K'tle phon- etc.

Instead of doing what I'm supposed to, I've been working on a new language
(the name K'tle will probably change). It's still pretty unstable, especially the
morphology. I should mention that, although I'm using sound changes etc. to
develop this, esthetics takes precedence over naturalism.

ALPHABET

My current *transliteration* uses the letters
|a c e f h i k l m n o p r t x z|
and also | ' | and |^|.

PHONETICS

|p'  t'  k'| are ejectives
otherwise | ' | is [?] (automatically geminate between vowels)
| ' | isn't written initially
|tl| is [tK] (|ttl| is geminate)
and otherwise, |p  t  k| are plain stops (doubled when geminate)

|pl  kl| are clusters occurring only as onsets (or as geminates |ppl  kkl|)

|l| is [4] after a vowel and otherwise [l]
the corresponding geminate [r:] is |r|

|m| is [m] and |n| is [N] before |k| and otherwise [n] (doubled when
geminate)

|f  z  c  x| are [f  s_m  s\  X] (doubled when geminate)
|z  c| are also [ts_m)  ts\)] after |n  t| (forming geminate affricates in the
latter case)
|h| is [h]

|^| indicates that the immediately preceding vowel has high tone; otherwise,
a vowel has low tone

|i  e  a  o| are [I  E  A  O] in the following circumstances:
- after |x|
- before |x  r|
- before |l| when it's not followed immediately by a vowel
and otherwise [i  e  a  o]

SOME PHONOLOGY

The basic syllable structure is *(C)V(C)*, with |pl  kl| counting as onset *C*;
*CCV(C)* is also possible for initial syllables.

|f| and |h| are in complimentary distribution: |f| occurs:
- immediately after [?] or an ejective
- immediately before [?]
- initially before a consonant
- when geminate
otherwise, |h| occurs

plain stops don't occur before other stops/affricates or before nasals
[?] also doesn't occur before other stops/affricates
ejectives don't occur before ejectives or [?]

|m| doesn't occur before |n| or before non-labial stops/affricates (except | ' |)
|n| doesn't occur before |m  p|

low tone |i  e  o| don't occur finally unless preceded by 2 (or 3) consonants

Only some of the *CC* combinations are possible initially, but I haven't
completely decided which. They probably include:
- ejective + any but | ' |
- fricative + stop (including |tl| and | ' |)

They probably exclude:
- fricative + fricative
- nasal + anything
- |l| + anything

That's all I can think of for now.

Jeff