Silōs
| Silōs [-] | |
| Timeline/Universe | - |
| Period | 2012– |
| Spoken in | Republic of Cœlophyce |
| Total speakers | ~5 |
| Writing system | Latin script |
| Classification | - |
| Typology | |
| Basic word order | SVO |
| Morphology | Isolating |
| Alignment | - |
| Credits | |
| Created by | Clayton Williams & Jack Bevolo |
The Silōs language is an a priori natlang spoken exclusively within the Republic of Cœlophyce. It is an isolating language, although its hypothetical internal reconstruction, Pre-Silōs, has the qualities of a polysynthetic language. Novel vocabulary in Pre-Silōs is very frequently derived from "semantic neighbor assimilation" in which related words tend to influence base words to produce new words.
Phonology
The phonology of Silōs is simple, indeed very limited, having no velar consonants, no secondary articulation, and no phonemic voicing besides for the labiodental fricative. There are five phonemic vowels. In total, this makes for only 16 distinct phonemes, counting the palatal approximant, which can be argued as a mere allophone of the vowel /i/.
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | |||
| Plosive | p | t | |||
| Fricative | f v | s | ʒ *<z> | ||
| Flap | ɾ <r> | ||||
| Approximant | l | (j <i>) |
- *This is standard notation. <j> is also seen, but this is non-standard.
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o <ō> | |
| Open | a |
In addition, allophones of this system are few: phonemes are rarely realized with a different voicing, despite their free variation. The postalveolar fricative, moreover, mainly occurs in onomatopoeia (though not always).
