Phonology - Movanno

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post Alveolar
Nasal	m		n
Plosive	p, b	t		d
Fricative	f, v	θ, ð	s, z	ʃ, ʒ

Movanno realized a limited selection of contrastive phonemes, split between the nasal, plosive, and fricative manners of articulations, and the Labial and Coronal categories of places of articulation

There is also a distinction in voicing between these sounds, with all fricatives having their voiced counterparts. This continues with the plosives, however /t/ and /d/ are articulated more distinctly than a pure unvoice-voiced pair and are represented as a dental and postalveolar plosive.

Allophony is highly contextual and will be mentioned in any dictionary entries to what word they occur in.

There is also a empithetic insertion of a liquid/approximate sound roughly approximated by the IPA's /l/ which is found soley after heavy open syllables though it is not contrastive and often lost.

Romanization

Generally all sounds are romanized according to their appearance on the chart above, or as in the IPA. However the dental and post-alveolar fricatives a digraph with the unused letter {h} is utilized.

/θ/ is romanized as {th}, /ð/ is romanized as {dh}, /ʃ/ is romanized as {sh}, and /ʒ/ is romanized as {jh}. The transcription of /ʒ/ as {jh} instead of {zh} as would be thought of via the pattern of {th dh} and {sh zh} is merely an aesthetic choice for the romanization of the language. Romanizing it as {zh} would not be wrong and can be found in contemporary writings on the subject.

Vowels

	Front	Back
Close	i iː
Mid		o oː
	a aː
Open

For the vowels there is a somewhat abnormal three-vowel system with contrastive vowel length. This divides the vowel chart into three somewhat even thirds.

These representations are to be though of as the most common or middle representations of the vowel's qualities.

Romanization

The general romanization of the sounds follows here, were /a i o/ are romanzied as they are in the IPA. However for long vowels, a diacritic is utilized in most transcriptions { ā ī ō }. Doubling the vowel can also be used when diacritical marks are hard to type, such as on a type writer or when typing fast.

Syllable Structure and Phonological Restrictions

There are five base syllable structures found in Movanno: CV, VC, CVC, CV:, and CV:C

However not all combinations of these syllables are permitted. Specifically CV.VC clusters are generally disallowed, though in cases of CV.VC clustering within inflection, there is a chance for the creation of a CV:C Cluster. V:C clusters are disallowed.

Every consonant can become an onset, however not any consonant is allowed in the coda of a syllable or a word. All nasals, unvoiced fricatives, unvoiced plosives, and voiced labials not otherwise included can be codas. This creases a list of /m/,/n/,/p/,/b/,/t/,/θ/,/f/,/v/,/s/, and /ʃ/.

There is a form of nasal assimilation that occurs when one or two nasals falls into a cluster. These adjust in pronunciation towards the other sound. This feature's prevalence has made certain clusters of nasals and consonants illegal. {m} may only be clusters with other labials and {n} fufills the role for all other sounds.

Nasal on Nasal clusters asssimilate towards a gemenation of the initial sound.

Stress Rules

Stress occurs on the lest heaviest syllable in a word, where heaviness is defined by the structure and sonority of the syllable.

Levels of Heaviness

1. VC syllables
2. CV syllables
3. CV: syllables
4. CVC syllables
5. CV:C syllables

Only one CV:C syllable may appear in any non-compounded word. Any other syllable after the first will decrease to the next-level down of heaviness.