Proto-Imperial

Phonemes

Consonants

The consonant system of Proto-Imperial is characterized by a large amount of plosives and affricates (here called stops), with 4 different manners of articulation: lenis, fortis, glottalized and prenasalized at 5 different points of articulation, as well as the glottal stop. On the other hand there are few fricatives, and no phonemic nasals.

		Bilabial	Alveolar			Alveolo- palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
			plain	fricated	lateral
Stop	lenis	p	t	ʦ	tɬ	ʨ	k	q	ʔ
	fortis	pʰ	tʰ	ʦʰ	tɬʰ	ʨʰ	kʰ	qʰ
	glottalized	ɓ	tʼ	ʦʼ	tɬʼ	ʨʼ	kʼ	qʼ
	prenasalized	mb	nd	nʣ	ndɮ	ɲʥ	ŋg	ɴɢ
Fricative				s		ɕ			h
Approximant					l	(j)	(w)

The central approximants /w/ and /j/ can be treated as consonantal allophones of /u/ and /i/ respectively.

Vowels

Proto-Imperial has three contrastive vowel qualities /i, u, a/ at two different vowel heights (high, low). There are also two contrastive vowel lengths and a contrast in nasalization. There are also 4 diphthongs. This results in 12 phonemic vowels, shown below.

Oral, Long

	Front	Back
High	iː	uː
Low	aː

Oral, Short

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Low	a

Nasal, Long

	Front	Back
High	ĩː	ũː
Low	ãː

Nasal, Short

	Front	Back
High	ĩ	ũ
Low	ã

There are also 2 oral and 2 nasal diphthongs:

Diphthongs

	Oral	Nasal
Closing to ɪ	aɪ	ãɪ
Closing to ʊ	aʊ	ãʊ

Syllable structure and constraints

The syllable structure is C(G)V(X), where

C is any (phonemic) consonant (i.e. no central approximant)

G is one of the two central consonants, [j] or [w]

V is any vowel or diphthong

X is one of the two glottal consonants, /ʔ/ or /h/

The central approximants cannot occur before the vowel of which they are allophones. In other words [w] does never occur before /u(ː)/ and [j] does never occur before /i(ː)/. The palatal approximant [j] does not occur after sibilants or affricates. It also doesn't seem to occur after uvular consonants. The labio-velar approximant [w] does not occur after the lateral affricates.

Realizations and allophony

The realization and allophony of Proto-Imperial (PI) is based on the reflexes of the daughter language(s). Quite possibly many of these allophonies reflects the pronunciation of a rather late stage of PI:s history.

Consonants

The realizations of the consonants were depending on their location inside the word. In PI one differs between two locations, initial and medial. Initial position is initially in the word, or after a checked syllable (i.e. a syllable that ends with /ʔ/ or /h/) while medial position is after a non-checked syllable.

Stops

Lenis stops were pronounced voiceless in initial position, and voiced in medial position. They were voiced as such:

Lenis stops

Unvoiced	Voiced
p	b
t	d
k	g
q	ɢ
ʦ	ʣ
ʨ	ʥ
tɬ	dɮ

The affricates could further deaffricate to voiced fricatives in some dialects.

Checked syllables ending in /h/ + lenis stop was pronounced as a preaspirated stop.

Fortis stops were always voiceless. They were pronounced aspirated in initial position, and geminated and preaspirated in medial position. The difference between non-checked syllable + fortis stop and h-checked syllable + lenis stop is thus one of consonant length.

Glottalized stops were ejectives, except for the labial plosive, which was an implosive. Certain dialect also pronounced the alveolar plosive as an implosive rather than an ejective. There seems to have been no difference in pronunciation between initial and medial position for the glottalized plosives/affricates.

The pronunciation of prenasalized stops depended on the location but also on the quality of the following vowel. All prenasalized stops except the lateral affricate were pronounced nasal before a nasal vowel. They nasalize as such:

Nasal realization of prenasalized stops

Prenasalized	Nasal
mb	m
nd	n
ŋg	ŋ
ɴɢ	ɴ
nʣ	n
ɲʥ	ɳ

The ”nasals” were pronounced the same in initial and medial position.

Before oral vowels and in initial position they were pronounced without the prenasalization, i.e. as voiced stops:

Voiced realization of prenasalized stops

Prenasalized	Voiced
mb	b
nd	d
ŋg	g
ɴɢ	ɢ
nʣ	ʣ
ɲʥ	ʥ
ndɮ	dɮ

Resulting affricates were never deaffricated.

In medial position before oral vowels they were pronounced as true prenasalized stops, but the same dialects that deaffricate medial lenis affricates also deaffricate medial prenasalized affricates, so that they become prenasalized fricatives: [nz], [ɲʑ] and [nɮ],[nl] or [lː]

Also note that several dialects failed to deaffricate the lateral prenasalized affricate in medial position, even if they deaffricate other affricates.

Other consonants

Other consonant show less allophony, but [h] was usually pronounced voiced [ɦ] when in coda and before voiced consonants (i.e. /ɓ/ prenasalized stops and /l/).

Vowels

Nasal vowels were centralized, and realized as [ɪ~(ː)], [ʊ~(ː)] and [ɐ̃(ː)]

Vowels were backed and lowered when next to an uvular consonant, to [e(ː)], [ɛ~(ː)], [o(ː)], [ɔ~(ː)] and [ɑ(ː)], [ɑ~(ː)], the second in the pair being the nasal realization.

Vowels in syllables that are closed with [ʔ] were possibly pronounced with a glottalized vowel (i.e. creaky voice). The glottal stop can not be geminated, so when a ʔ-checked syllable were followed by an initial [ʔ] the coda disappears, but the creaky voice of the preceding vowel probably remained.