Stilio
| Stilio slashuru | |
|---|---|
| Species: | snakes and snake-like reptiles |
| Credits | |
| Creator: | Robert Marshall Murphy |
| Created: | 2012 A.D. |
Parseltongue (in this article) refers to Stilio, a reconstructed form of Parseltongue. A script for this language is forth-coming. This language is an Fluid Alignment language, defaulting to SOV word order.
Phonology
Snakes have vastly simplified mouths compared to human-being. We are capable of making every sound they make, though some are easier than others. Snakes have no lips, but their labial scales can contract and produce something like "lip-rounding", which is very important is Parseltongue. Their palate is occupied with the vomeronasal organ or Jacobson's organ, which acts as a sense of smell. Snakes have no uvula. Their glottis is where our pharynx is, but it can move aside when eating large prey. They have no epiglottal region.
Sentient and non-sentient snakes hiss their entire volume of air without interruption, so a Parseltongue utterances cannot be longer than about ten seconds. Stops are typically initial in an utterance. Whatever vocal-cords they are graced with by magic, snakes cannot speak very loudly or vary pitch beyond very low frequencies.
Given their anatomy, even with the aide of magic, Parseltongue
- has no labial consonants
- has no retroflex consonants
- has no palatal or alveolar-palatal consonants
- has no uvular, pharyngeal, or epiglottal consonants
- has no voiced consonants
- is all spoken in creaky-voice
- has no corarticulated consonants
- of the clicks, has only the dental
- may begin an utterance with a stop, but they are not permitted elsewhere in speech.
- affricates can appear anywhere and are common
- must end an utterance with a sibilant/fricative
- has ejective forms
- contrasts lip rounding on consonants
Consonants
| Consonants | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dental | Alveolar | Post-alv. | Velar | Glottal | ||||||||||||
| Nasal | n (=n̥) | g (=ŋ̊) | ||||||||||||||
| Stop | t | k | ||||||||||||||
| Ejective | x (=t') | q (=k') | ||||||||||||||
| Click | # (=ǀ) | |||||||||||||||
| Fricative | d (=θ) | s | c (=ʃ) | z (=ɬ) | y (=ʟ̝̊) | h | ||||||||||
| Round. Fric. | ḑ= θ̹ | ş (=s̹) | ç (=ʃ̹) | z̧ (=ɬ̹) | ||||||||||||
| Approximants | j (=ɹ) | l | w (=ɰ) | |||||||||||||
| Tap | ɾ | |||||||||||||||
Because snakes use a wide range of glottis motion instead of changing vocal fold pitch, there are two versions of most letters. Humans can best approximate this change by tightly rounding their lips. There is one place where this is impossible for the human mouth, /θ̹/. This is sound is best approximated by rolling (also called curling) the tongue and passing air through as thin an opening as possible. Most English speakers round their lips anyway when shooshing someone, so great care must be taken to distinguish /ʃ̹/ and /ʃ/. Snakes don't appear to mind if /s̹/ produces some whistling. All the stops, whether in or out of affricate pairs, can be ejectives. /t/ can be followed by /θ/, /s/, /ʃ/, /ɬ/, /h/, /s̹/, or /ʃ̹/ to make affricates. /k/ can be combined with /s/, /ʃ/, /ɬ/, /ʟ̝̊/, /h/, /s̹/, /ʃ̹/, or /ɬ̹/. /t/ and /k/ can be ejectives on all these cases.
Vowels
| Vowels | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front-Unrounded | Front-Rounded | Back (Rounded) | ||||||||
| High | i | ï (=y) | u | |||||||
| Mid | e | æ (=ø) | o | |||||||
| Low | æ | a | ||||||||
The Parseltongue system of vowels is a simple of eight unique sounds, or six if you consider rounding. The "resting vowel" (like English schwa) is /a/. The sometimes despised "ash" (/ae/) is not rare in Parseltongue.
Grammar
Nouns
Parseltongue is exceedingly pro-drop, like Japanese. Speakers often state the topic and then rely on context to make things clear. Because the Morphosyntactic Alignment is Fluid, there are a lot of cases as well as a large number of postpositions.
| Case | Paradigm |
|---|---|
| Nominative | k'aʃ̹ |
| Ergative | |
| Absolutive | |
| Accusative | |
| Dative |
