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, and unvoiced, bilabial, alveolar, and velar nasal sonorants as well, m n ŋ m̥ n̥ ŋ̥. Of these, n may appear as a syllabic resonant, n̩. When subject to the Aspirate mutation, the nasals usually 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 m̥			n n̥			ŋ ŋ̥
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 n̩ (which is always preceded by ʔ).

In the coda of initial or internal syllables, only a nasal, h, l, s, or ʔ may appear. These phonemes interact with the consonants of following syllables in complex ways, in effect limiting medial clusters; these phonological changes are discussed below.

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.

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.

Mutations

Taalen is rich in transformation, a common result of any polysynthetic typology. There are five primary types of mutation that affect consonants: aspirate, nasal, liquid, sibilant, and glottal. Two other common mutations affect vowels and diphthongs: diphthongization, which includes the change 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.

These processes are phonological in nature, though there are morphemes that exist only as manifestations of these mutations. 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.

The mutations are discussed using standard Taalen romanization. If the triggering phoneme does not appear in the result (i.e. after the ">"), it disappears after causing its changes.

Aspirate

Also called pre-aspiration, the Aspirate mutation is generally the result of contact with a syllable final h. It causes the following changes:

- Aspirated stops show no change: p t k > hp ht hk
- Non-aspirated stops become aspirated: b d g > hp ht hk
- Nasals become pre-aspirated or voiceless, depending on dialect: m n ñ > hm hn hñ
- Glides are unaffected: w y > hw hy
- The glottal stop is lost: '' > h'
- Laterals are devoiced: l lh > lh
- The tap become an aspirated alveolar stop: r > ht
- Sibilants become an alveolar affricate: s sh > hts
- The glottal fricative h is unaffected: h > h
- The alveolar and lateral affricates are unaffected: ts tl > hts htl
- The laminodental affricate becomes the aspirated alveolar stop: th > ht

When a morpheme ends in one consonant, and is followed by h in a subsequent morpheme, the Aspirate mutation applies, in a way somewhat similar to h-metathesis. Certain word initial morphemes also cause this mutation, though the h that triggers the mutation never appears with occlusives (i.e. b th > p t, not hp ht), only with resonants (hm hn hñ hw hy).

Nasal

The Nasal mutation, sometimes called pre-nasalization, is the result of consonant contact with a nasal. The nasal generally assimilates homorganically.

- Aspirated stop are deaspirated: p t k > mb nd ñg
- Unaspirated stops become nasals: b d g > m n ñ
- Glides are unaffected: w y > ñw ny
- The glottal stop is lost: '' > n'
- Liquids and the alveolar tap become the lateral affricate: l lh > tl
- Sibilants become the alveolar affricate: s sh > ts
- H becomes a voiceless nasal: h > hn

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 Consonant Mutations

Phoneme	Aspirate	Nasal	Liquid	Sibilant	Glottal
p t k	hp ht hk
b d g	hp ht hk
m n ñ	hm hn hñ
w	hw
y	hy
'	h
l lh	lh
r	ht
s sh	hts
h	h
ts	hts
tl	htl
th	ht

Links

Taalen Ethnography
Taalen Writing
Taalen Morphology