Pangali

Pangali
Ngipangalusu'a, Pangali
Pronunciation	[[Help:IPA|[[ŋi.pa.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

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 Mpaluwika'unu 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 and Orthography

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.

Consonants

Pangali Consonant Inventory

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	/m/ /mː/	/n/ /nː/		/ŋ/ /ŋː/
Plosive	/p/ /ᵐp/ [b]	/t/ /ⁿt/ [d]		/k/ /ᵑk/ [g] [gʷ]	/ʔ/
Fricative	[v]	/s/ /sː/ [z]	/ʃ/ /ʃː/ [ʒ]
Approximant		/l/ /lː/		/w/

Vowels

Pangali Vowel Inventory

	Front	Central	Back
Close	/i/	[ɨ] [ʉ]	/u/
Close Mid
Mid		[ə]
Open Mid	[ɛ]	[ɐ]	[ɔ]
Open	/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 Anglo-centric Romanization system, which is presented below in the following tables and shall be used throughout this article.

Consonants

Pangali Consonant Romanization

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m mm	n nn		ng nng
Plosive	p mp	t nt		k ngk	'
Fricative		s ss	sh ssh
Approximant		l ll		w

Vowels

Pangali Vowel Romanization

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Open	a

Allophonic Variation

Intervocalic Lenition

Nonprenasalized and nongeminated consonants that occur intervocalically are voiced if the preceding syllable is unstressed:

• upaki /upaki/ = [u.baˈki]
  • umpaki /uᵐpaki / = [ˈu.ᵐpaˈki], not *[ˈu.ᵐbaˈki]

• ngutasa /ŋutasa/ = [ˈŋu.ta.zə]
  • ngutassa /ŋutasːa/ = [ˈŋu.taˌsːa], not *[ˈŋu.taˌzːa]

Centralization

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

• shanu'a /ʃanuʔa/ = [ʃa.nʉˈʔa]
• sa'ammu /saʔamːu/ = [sɐˈʔaˌmːu]
• pi'a /piʔa/ = [pɨˈʔa]

Lowering of Close Vowels

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

• sintu /siⁿtu/ = [ˈsɛ.ⁿtu]
• 'unga /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]
• ngisatawu /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:

• ungkushala /uᵑkuʃala/ = [ɔ.ˈᵑku.ʃa.lə]
  • ngkila /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. 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 [ˈŋutaˌsːa], 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.

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

Verb Phrase

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.