Taalen

Pronounced /'tQ.lEn/.
From tal 'tree' + ra 'speak' + -en agentive suffix: 'Treespeaker', used metonymically. If compounded currently instead of anciently, this results in tallen, which is used to indicate the individual Treespeaker as opposed to the language.

History

External

I started working on Taalen in the summer of 2000. Anticipating grad school, and unhappy with where Aelya was going, I started over. There's a lot of Aelya's aesthetic in Taalen - one might say that Aelya evolved into Taalen, but not definitely not in a diachronic way!

It has been heavily inspired by the Celtic and Uralic languages, as well as Native American languages of various families.

Internal

There will be a proto-language and sister languages, but nothing has been developed in any detail yet.

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. The palatal plosive is unusual, and most easily approximated by English speakers with /ts/. The alveolar approximant is the standard English <r>, and the dental flap can be heard in American English words like <water> /wa4.r=/ or Spanish <para> /pa.4a/. Note also the presence of syllabic resonants.

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	/p/ /b/			/t/ /d/		/c/	/k/ /g/
Nasal	/m_0/ /m/			/n_0/ /n/			/N_0/ /N/
Fricative		/f/ /v/	/T/ /D/	/s/	/S/		/G/	/h/
Approx.		/w/		/r\/		/j/
Lat. App.				/l/
Lat. Fric.				/K/

As in English, the voiceless stops are usually aspirated (/p_h t_h k_h/) initially, but also when geminate.

Some resonants may also be syllabic: /m=/ /n=/ /r\=/ /l=/ as in <bottom>, <button>, <butter>, and <bottle>.

Vowels

Basic description/intro will be here.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	/i/ /I/		/U/ /u/
Close-mid	/e/ /2/		/o/
Open-mid	/E/ /{/	/V/ or /@/
Open	/a/		/Q/

Diphthongs

Taalen only possesses five diphthongs, all falling: /aI/ /eI/ /oI/ /aU/ and /oU/.

Allophones

• [C] 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 [p\], and /v/ as [B], in free variation.
• /K/ and [K\] also appear in free variation.
• /r\/ appears initially and finally, while [4] appears intervocalically and after a consonant. Neither ever appears before a consonant.

Phonotactics

Syllabic onsets may consist of any consonant, in addition to the following clusters:

• voiced stops + liquids: /b4 bl d4 dl g4 gl/
• /s/ + voiceless stop: /st sp sc/
• stop + glide: /pj bj tj dj kj gj/
• nasal + glide: /nj Nj mw Nw/ (*/nw mj/ are not allowed)
• /sr sv lj/

Syllabic nuclei consist of a single vowel or diphthong. Vowels cannot remain in hiatus (*/aE/) but instead become a diphthong or introduce a glide: */i@/ -> /ij@/.

The coda of a syllable can only be a continuant (excluding voiceless nasals) or null. Immediately preceding an onset cluster, no coda is allowed. In compounding, codae often vocalize before a cluster: /tam/ + /bran/ -> /taUbr@n/ (with unstressed /a/ -> /@/). Geminate consonants (with onset in the coda of one syllable and release in the onset of the next) are therefore limited to continuants (liquids, voiced nasals, and fricatives).

Cross-syllable (i.e. medial) clusters are limited.

• nasal + homorganic voiced stop: /mb nd Ng/
• nasal + glide: /nj Nj mw Nw/
• /l/ + voiced stop: /lb ld lg/
• /l/ + heterorganic nasal: /lm lN/
• liquid + glide: /lj lw rj rw/
• /K/ + voiceless stop: /Kp Kt Kk/
• certain fricative + liquid clusters: /f4 v4 T4 D4 S4 x4 G4 Tl Dl/
• sibilant + voiceless stop: /sp st sk Sp St Sk/
• fricative + homorganic glide: /Cj xw/

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

In general, the phonemes of Taalen are represented in romanisation by their obvious counterparts: <t> is /t/. Exceptions:

Rom.	PR		Rom.	PR		Rom.	PR
ts	/c/		c	/k/		mh	/m_0/
nh	/n_0/		f or ph	/f/ or /p\/		v or bh	/v/ or /B/
th	/T/		dh	/D/		sh	/S/
h	/h/, /C/ or /x/		gh	/G/		u	/u/, /U/ or /w/
r	/4/ or /r\/		lh	/K/ or /K\/		i	/i/ or /I/
y	/j/ or /I/		eu	/2/		ea	/{/
aa	/Q/		ñ or ngh	/N/		bh	/v/ or /B/

Rom.: Romanisation PR: Phonetic representation

The letter <y> is also used to mark syllabicity on the four resonants: <yn> = /n=/, <ym> = /m=/, <yr> = /r\=/, and <yl> = /l=/. It is also used to indicate /V/ and /@/. Other simple vowels <a e o> can also indicate /@/ in unstressed syllables.

The digraph <ch> does not appear, replaced in mutation by <h>. <Ngh> is only used outside of a cluster; when in a cluster, it is represented in romanisation by <n>: /Ng/ = <ng>.

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

<ragh> /'4aG/ 'mist'	<ragha> /'4a.G@/ 'mists'
<rag'h> /'4aG/ 'he carries'	<ragen> /'4a.gEn/ 'I carry'

Geminate consonants (such as <ll> /l:/) 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>, <ssh>, and <llh> (<ph> and <bh> only appear as the result of mutation, and thus won't appear geminated).