R: Vaiysi phonology

> Hello everyone!
>
> Here's an extract from the Vaiysi grammar I'm writing. I'd like to hear
your
> comments, since I've promised to myself that I'll finish to write it in
this
> summer. Here you are:
>
> First of all an introduction:
> <<
> Vaiysi is an inflecting language. This means that it adds prefixes,
suffixes
> and infixes to some parts of the speech to change or specify their
meaning.
> It has a quite complex nominal and verbal morphology, but it's much
simpler
> than Latin or Greek. Vaiysi has inherited from Suimeni, its mother tounge,
> an ergative / absolutive case system. This means that the subject of
> intransitive verbs (verbs which can take the object) is marked for a case
> called ergative, and that the subject of intransitive verbs and the object
> of transitive verbs are generally unmarked, in a case called absolutive.
> Vaiysi has four other cases: dative, genitive, locative and allative.
Dative
> is the case of the indirect object (I give you the book) or of the object
in
> antipassive constructions, genitive resembles English 's, locative carries
> the meaning 'in' or 'on', while allative 'to' or 'into'. Adjectives are
> usually declined as nouns, and adverbs are directly deviced by adjectival
> stems. Vaiysi verb conjugation is another quiet complex argument. Verbs
> distinguish tense, person, number, aspect and voice, and their conjugation
> is as difficult as that of French or Italian verbs, far more difficult
than
> the English one. Vaiysi has five tenses: present, past, future, anterior
and
> posterior, plus an imperative mood. A particular construction is that of
the
> verb 'to be', which has become in Vaiysi a suffixed particle (-yeam...).
The
> language is largerly SVO, but the word order is not very rigid. There are
> only prepositions, not potpositions; all prepositions govern the genitive
> case.
> >>
>
> Here's the phonology:
> <<
> Classical Vaiysi Phonology
> The phonemic system of Classical Vaiysi is as follows (in Kirshenbaum IPA)
>
> Consonants:
>
> u.stops                  p   t  k   q
> v.stops                  b  d  g
> u.fricatives             f   s       h
> v.fricatives            v   z
> u.affricates                tS
> nasals                  m   n
> lateral                             l
> flap                                 r
>
> In transliteration, the affricate /tS/ is written ch.
> h /h/ occurs only word initially, and is still pronounced by educated
> people, but is generally dropped in many dialects and in rapid speech.
> n /n/ usually becomes /N/ before /k/ and /g/, and m /m/ before /p/ and /b/
> (we say it is assimilated in its place of articulation).
> r /r/ is not to be pronounced as in English 'rose', but as in Spanish or
> Italian 'caro', and it should never modify the pronounciation of the
> previous vowel.
> q /q/ is a glottal stop, that is a stop is produced either by the suddent
> opening of the glottis under pressure from the air below, or by the abrupt
> closure of the glottis to block the airstream. The glottal stop is always
> voiceless, as the complete closure of the vocal cords precludes their
> vibration.
> It is very important to keep  s /s/ and  z /z/ apart: the former is
> unvoiced, as in 'send', the latter is voiced, as in 'realize'.
> Double consonants are not to be pronounced twice, but they mark a long
> consonant: kyemma /k@'em:a/.
>
> Vowels:
>
>             front                back
> high     i                      u
> mid           e   @    o
> low                a
>
> In transliteration, schwa /@/ is written y.
>
> Other vowels are pronounced a /a/, e /e/, i /i/, o /o/ and  u /u/,
> as in car, regulate, Jim, crow, full.
>
> Suimeni had two series of vowels: short and long ones. Vaiysi has a series
> of diphthongs  directly derived from these long vowels (a > a;  e > ye; i
> > iy; o and u > ou), and treated as such in the vowels' reducer's
mechanism.
> Alternations between vowels and diphthongs are very common in the
language.
>
> Accent
> The accent is a stress accent. It generally falls on the last long vowel
of
> each word. If there are no long vowels, it falls on the first syllable.
> Monosyllabic words obviously  stress the only syllable they have.
>             tal = house
> taleiy = houses /ta'lej@/
>
> There are, anyway, a few exceptions: prepositions are proclitic, thus they
> do not bear any accent.
> riyt taluni = outside the house /ri@'t:aluni/
>
> The vowels' reducer
> Vaiysi has retined from its mother tongue the use of a long vowels'
reducer;
> this because, in both the languages, two long vowels can't stand in two
> adjacent syllsbles, and the latter displaces the former. This mechanism is
> rather innovative, and hasn't been observed in any of the other Hyarian
> languages. There are rather complex reduction patterns, but the most
> important ones affect those diphthongs derived from Suimeni's long vowels.
> So:
>
>             ya + long vowel > a
>             ye + long vowel > e
>             iy + long vowel > i
>             ou + long vowel > u (always, even when ou is from Suime:ni o:)
>
> Example:     S. eka, V. yego = he comes
>                    S. eke, V. egeiy = he came
>
>                         Present                                     Past
> Suime:ni            e:ka                  e:k+e:    >          eke:
> Vaiysi               yego                 yeg+eiy  >          egeiy
>
> vyankeo = he is killed
> vyank+yark(antipassive) > vankyarko = he kills
> vyank+yark(antipassive)+eiy(past.3s) > vyankarkeiy* = he killed,
>
> *Important: notice that the root's vowel in _vyank_ isn't shortened
anymore:
> the last syllable _eiy_, with his long vowel, has already shortened
_yark_,
> and this last one can't rearrange the root.
> >>
>
> Well, Pablo  proposed to call this last feature "shortening" or "length
> dissimulation" because "vowels' reducer" sounds like a shrinking machine.
> : ) Anyway I think this is one of the coolest features of the language.
>
> I'm waiting for your reply.
>
> Luca
>
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