Effects of Accent in Seinundjé

Historically, Seinundjé had a pitch accent: the rightmost heavy syllable of the
stress-affecting part (including stems and derivational/gender affixes, but not
inflections; compounds can be multiply accented) and all syllables to the right
are pronounced with a higher pitch.

Eventually, this split into a dual stress system: a 'tension accent' that matches exactly
the behavior of the pitch accent, and a stress accent that no longer resets at
morpheme boundaries within words, and includes inflections (with a special
restriction: the final consonant of an inflection never affects meter).

The 'tension accent' appeared as the low pitch accent laxed vowels. Sein. has 5
vowels /a e i o u/ with a long/short distinction, can have diphthongs in Vj or
Vw. The laxing resulted in this:
Short vowels:
If a prevocalic glide is present, syllabify the glide and drop the vowel. /o/ and
/u/ cause /j/ to round.
If a liquid is present, syllabify the liquid, dropping the vowel.
If a nasal is present, the nasal becomes a nasalized approximant and causes the vowel to drop.
Otherwise, the vowel becomes /@/.
Long vowels:
The vowel becomes /y@ E@ E@ A@ w@/.

Example:

Sáu zin rámnje kóldhamlamjhál lénh,
Kámne inu arénj horuite lélal inhiak yacénh.
Címnhe dhemvadhénh lyún sóbathaneas:
Dhafaf, kégune, "Lélakura dhemvadhetje rúnj rúnje."

/
sa:w' zin' ra:m'n`e kA@lDw~=lam'dZa:l l:eJ'
ka:m'ne inu' r=e:n`' h@ruj'te le:lal j~'jak jatSe:J'
tCi:m'Je Dw~=vaDe:J' lju:n' so:'baTane.as
D@faf' ke:'gune le:'lakura Demva'Det`e r:uJ' ru:'Je
/

Naturalistic?  Weird?
(I firmly believe that the rest of Arda thinks that the Sein. people speak with
pebbles in their mouths.)

 ---
Shreyas Sampat