The phonology is the description of the sound of a language. It is composed of a set of segments, or building blocks, and rules which govern the permissable sounds of a given language as well as how they are ordered into words. In this language, the sounds are comprised of consonants, vowels, and tones. Each word is described as being one syllable long.
Below, is a chart of all the phonemic consonants available in Shangkurian.
| Consonants | Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Lateral | Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops | Plain | (p,) b | t̪ ⟨t⟩, d | tʃ ⟨tr⟩ | tɬ ⟨tl⟩ | k ⟨c⟩, g |
| Prevocal | ɤb ⟨ib⟩ | ət̪ ⟨ot⟩, əd ⟨od⟩ |
itʃ ⟨itr⟩ | ɪtɬ ⟨itl⟩ | ɯk ⟨uc⟩, ɯg ⟨ug⟩ |
|
| Nasals | Plain | m, m̥ ⟨hm⟩ |
n, n̥ ⟨hn⟩ |
ŋ ⟨ng⟩, ŋ̊ ⟨hg⟩ |
||
| Prevocal | ɤm ⟨im⟩, ɤm̥ ⟨ihm⟩ |
ən ⟨on⟩, ən̥ ⟨ohn⟩ |
ɯŋ ⟨ung⟩, ɯŋ̊ ⟨uhg⟩ |
|||
| Clicks | Plain | ʘ ⟨p⟩ | ǀ ⟨z⟩ | ǂ¡ ⟨q⟩ | ǁ ⟨ll⟩ | ǃ ⟨k⟩ |
| Prenasal | mʘ ⟨mp⟩ | nǀ ⟨nz⟩ | nǂ¡ ⟨nq⟩ | nǁ ⟨nll⟩ | ŋǃ ⟨ngk⟩ | |
| Fricatives | Plain | s | ʃ ⟨x⟩ | ɬ ⟨hl⟩ | x ⟨h⟩ | |
| Prevocal | əs ⟨os⟩ | iʃ ⟨yx⟩ | ɪɬ ⟨ihl⟩ | ɯx ⟨uh⟩ | ||
| Liquids | Plain | l | ||||
| Prevocal | ɪl ⟨il⟩ | |||||
For the most part, the sounds which are are written in IPA with a standard latin script letter sound as they do in English. The /p/, /b/, /d/, /k/, /g/, /m/, /n/, /s/, and /l/ sounds are largely the same as they appear in English. The rest of the sounds however, may need some additional explanation.
There are also pre-versions of each of the consonants as well. The majority of the consonants are pre-vocalized, however the click consonants are pre-nasalized instead.
| Vowels | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| High |
i
⟨y⟩
|
u~ʊ
⟨u⟩
|
|
| Mid-High |
ɪ
⟨i⟩
|
||
| Mid |
ɜ
⟨e⟩
|
ə
⟨o⟩
|
|
| Low |
ɐ
⟨a⟩
|
| Glides | Front | Back |
|---|---|---|
| Fronting |
ᶹɪ
⟨ui⟩
|
|
| High Centering |
ʲə
⟨yo⟩
|
ᶹə
⟨uo⟩
|
| Mid Raising |
õʲ
⟨oi⟩
|
ɐ̃ᶹ
⟨ao⟩
|
| Low Raising |
ɐ̃ʲ
⟨ai⟩
|
|
| Lowering |
ᶹɜ
⟨ue⟩
|
ᶹɐ
⟨ua⟩
|
Words are not just made of letter sounds, however, they also include tone. Tone is the inflection of the voice which conveys meaning. While some people say tone is like singing, it is really more like asking a question in English. If someone were to say in English "Is that for me?", the pitch of their voice goes up, but no one would say that they are singing. It is just a change of where their voice is sitting in the normal spoken range.
Shangkurian has 6 tones which are applied to words. They are visualized below:
In both the case of the sesquisyllables and with reduplication, the question of how to handle the tone arises. For these sections of words, which haven't been assigned a tone lexically, one would use a reciting tone to fill in the tonal gaps of a word or construction. The concept of a reciting tone essentially copies the first or last part of the word's tonal contour. If a sesquisyllabic word has a fourth tone (otlyôc) assigned to it, pre-vocalization of the onset consonant would adopt a mid-level tone to match with the beginning of the tonal contour. Likewise, when a reduplicated construction is used, the level where the tone contour ends would then be adopted for a reduplication construction (which doesn't already have a tone association).
Now that all of the individual phonemes have been established, the rules in which they are put together into words needs to be set. This is called phonotactics. Taking the various categories of phonemes (i.e. consonant, vowel, glide, and tone) we can start to make words. Below, each of these categories will be assigned a single letter as shorthand. If that category is optional to make a real word, then it will be placed in parentheses. Sometimes there will be a choice of 2 categories, so a slash is placed between the choices
Category Abbreviations
So with this shorthand, it is now possible to say that a legal Shangkurian word is defined as a single syllable of:
(C)VT(N/K)/(C)GT
There are a couple more rules to think about too. Firstly, the phoneme /p/ cannot be in the initial consonant place of a word. Instead the only place where /p/ can be pronounced is at the end of a word. Additionally, there is a fixed set of rimes which can serve as vowel/coda pairs.
| ∅ | -p | -t | -c | -n | -ng | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a- | a | ap | at | ac | an | ang |
| e- | e | ep | et | ec | en | eng |
| i- | i | ip | it | ic | ||
| o- | o | op | ot | oc | on | ong |
| u- | u | up | ut | uc | un | ung |
| y | y | yn | yng |
A rule in which /t/ and /tr/ become aspirated before a monophthong vowel and a voiceless stop coda.
[voiceless alveolar/palatal stop] → [+aspirated] / _VK#
Since the phoneme /p/ cannot occur as an word onset, the grapheme ⟨p⟩ is then used for the bilabial click in onset position, and then used again to represent /p/ in the coda position. Due to the onset aspiration phonological process, an ⟨h⟩ is included in the romanization after the initial consonant to represent this change (ex. ⟨thic⟩ instead of *⟨tic⟩).