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Degaspregos Phonology

1.1 : Segmental Phonology

1.1.1 : Consonant Phonology

The phonological system in Degaspregos in many ways mirrors that of the language off of which it is based, Proto-Indo-European. This means that it is relatively richer in phonemic stop consonants than in fricatives (unlike English). Also like PIE (or rather, like most of the currently reconstructed systems for it), Degaspregos does not have a series of aspirated stops, nor do stops aspirate as allophonic variants of voiceless stops (also unlike English). To accomodate the largest number of speakers, however, I have designed Degaspregos with a large degree of lenience; if you want to aspirate your stop consonants, hey, go ahead, that's fine with me (though note if you do that you will be marking yourself with an accent). The following chart illustrates Degaspregos's phonology:

Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Postaveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Labiovelar Glottal

Stops (Plosives) p b [p b] t d [t d] [t d] [t d] [k g] k g k^w g^w [?]*

Aspirated Stops [p^h] [p^h] [t^h] [t^h] [t^h] [t^h] [k^h] [k^h] [k^hw]

Nasals m [m] [n] n [n] [n]

Fricatives [f v] f v s z š Z h

Trill r

Taps (Flaps) [r]

Approximates y hw w

Lateral Approximates l [l,]

Note: bracketed characters represent phonetically realizable sounds which occur either as allophones of the stated phoneme or are in free variation with it. In the case of the glottal stop ([?]), one may say that it is in free variation with [ř], that is, no sound. This is due to the diphthongization (or rather, in some circumstances, the lack thereof) that may occur with vowel clusters.

1.1.2 : Vowel Phonology

The system of phonemic vowels in Degaspregos is also quite similar to those systems that have been reconstructed for PIE (again, depending on which reconstruction theory you favor). It has a typologically uninteresting series of vowels; that is, the phonemic vowels are pretty much the five cardinal vowels: /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/ (though /a/ is articulatorily backer and somewhat higher than the corresponding cardninal vowel). When clustering of vowels occurs, the vowels are treated phonemically as two separate vowels, though phonetically tend to diphthongize.

       front   central   back
high   /i/_________________/u/
         \                 /
mid       /e/            /o/     
            \            /
low          \______/a/_/

1.2 : Prosody

1.2.1 : Wordstress

In contrast to most European languages of today, Degaspregos employs not the typical stress accentuation system but rather uses one of tone. This means that it is not how loud or soft the syllable is made to be, but how high or low on a sort of musical scale it is (though note that this is an oversimplification). The tonally accented syllable will be of a relatively higher tone than the preceding syllable (it is not necessary to specify absolute levels of tone).

Many languages are tonal, some even having nine or more tones as phonemic distinctions between sounds. The concept of tonal stress is in fact not something that is totally excluded from the IE world: Ancient Greek and Latin were supposedly both tonally accented languages (though in the case of the second, it is questionable whether it were accented in this way as it is said by any more than the elite upper class of Roman aristocracy [who did everything in their ability to look and act Greek and who, we must remember, wrote the grammar books] as all descendent Romance languages use stress to indicate accent). It has also been postulated that PIE utilized a system of tonal, rather than stress, accents (though I must say I am not sure from what source I got this). If so, Degaspregos would be acting in fact more faithfully as a reflex of PIE off of which it was designed.

Whatever the case, Degaspregos accentuation follows a fairly widespread phenomenon : rise in tone falls on the penultimate syllable, even when affixation lengthens a word.

1.2.2 : Syllable Structure and Liaison

Syllable structure is just as much an integral part of the language as any other*. Every language yet discovered has some way of breaking down the various phonemes of the language into quickly pronounceable segments, which provide for ease of communication. Some languages have strict conditions on how any two sounds may come together, disallowing consonant or vowel clusters entirely, while others may be relatively lax on this, allowing strings of consonants to build up one on another. But perhaps it's best to see what I mean through example.

The English language, in sharp contrast to its relative dearth of morphological complexity, exhibits a rather complex phonology, in this respect allows multiple consonant clusters. In the notation of linguistics, English has a C(C)(C)V(C)(C) syllable structure (which means that it allows up to three consonants before and two after the vowel); for example, "stringed".

With Degaspregos, it's somewhat different. Degaspregos does allow a similar level of consonant clustering for its roots, but for all other processes it restricts the level of cluster formation by necessitating** the use of a epenthetic vowel ("-a-") or consonant ("-n-"); these in and of themselves have no meaning, but function similarly to the "n" in "an" in English, and thus are a type of liaison . So, in one respect, Degaspregos does allow the clustering that we see in many English words, but mostly, this cannot occur outside the root, such that words like tanakwonit actually have no consonant clustering whatsoever - at least insofar as they abide by the rules. Thus, Degaspregos's syllables remain for the most part CVCV.

* Indeed, were it not for the fact of syllable structure, we could not really conceive of human language in the same sense as we do now, because, by means of phonetic coarticulation (the universal feature of human languages whereby adjacent sounds blend into one another) speech can be spoken faster than pronouncing each sound individually, and thus in many cirumstances

** In saying this, we must remember that semivowels such as /w/, /hw/ and /y/ are counted as vowels for the purposes of syllabification.

1.3 : Orthography

Degaspregos orthography utilizes an altered form of the Roman alphabet, roughly similar to that of the IPA. It is a phonemic alphabet; it makes only those orthographic distinctions made by the speakers themselves in speech.


Vowels  Written      Phonemic     Allowable        Rough English 
        character    value        allophones       equivalents
  
        i            /i/          [i][I]           keep, machine  
        e            /e/          [e][E]           hate, German Fehler
        u            /u/          [u][U]           rude, food
        o            /o/          [o][O]           German Vogel     
        a            /a/          [a][A]           German ahnen

Diphthongs*

        ei           /ei/         [ej‹][ei][eI‹]   Eng. hate, Span. beisbol
                                  [Ei‹][EI‹]          
        eo           /eo/         [eo‹][eo][Eo‹]   "eh" + "aw"          
        eu           /eu/         [eu‹][eu][eU‹]   "eh" + "oo"
                                  [Eu‹][EU‹] 
        ea           /ea/         [ea‹][ea][Ea‹]   "ay" + "ah"
        ui           /ui/         [uj‹][ui][Ui‹]   French ennui"oo" + "ee"
        oi           /oi/         [oj‹][oi][Oi‹]
                                  [OI‹][oI‹]
        ou           /ou/         [ow‹][ou]
        ai           /ai/         [aj‹][ai][aI‹]
        au           /au/         [aw‹][au][aU‹]

Consonants

        p            /p/          [p][p^h]       
        b            /b/          [b]       
        m            /m/          [m]
        t            /t/          [t][t^h]
        d            /d/          [d]
        n            /n/          [n]
        k            /k/          [k][k^h]
        g            /g/          [g]
        kw           /k^w/         [k^hw]  
        gw           /g^w/         [g^w]
        f            /f/          [f]
        v            /v/          [v]
        s            /s/          [s]
        z            /z/          [z]
        š            /S/          [S]  
       (zh)          /Z/          [Z]       
        l            /l/          [l][l,]
        r            /r/          [r]
        y            /j/          [j]
        w            /w/          [w]
        hw           /hw/         [hw]
        h            /h/          [h]

*Note: Because all vowel combinations may be spoken as two individual vowels rather than a diphthong, the diphthongs need not be included in the alphabet proper. Thus the alphabet would have only 26 phonemes instead of 35. In addition to this, when each letter is pronounced, it is treated as if it were any noun, and thus adds the noun morphemes(e.g, "p" would be pronounced [pos] were one to say "This is the letter 'p'." [="Kos literos pokso bat"]). The same is true of vowels, except that the liaisonizing suffix "-n-" is placed between it and the next morpheme. So for example, 'I like the letter "A"' would be 'Plakikwat meom "Anos"' ["A" causes me to be pleased]

The alphabet is written in this order according to the various anatomic places within the organs of speech.

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