without having to use the longer form mabempwar. Note also that i as a standalone word is still widely understood to mean "buoy", as it has for the last 4000 years.

Nevertheless, the ability to create all-vowel sentences is long gone, and most words in Poswa have at least two syllables.

Sound changes

The many ways to /p/

As in Pabappa, there are many paths which lead from various Babakiam consonants to Poswa /p/. Many of these changes are found only in certain phonetic environments, but some of these environments are common. For example, immediately following an /m/ in a third or later syllable, the consonants /f s š tš t k/ all merged as /p/, and /v ž l r/ all merged as /b/. The intermediate paths here involved clusters; the steps of the first sound change were /f s š t k/ > /pf ps pš ptš pt pk/ > /p p p p p p/; and the steps of the second were /v ž l r/ > /bv bž bl br/ > /b b b b/.

Yet, the above sound changes are commonly found at the beginnings of Poswa words as well. This is because historically, many morphemes could appear either as stressed independent words or as unstressed clitics occurring immediately after a different word. For example, the verb tša "to transform, change into something else" changed into pa because it was a translative marker modifying a word in the locative case, which always ends in -m. Thus, tša was often unstressed, and the sound changes which took place when the word was unstressed were transferred by analogy to the stressed form as well.

The sound change champions

• pobbas "war", from pau babibup mibeas. Note that this was originally a euphemism meaning "to destroy unarmed people", replacing many other words for war which, however, still survive in compounds.
• pwubo "salary, rate of pay", from pepibu miaau "career value".
• polfwatos "vegetarian", from pauyau pabaa kataus, "able to eat fresh fruit".
• peffofapwa "red rose", from pipta babupte apusa
• povbia "to want to become pregnant", from pusmabaupubiba

Most of the extreme examples involve deletion of /b/ in unstressed syllables, resulting in vowel sequences which then contracted into single vowels.

Note that some modern Poswa words are actually longer than the Babakiam words they came from, primarily because of an early sound change reforming the old Babakiam long vowels ā ī ū into sequences. Of these, only ā had a regular outcome: aba. Thus Babakiam fā "face, facial (expression)" becomes modern Poswa waba.