Pangali

Pangali
Ńipańariâ, Pańari
Pronunciation	[[Help:IPA|[[ŋi.ba.ŋa.ɹɨˈʔa], [pa.ŋaˈði]]]]
Created by	Sámuel Hiette Kannosíni
Date	August 8th, 2019
Language family	Language Isolate Pangali
Language codes
BRCL	blue

Pangali (English: /pɑŋˈgɑli/, /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. A unique feature that may be noted is the presence of phonemic prenasalized stops.

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	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m ⟨m⟩	n ⟨n⟩		ŋ ⟨ń⟩
Plosive	Plain	p ⟨p⟩	t ⟨t⟩		k ⟨k⟩	ʔ ⟨ˆ⟩
	Prenasalized	ᵐp ⟨b⟩	ⁿt ⟨d⟩		ᵑk ⟨g⟩
Fricative						h ⟨h,hj⟩
Approximant			ɹ ⟨r⟩	j ⟨j⟩	w ⟨w⟩

Pangali Vowel Inventory

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

Romanization

The Pangalu currently have no official writing system but offers to be taught the romanization used in the recorded lexicon produced by academics have been met with enthusiasim.

Allophonic Variation

Plosives

Comprising 12 different allophonic variations, Pangali's plosives are the most unstable aspect of the language's phonological inventory.

Sonorization

Standard Pangali: Plain voiceless plosives become voiced in intervocalic positions.

Shift	Example
p → b / V_V	/ʔupa/ → [ʔuˈba]
t → d / V_V	/huwutuwi/ → [hu.wu.duˈɣʷi]1
k → g / V_V	/ⁿtaku/ → [ⁿtaˈgu]

Notes:

• A minority of speakers only voice /p t k/ in unstressed syllables, primarily in the more southern islands.

Dissimilation

Word initially, /p t k/ spirantize to [f s x] when the following syllable shares the same onset. Under the same conditions intervocalically, /p t k/ instead affricate to [p͡f t͡s k͡x]:

Word Initial	Example	Intervocalic	Example
p → f / _Vp	/papa/ → [faˈba]	p → p͡f / V_Vp	/ᵐpipapa/ → [ᵐpi.p͡faˈba]
t → s / _Vt	/tutiɹa/ → [su.diˈða]	t → t͡s / V_Vt	/ᵐpitutiɹa/ → [ᵐpi.t͡su.diˈða]
k → x / _Vk	/kuka/ → [xuˈga]	k → k͡x / V_Vk	/ᵐpikuka/ → [ᵐpi.k͡xuˈga]

Notes:

• It is theorized that /p t k/ originally affricated in all positions but later spirantized word initially.
• For the speakers from the island of Batawutarjikuri affricates continue to occur both word intially and intervocalically.

Approximants

Fortition

/ɹ j w/ fortify to [ð̠ ʝ ɣʷ] when occurring in a stressed syllable:

Shifts	Examples
ɹ → ð̠	/paɹa/ → [paˈð̠a]
	/kiɹi/ → [kiˈð̠i]
j → ʝ	/iɹataju/ → [i.ɹa.daˈʝu]
	/nija/ → [niˈʝa]
w → ɣʷ	/iwi/ → [iˈɣʷi]
	/kuwa/ → [kuˈɣʷa]

Notes:

• The most common realization of /ɹ/ is [ð̠], a voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative, but some speakers may realize it as the sibilant counterpart [z] or even postalveolar [ʒ].
• Speakers who realize /ɹ/ as [ʒ] typically merge [ʒ] and [ʝ] to [ʒ].
• Technically, /w/ would be better transcribed as [ɣʷ~ɣ] due to notable free variation, however [ɣʷ] is more commonly encountered and thus the more common transcription.

Vowels

Centralization

Vowels preceding /ʔ/ are centralized. /a/ is both centralized and raised:

Shift	Example
a → ɐ /_ʔ	/haʔamu/ → [hɐ.ʔaˈmu]2
u → ʉ /_ʔ	/hanuʔa/ → [ha.nʉˈʔa]2
i → ɨ /_ʔ	/piʔa/ → [pɨˈʔa]

Notes:

• Southern speakers do not raise /a/, but rather retract it to [ɑ]
• For many speakers, [ɨ] and [ʉ] may be in free variation with [ɪ] and [ʊ], respectively.

Lowering

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

Shift	Examples
i → ɛ /_N	/hiⁿtu/ → [hɛˈⁿtu]	/tatinu/ → [sa.dɛˈnu]
u → ɔ /_N	/ʔuŋa/ → [ʔɔˈŋa]	/kumaki/ → [kɔ.maˈgi]

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 except for /ɹ/ and /j/, while word internal syllables may only occur with single consonant onsets, with the exception of /h/, which may only appear word initially. Codas are forbidden in any context, with all syllables being open.

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.

• /hatawu/ + /utunasa/ = [sa.daˈɣʷɔ ŋu.dɔ.naˈða]
  • /hatawu/ + /ŋaᵐpinaɹa/ = [sa.daˈɣʷu ŋa.ᵐpi.naˈða]

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 simplification of clusters to the second consonant in the example below:

• Helicopter: /ˈheliˌkɔptə(ɹ)/ → /hiɹikuta/

Stress

Lexical stress in Pangali falls on the final syllable of the root, and this remains true even if derivational suffixes apply.

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):

[ⁿtɛ.mɔˈmi|wa.ᵐpuˈɟi|ka.ɹu.wi.ɹi.ɡaˈvi]

animal-ACC | father.ERG | CAUS-eat

The father is feeding the animal

[ŋa.k͡xu.ɡɔ.maˈmi|wa.ᵐpuˈɟi|i.ɹi.ɡaˈvi|hu|u.na.ŋaˈɡʷu|na.mu.wɛ.naˈvi]

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