Pangali

Pangali
Ngipangalusu'a, Pangali
Pronunciation	[[Help:IPA|[[ŋi.ba.ŋa.lu.zʉˈʔa], [paˈŋa.li]]]]
Created by	Sámuel Hiette Kannosíni
Date	August 8th, 2019
Language family	Language Isolate Pangali
Language codes
BRCL	blue

Pangali (English: /peɪŋˈgɑli/ or /pɛnˈgɑli/) is a poorly made attempt at channeling the creator's artistic nature a constructed language developed by Sámuel Hiette Kannosíni for the purposes of his own gasket-blowing frustration enjoyment and glee.

Introduction

[WARNING - ACHTUNG - AVERTISSEMENT]

This article is very much a WIP, examples being inconsistency in formatting/style and references to features not yet fleshed out, as well as some small mentionings of a dialect called Luâi. I realize this is the case, however as someone who has ADHD (primarily inattentive type for the curious informed) and is extremely busy, my ability to consistently and coherently update this article is abysmal at best.

Thanks for understanding, people who obviously care as much as I do! /s

Fictional Setting

The Pangali language is the language used by the Pangalu, or the Pangali people, an indigenous people of the Pangali island chain, which is located roughly five hundred and thirty kilometers due west of the Phillipines. Until 2003 they were considered an uncontacted people, but on March 17th, 2003 an exploratory party onboard a rudimentary sailing vessel voyaged from the northern island of Baluwikaûnu towards the Phillipines. Enroute to their destination, however, they were intercepted by the Philippine Coast Guard some two hundred kilometers northeast of the coast of Tandag City and, controversially, detained for a period of 5 months and 23 days.

Official justification for the length of the detainment was given by the Phillipine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) soon after the party’s release, stating:

“Due to the immense language and cultural barrier, as well as concern for the potential spread of disease to the isolated people, and questions regarding their motivation for travel made difficult by the aforementioned barriers, quarantine and detainment procedures were deemed not only the most efficient course of action, but also the safest, for all parties involved.”

The following months gave rise to an increase of international attention surrounding the Pangali people and the continuing communication efforts between them and the Philippine Government. It was later announced by the Philippine DFA that the isolated tribe “no longer wishes to be isolated”, and thus were subsequently placed underneath an international spotlight.

Naturally with the indigenous people now slowly but surely increasing contact with the modern world, records of their culture and language are a must in order to maintain a positive relationship, and thus the purpose of this wiki is, succinctly summarized, to address the linguistic side of such matters.

Classification

The language is classified as an agglutinative language isolate with a tripartite morphosyntatic alignment that declines nouns under a 12 case system and conjugates verbs for person, tense, aspect, and mood. Adjectives are not inflected and have zero-grade derivation for adverbial phrases. The primary word order is OSV, however due to nouns being heavily inflected other word orders are possible, with SOV being the most prominently encountered alternate order. Whereas in many languages adpositions are used to indicate different relations between phrases, Pangali typically makes use of existing cases or a variation of Suffixaufnahme (also known as case stacking), wherein different cases are combined to carry the function of an adpositional function not normally covered by the standard twelve.

Phonology

In spite of its status as a language isolate, the phonological system of Pangali isn't terribly special in comparison to its neighbors in the Philippines or Australia. A simple syllable structure, few (phonemic) vowels, a fair amount of consonants, and stable vowel quality make this language both interesting and soundly (ha, pun!) mundane all at the same time.

Phoneme Inventory

Pangali's consonant inventory weighs in at a respectable 21 phonemic consonants. Some unique features that may be noted are the presence of phonemic prenasalized stops and phonemic consonant length amongst the nasals, fricatives, and lateral approximant.

The vowels, on the other hand, number only three in terms of phonemic units. As with many languages with small vowel inventories, what vowels that Pangali does have are subject to significant allophonic variation.

Pangali Consonant Inventory

		Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m ⟨m⟩	n ⟨n⟩		ŋ ⟨ń⟩
Stop	Prenasalized	ᵐp ⟨b⟩	ⁿt ⟨d⟩		ᵑk ⟨g⟩
	Plain	p ⟨p⟩	t ⟨t⟩		k ⟨k⟩	ʔ ⟨ˆ⟩
Fricative	Prenasalized		/ⁿs/ ⟨z⟩
	Plain		/s/ ⟨s⟩	/ʃ/ ⟨ś⟩
Approximant					/w/ ⟨w⟩

Pangali Vowel Inventory

	Front	Back
Close	/i/ ⟨i⟩	/u/ ⟨u⟩
Open	/a/ ⟨a⟩

Romanization

The Pangalu have no writing system and due to cultural reasons have declined offers to be taught the Romanization provided by academics. Despite this, field linguists who have begun the process of recording the language have developed a relatively intuitive Romanization system, which shall be used throughout this article.

Allophonic Variation

Obstruents

Obstruents are the most unstable aspect of Pangali's phonological inventory, with a total of nine different allophonic realizations based on stress alone.

Sonorization

Standard Pangali: Plain voiceless obstruents become voiced in unstressed syllables when directly preceding an stressed syllable.

Luâi Pangali: Under the same conditions, plain obstruents are elided entirely. (Note: The resulting V.V remains if the vowels in question are different in quality, otherwise the second instance is also elided.)

Shift	Standard Pangali	Shift	Luâi Pangali
/p/ → [b]	/ʔupa/ → [ˈʔu.ba]	/p/ → Ø	[ˈʔu.ba] → [ˈhu̯a]
/t/ → [d]	/ʃuwutuwi/ → [ʃuˈgʷu.du.wi]	/t/ → Ø	[ʃuˈgʷu.du.wi] → [uˈgʷu]
/k/ → [g]	/ⁿtaku/ → [ˈⁿta.gu]	/k/ → Ø	[ˈⁿta.gu]→ [ˈn̩.tau̯]
/s/ → [z]	/kasu/ → [ˈka.zu]	/s/ → Ø	[ˈka.zu]→ [ˈkau̯]
/ʃ/ → [ʒ]	/waʃuʔuwi/ → [wa.ʒʉˈʔu.wi]	/ʃ/ → Ø	[wa.ʒʉˈʔu.wi]/ → [ou̯ˈhu]

Opening

Plain plosives spirantize and plain fricatives debuccalize word initially when in an unstressed syllable preceding a stressed syllable:

Shift	Example
/p/ → [f]	/pakiʃuwu/ → [faˈki.ʒu.wu]
/t/ → [θ]	/tusːa/ → [θuˈsːa]
/k/ → [x]	/kaʔuni/ → [xɐˈʔɔ.ni]
/s/ → [h]	/siwi/ → [hiˈwi]
/ʃ/ → [h]	/ʃaʔa/ → [haˈʔa]

Centralization

Vowels preceding /ʔ/ are centralized. /a/ is both centralized and raised to [ɐ]:

• śanuâ /ʃanuʔa/ = [ʃa.nʉˈʔa]
• saâmmu /saʔamːu/ = [sɐˈʔaˌmːu]
• piâ /piʔa/ = [pɨˈʔa]

Lowering of Close Vowels

/i/ and /u/ are lowered to [ɛ] and [ɔ], respectively, when preceding nasals and prenasalized consonants:

• sidu /siⁿtu/ = [ˈsɛ.ⁿtu]
• úńa /ʔuŋa/ = [ˈʔɔ. ŋa]

Labio-Velar Fortition

/w/ fortifies to [g^w] in stressed onset positions preceding /u/ and to [v] intervocalically when the preceding syllable is unstressed:

• wupani /wupani/ = [ˈgʷu.pa.ni]
  • wapani /wapani/ = [ˈwa.pa.ni], not *[ˈgʷa.pa.ni]
• ńisatawu /ŋisatawu/ = [ˈŋi.sa.da.vu]
  • hawi /ʔawi/ = [ˈʔa.wi], not *[ˈʔa.vi]

Open Vowel Reduction

/a/ is reduced to /ə/ in word final syllables if the preceding syllable is unstressed:

• uguśala /uᵑkuʃala/ = [ɔ.ˈᵑku.ʃa.lə]
  • gila /ᵑkila/ = [ˈᵑki.la], not *[ᵑkilə]

Phonotactics

Syllable Structure

Pangali has a (C)V structure, where a syllable can only contain one vowel, which may or may not be preceded by a consonant. Word initial syllables may occur with either a null onset or with any single consonant, while word internal syllables may only occur with single consonant onsets. Codas are forbidden in any context, with all syllables being open. This is true even for geminate consonants, thus they are analyzed as single consonants as opposed to a sequence of [VC.CV].

Epenthesis

In instances where a word ending in a null coda (i.e. all words) is followed by a word beginning with a null onset, an epenthetic /ŋ/ is inserted to replace the null onset. This process is treated as if there is no word boundary, and thus the presence of the epenthetic nasal lowers the preceding vowel if it is high, while in other instances word boundaries would prevent this.

• /satawu/ + /ulunasa/ = [sa.daˈgʷɔ ŋu.lɔˈna.sa]
  • /satawu/ + /ŋaᵐpinasa/ = [sa.daˈgʷu ˈŋa.ᵐpi.na.zə]

Loanwords

Due to the nature of this syllable structure non-conforming loanwords are often heavily altered; although it should be noted that calques are extremely more common in favor of familiarity when possible. Note the insertion of /u/ to break apart clusters and avoid final consonants in the following example.

• Helicopter: /ˈhɛlɪˌkɑptɚ/ > 'alikuputalu /ʔalikuputalu/, [ˈʔa.li.gu.bu.da.lu]

Stress

Pangali determines lexical stress via two categories, Onset Placement and Onset Articulation. The table below shows the subcategories for each in descending fashion, with the categories becoming "weaker" in attracting stress as one moves to the right.

Onset Placement	Onset Articulation
Glottal > Velar > Postalveolar > Alveolar > Bilabial	Geminated > Coarticulated > Plain

For example. the stress of */kVtVpV/ would invariably be [ˈkV.tV.bV] because velar consonants attract stress more strongly than either alveolars or bilabials. The same would also be true if the syllable order were reversed, thus */pVtVkV/ would be realized as [bV.dVˈkV]. However, if the prefix */ʔV/ is added, then the word would be stressed as *[ˈʔV.pV.dV.gV] since /ʔ/ attracts stress more than any other consonant in the word.

When Onset Articulation is factored in, then prenasalized consonants are stronger than any plain consonants, however geminated consonants are only greater than their plain counterparts and gain secondary stress when stronger plain placements are present within a word.

Thus /ᵐp/ will always attract stress over /ʔ/, /k/, or /w/ despite its placement of bilabial being "weaker" than the velar placement; a word such as /ŋutasːa/ is stressed as [ˈŋu.taˌsːa], not *[ŋu.daˈsːa].

Stress is placed on the initial syllable whenever all onsets in a word are identical; when two identical strong consonants are present in any word 3 syllables or longer then the most left-leaning strong syllable is stressed. In cases where an epenthetic /ŋ/ is inserted, the modified word does not change its original stress pattern.

Numbers

Filler text is text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated. It may be used to display a sample of fonts, generate text for testing, or to spoof an e-mail spam filter. The process of using filler text is sometimes called greeking, although the text itself may be nonsense, or largely Latin, as in Lorem ipsum.

Nouns

Filler text is text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated. It may be used to display a sample of fonts, generate text for testing, or to spoof an e-mail spam filter. The process of using filler text is sometimes called greeking, although the text itself may be nonsense, or largely Latin, as in Lorem ipsum.

Verbs

While other languages such as Spanish follow a Tense-Aspect-Mood (TAM) system, in which the three categories are largely conflated amongst conjugation paradigms, Pangali primarily expresses these categories in an agglutinative fashion. Where each category can cleanly be separated morpheme by morpheme.

The 6 categories that verbs in Pangali conjugate for are: Person, Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Evidentiality.

Person

Filler text is text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated. It may be used to display a sample of fonts, generate text for testing, or to spoof an e-mail spam filter. The process of using filler text is sometimes called greeking, although the text itself may be nonsense, or largely Latin, as in Lorem ipsum.

Tense

Filler text is text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated. It may be used to display a sample of fonts, generate text for testing, or to spoof an e-mail spam filter. The process of using filler text is sometimes called greeking, although the text itself may be nonsense, or largely Latin, as in Lorem ipsum.

Present Tense

Filler text is text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated. It may be used to display a sample of fonts, generate text for testing, or to spoof an e-mail spam filter. The process of using filler text is sometimes called greeking, although the text itself may be nonsense, or largely Latin, as in Lorem ipsum.

Past Tense

Filler text is text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated. It may be used to display a sample of fonts, generate text for testing, or to spoof an e-mail spam filter. The process of using filler text is sometimes called greeking, although the text itself may be nonsense, or largely Latin, as in Lorem ipsum.

Aspect

Filler text is text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated. It may be used to display a sample of fonts, generate text for testing, or to spoof an e-mail spam filter. The process of using filler text is sometimes called greeking, although the text itself may be nonsense, or largely Latin, as in Lorem ipsum.

Derivational Morphology

Filler text is text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated. It may be used to display a sample of fonts, generate text for testing, or to spoof an e-mail spam filter. The process of using filler text is sometimes called greeking, although the text itself may be nonsense, or largely Latin, as in Lorem ipsum.

Syntax

Parameter Order

Pangali, in line with its use of case marking, allows its speakers to vary their choice of word order. That being said, the default and most neutral order is OSV (Object-Subject-Verb):

Dimumi wabuśi kasuwiśikawi

animal-ACC father.ERG CAUS-eat

The father is feeding the animal

Ńakukumami wabuśi iśikawi su unańalu namulinawi

1P.GEN-apple-ACC father.ERG CAUS-eat REL INTRANS-I fear

I fear that my father is eating my apple.

Topicalization

With the exception of the verb, which must be in the final position of a clause, phrases that are emphasized generally come first in a sentence.

Śikimi baúmaliku śuwiwaúśuwi (Neutral)

child-ACC bird.ERG DIM-bite

The bird nipped the child

-

Baúmaliku śikimi śuwiwaúśuwi (Emphasis on baúmaliku)

bird.ERG child-ACC DIM-bite

It was the bird that nipped the child