Khangaþyagon Phonotactics
Phonotactics
This is more of a philosophical discussion than a rigourous description. I've never actually sat down and said "These are the constraints that a Khangaþyagon syllable must obey." Rather, I set out to give the language a quasi-Gemanic feel to it. Both consonant clusters and vowel hiatus can occur intra-morphemically, and as the morphology is agglutinating, even more complex things can occur at morpheme boundaries. Very few things are absolutely disalowed (initial geminates being one of them), others can occur but are fairly rare (initial ng, initial stop clusters).
One reason for this is that I don't use automatic word generation for Khangaþyagon. When I create new vocab items, I try to produce words that fit in with the tone of what's gone before, and suit their meaning. Khangaþyagon seems to have developed a distinctive sound of its own, and I'm happy that my language has found its own voice.
Stress
Placement of stress is much better defined. The primary stress occurs on the first syllable of the primary root. Secondary stress occurs in compounds on the first syllable of secondary roots.
One consequence of this is that stress can be phonemic. Here's a minimal pair.
- zaldep [ˈzældep]
- treasure
- ban [bæn]
- stone
- -ban [bæn]
- that (suffix)
zaldepban
- [ˌzældepˈbæn]
- gemstone
- [ˈzældepbæn]
- that treasure
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--PeteBleackley 01:50, 19 May 2006 (PDT)
