Sisiwön

"Sisiwön" is the provisional name of a collaborative Conlang, started in June 2004, by a small group of members of the Conlang list: Paul Bennett, Alex Fink, Rob Haden, Joe, and Robert "Trebor" Jung.

The name itself, while phonologically compatible with the language, doesn't actually mean anything (yet).

This page is essentially a public repository of information on Sisiwön. Work on the language is conducted in the Yahoo group ConlangCollaboration. If you'd like to participate, feel free to join the group (as opposed to changing this page directly).

I know nothing about editing this Wiki, and the help page is blank. Help! (PaulBennett)

Phonology

Vowels

There are a total of twenty phonetic vowels: i /I/, ii /i:/, ü /Y/, üü /y:/, ï /U_c/, ïï /M:/, u /U/, uu /u:/, e /E/, ee /e:/, ö /9/, öö /2:/, ë /V/, ëë /7:/, o /O/, oo /o:/, ä /&/, ää /&:/, a /A/, aa /A:/. However, due to vowel harmony, any given word will only contain a subset of these, either the front series (i ii ü üü e ee ö öö ä ää) or the back series (ï ïï u uu ë ëë o oo a aa). It makes sense to think of Sisiwön as having five basic vowel phonemes (ï, u, ë, o, a), plus two suprasegmental phonemes, [+long] and [+front], the latter occuring zero or one times in each word, affecting all the vowels in it.

Consonants

From the group's phonology file, still in X-Sampa:

                  lab   alv   lat   alvpa pal   vel   uvu   glo
Stops plain       p     t                       k     q
      aspirated   p_h   t_h                     k_h
      ejective    p_>   t_>                     k_>
Affricates              ts)   tK)   tS)
Fricatives        f     s     K     S           x           h
Nasals            m     n                       N
Liquids                 r     l
Semivowels

Labialized        lab   alv   lat   alvpa pal   vel   uvu   glo
Stops plain                                     k_w   q_w
      aspirated                                 k_w_h
      ejective                                  k_w_>
Affricates              ts)_w       tS)_w
Fricatives              s_w                     x_w
Nasals                                          N_w
Liquids           
Semivowels                                      w

Palatalized       lab   alv   lat   alvpa pal   vel   uvu   glo
Stops plain       
      aspirated   
      ejective    
Affricates              ts)_j
Fricatives              s_j
Nasals                  n_j
Liquids                 r_j   l_j
Semivowels                                j

There may be a restriction preventing labialized and palatalized consonants from occurring before [u(:)] and [i(:)], respectively.

Syllable structure

It seems the consensus is CV(N) with N being any non-stop, non-affricate, or alternatively the aforementioned vowel-lengthening suprasegmental [+long]. The symbol C may also stand for a word-initial 0-, allowing vowel-initial words.

Word Structure

Any number of syllables, as defined above, with no other constraints known at this time.

Grammar

Verbal morphology

Verbs are marked agglutinatively for person and number of subject and object, tense (past vs non-past), mood (indicative vs irrealis vs imperative), aspect (imperfect vs perfect) and evidentiality (probably as clitics, meanings as yet undecided).

Inchoative and completive will probably be derivational and independent of the aspectual system.

There are a small class of valence-increasing derivational operations that take f(x,y) -> g(z,f(x,y)), where g is "want", "cause", "allow", "prevent", or "fear", and maybe a small number of others.