Taalen Phonology

Phonology

Phonemic Inventory

Consonants

The Taalen phonemic inventory contains 21 consonants. There are bilabial, alveolar, and velar stops, occurring in aspirated and non-aspirated pairs, as well as the single glottal stop. Of these six, the three non-aspirated stops, p t k, are realized as voiced stops in free variation.

The language contains the voiced bilabial, alveolar, and velar voiced nasal sonorants as well, m n ŋ. Of these, n may appear as a syllabic resonant, n̩. When pre-aspirated, the nasals often realize as their voiceless counterparts.

The single alveolar tap ɾ may also be realized as the alveolar approximant ɹ in some dialects.

There are four unvoiced fricatives: the alveolar s, the post-alveolar ʃ, the glottal h, and the lateral ɬ. Of these, the glottal fricative h appears as ç near the front vowels i and e (or their lax counterparts), and often as x when final. The occasionally occurring palatized alveolar fricative sʲ is usually realized as the post-alveolar fricative ʃ.

The approximant inventory consists of a voiced bilabial or labio-velar w, a voiced palatal j, and the alveolar lateral approximant l. The lateral approximant may also appear as a syllabic resonant l̩, and when pre-aspirated, becomes the voiceless lateral fricative.

Finally, Taalen contains 3 unvoiced affricates, the laminodental tθ, the alveolar ts, and the lateral tɬ.

The full phonemic consonant inventory can be summarized in the table below:

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	pʰ p			tʰ t		kʰ k	ʔ
Nasal	m			n			ŋ
Tap				ɾ
Fricative				s	ʃ		h
Lat. Fric.				ɬ
Approximant	w				j
Lat. App.				l
Affricate		tθ	ts
Lat. Aff.				tɬ

There are morphological and composition process that can change the phonetic realization of the consonantal phonemes; these are discussed in the Transformations section.

Vowels

Taalen makes use of a simple 6-vowel system:

	Front		Central		Back
High	i				u
Mid		e		o
Low-mid			ʌ
Low			a

The Low-mid unrounded vowel ʌ is usually nasalized, as in Cherokee.

A single resonant may also be syllabic: n̩ as in English button.

Vowel length is not phonemic, though stressed vowels tend to be held longer, and unstressed vowels tend to be weakened.

Before clusters (i.e. pre-aspirated or pre-nasalized consonants, consonants followed by a glide + vowel, glottal stop + consonant), high and mid vowels tend to realize as their lax counterparts:

i > ɪ, e > ɛ, u > ʊ, o > ɔ

Diphthongs

There are eight diphthongs, all falling: aj, ej, oj, ʌj, aw, ew, ow, and ʌw. The diphthongs in ʌ maintain the phoneme's nasalization throughout.

Phonotactics

Syllables generally begin with any single consonant or any consonant followed by a glide. The latter are uncommon, and subject to the following rules:
• a glide cannot follow another glide or a glottal stop in the same syllable: *jwa and *ʔja are both impossible.
• s and ʃ cannot be followed by j. In composition, they both become ʃ.

Only initial syllables can have null onsets, i.e. begin with a vowel. Vowels may not remain in hiatus; they will become a diphthong, the initial high vowel will be fortified to a glide, or a glottal stop will be inserted.

Syllabic nuclei consist of a single vowel, a diphthong, or the rare syllabic resonant (which is always preceded by ʔ).

In the coda of initial or internal syllables, only a nasal, h, l, s, or ʔ may appear. In word final syllables, the consonants ʃ and ɬ may also appear.

The syllable of Taalen may thus appear as CV, CVC, VC, or V, where V is any possible nucleus.

The interaction of consonants in the coda of one syllable and the onset of another, in addition to other common phonotactical changes, is described in Transformations section below.

Prosody

Stress

Taalen words are regularly stressed on the penultimate syllable. Suffixes may cause the stress to shift.

Weight

Taalen prosodics divide syllables into rising, falling, and balanced. Rising syllables are open and do not contain a diphthong, while balanced syllables are open and do contain a diphthong. Falling syllables are closed syllables.

A syllable is considered light if it is open and does not contain a diphthong. All other syllables are considered heavy.
• pʰi is rising
• tew is balanced
• kel is falling

The the syllables of the name so.wʌ.ɾan.das are rising, rising, falling, and falling respectively, for example.

Transformations

Taalen is rich in mutation, mostly as a result of its polysynthetic typology. There are five primary types of transformation that affect consonants: aspirate, nasal, liquid, sibilant, and glottal. Two other common transformations affect vowels and diphthongs: diphthongization, which includes the mutation of consonants into vowels, and simplification, which concerns diphthongs becoming simple vowels in specific environments. The first five transformations are named according to the class of phoneme which trigger them, and are distinct from the usual terms. That is, the aspirate transformation is not similar or related to aspiration. Where there is another term widely used in linguistic works, it will be noted, but even these other terms are rarely precise descriptions. It is for this reason that the native Taalen terms are used instead.

None of these transformations are strictly grammatical in nature, instead resulting from the morphophonology. Because of the nature of some morphemes, it can be difficult to see this, as the surface realization of a particular marker might only be a subtle transformation.

Apsirate

pre-aspiration

Historically, lenition arose most often from sibilants or liquids + stops initially, intervocalically, and from geminate stops. It also arose in syllabic codae, but only affected stops. It creates fricatives from stops, nasals are unvoiced, and fricatives tend to be weakened to approximants.

Nasal

pre-nasalization Arising from nasal assimilation, nasalization mutates unvoiced stops into voiced stops, and voiced stops into nasals.

Diphthongization

The most common and complex mutation, vocalization is the primary means by which medial clusters are simplified in Taalen. In addition to voiced consonants becoming vowels, unvoiced consonants usually cause other changes. Some vowels arise simply as a result of compensatory lengthening, which is not technically vocalization, but has been classed as such by the Elder grammarians. In a similar vein, some consonants do not vocalize, but aspirate or otherwise mutate eiether themselves of consecutive consonants or vowels, and these are classed as vocalization mutations as well.

The diphthong-rich vocabulary of Taalen owes much of it's existence to this mutation historically. Many of the non-voiced phonemes caused compensatory lengthening (noted as Long in the summary below), prior to the breaking of long vowels into diphthongs. Here is a characteristic example:

rag- 'to carry'

with

-de a resultative suffix

becomes

raede /ɾəɪ.dɛ/ : stative verb 'to be borne, carried'

Summary of Transformations

Phoneme	Aspirate	Nasal	Liquid	Sibilant	Glottal	Vocalization	Simplification
pʰ
tʰ
kʰ
p
t
k
m
n
ŋ
p
t
k
w
j
ʔ
l
ɬ
ɾ
s
ʃ
h
ts
tɬ
tθ
o
ʌ
e
u
a
i
oj
ow
ʌj
ʌw
ej
ew
aj
aw

Orthography

Phoneme

p

t

k

b

d

g

f

θ

h ç x

v

ð

ɣ

Romanization

p

t

c

b

d

g

f

th

h

v

dh

gh

Phoneme

m

n

ŋ

m̥

n̥

ŋ̥

s

ʃ

l

ɬ

ɾ,ɹ

ɹ̥

Romanization

m

n

ñ

mh

nh

ñh

s

sh

l

lh

r

rh

Phoneme

j

w

i

ɪ

ʊ

u

e

ø

o

ɛ

Romanization

y,i

u

i

i+

u+

u

e

eu

o

e

Phoneme

æ

ə

a

ɑ

aɪ

eɪ

oɪ

əɪ

aʊ

oʊ

əʊ

Romanization

ea

a,y

a

aa

ai

ei

oe

ae

au

ou

ao

+ : must be followed by a geminate

The letter y is also used to mark syllabicity on the four resonants: yn = /n̩/, ym = /m̩/, yr = /ɹ̩/, and yl = /l̩/. It is also used to indicate /ə/, as can the simple vowels in unstressed syllables.

U before a vowel is /w/, which never occurs before a back vowel (o or u). In the case where composition brings u before such a vowel, it becomes v: -au + o- = -avo-.

Though vowels cannot remain in hiatus (two sequential vowels which do not indicate a diphthong), they do appear frequently with understood glides between. For example, ia represents two syllables, /i.jə/, and uan can be one or two syllables, /wan/ or /u.wən/. The two syllable reading is usually distinguished with y, making uan (/wan/) and uyn (u.wən or u.wn̩), exactly as the native script does. It can also be indicated in romanization with ', so that the two could be distinguished as uan and u'an. This latter method is a remnant of an older romanization.

The digraph ch does not appear, replaced in mutation by h. The phoneme /ŋ/ is always represented by ñ, even in a cluster: /ŋg/ ñg.

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

ragh /ˈɾaɣ/ 'mist'	ragha /ˈɾa.ɣə/ 'mists'
rag'h /ˈɾaɣ/ 'he carries'	ragen /ˈɾa.gɛn/ 'I carry'

A newer romanization is gaining ground, in which such distinctions are not written, and left to the reader to clarify. The use of the apostrophe therefore has acquired an antiquated, victorian feel to its use.

Geminate consonants (such as ll /lː/) are represented by doubling the letter. 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, llh, and rrh (ph and bh only appear as the result of mutation, and thus won't appear geminated).

Links

Taalen Ethnography
Taalen Morphology