Tallfellow

Tallfellow (Mambéhoblind) is a naturalistic (mostly), a priori artlang by Enrique Gamez. The language is intended to sound and feel familiar to speakers of American English, while still being significantly different from English in terms of grammar and vocabulary. It is spoken by tallfellow halflings inhabiting the Patchwork (Elmbúmbi) in the conworld of Dombellus, a homebrew Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting. So far, only the Babandelglib dialect as spoken in the Age of Twilight is documented.

Phonology

Tallfellow uses no sounds not found in English, except for prenasalized consonants /ᵐb/, /ⁿd/, /ᵑg/. However, while historically these could occur at the beginning of a word (and still can in related languages such as Overhill and Rootbarrel), this is no longer allowed in Tallfellow, so from the point of view of a speaker there is little difference between these and sequences /mb/, /nd/, /ŋg/. Tallfellow does not use a voiced-unvoiced contrast as English does, instead employing a three-way contrast between voiced, prenasalized, and voiceless aspirate stops.

(List of phonemes will go here)

The phonotactics of Tallfellow are still being studied. In general, however, consonant clusters are restricted to those that include at most one stop or fricative (or occasionally two fricatives, when not beginning or ending a word). The remainder of the cluster is required to be liquids, nasals, and/or semivowels, generally no more than one (on the inner side) at the beginning or end of a word, or two (one on either side) in the middle of one. Also, a cluster cannot contain both a voiceless fricative (which includes all of Tallfellow's fricatives) and a stop. These restrictions are not always obeyed in loanwords or in the names of foreign places, e.g. /ɫiɻ'ɑsgoʊⁿd/ "please", from Darkfoot /li'jaʃkud/.

It should be reiterated that prenasalized consonants count as a single consonant for this purpose, so that constructions such as /boʊɫᵑgɫɛm/ "of/by means of the book" are permitted. Also, some consonants have more stringent restrictions. Nasals /m/ and /n/ may not be followed by /ɫ/, and neither may aspirated stops /tʰ/ and /pʰ/; however, semivowels /ɻ/, /w/ may follow any of these. /h/ and the aspirates may not end syllables, and /h/ also may not be followed by /ɫ/ or by semivowels. A stop or nasal followed by /h/ is typically pronounced as an aspirate at the same place of articulation, when possible, and is rewritten that way in the script for compounds; e.g. /ɻoʊm/ "good", /hɑɻ/ "adverbial suffix", /'ɻoʊpʰɑɻ/ "well". Nasals may not follow stops, and may not precede /h/ or aspirated stops.

Vowel sequences of any type are forbidden in Tallfellow (with /oʊ/ being treated as a single vowel rather than a diphthong). Common repair strategies involve inserting /ɻ/ between two vowels that would otherwise follow each other directly, converting initial /oʊ/ to /w/, replacing a sequence /ɑi/ with /ɛ/ or just /ɑ/, etc.

Despite its strong resemblance to English, in addition to lacking many sounds that English possesses, Tallfellow allows several combinations not found in English. For instance, clusters such as /dɫ/, /mɻ/, /nɻ/ may begin words, and prenasalized consonants /ᵐb/ and /ᵑg/ may (and frequently do) end them.

Stress is phonemic in Tallfellow, having fossilized from a stress rule involving double vowels that it has now lost. Most notably, the allative and ablative cases are distinguished only by stress: /'bɫʌnoʊ/ "from the river", /bɫʌ'noʊ/ "to the river".

(More information to follow!)