Czecklish phonology

Phonology

Vowels

Oral Monophthongs

Czecklish has a total of 10 monophthongs. Monophthongs occur in short and elongated variants. Vowel length is phonemic, and is used to disambiguate some minimal pairs. There are two central vowels: /ɨ/ and /ɑ/. The central vowel /ɑ/ is actually a back vowel, but is realized in a central position. In some dialects, though, it is pronounced as a back vowel.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i i:	ɨ ɨ:	u u:
Open-mid	ɛ ɛ:		ɔ ɔ:
Open		ɑ ɑ:

Nasal Monophthongs

Czecklish has a total of 8 nasal monophthongs. Like oral monophthongs, nasal vowels occur in both elongated and short variants. Close Front and Back monophthongs are never nasalized, due to phonotactic constraints. Nasal monophthongs cannot occur before nasal consonants.

	Front	Central	Back
Close		ɨ̃ ɨ̃:
Open-mid	ɛ̃ ɛ̃:		ɔ̃ ɔ̃:
Open		ɑ̃ ɑ̃:

Oral Vowel Distribution

The vowels /ɨ/ and /i/ have largely complementary distribution. Either vowel may follow a peripheral (labial or velar) consonant. Elsewhere, however, /i/ is usually restricted to syllable-initial position and positions after palatal consonants, while /ɨ/ cannot appear in those positions. The close vowel /i/ appears outside its usual positions in some foreign-derived words. The vowels /ɨ/ and /i/ are considered to rhyme in Czecklish poetry out of tradition, as in the past /ɨ/ was closer to [ɪ], which is acoustically similar to [i].

Nasal Vowel Distribution

The nasal vowels do not occur except before obstruents and in word-final position. When the letters with an ogonek appear before sonorants, they indicate an oral vowel followed by a nasal consonant. Before /l/ or/w/, the nasality is lost altogether and the vowels are pronounced as their oral variants. Many speakers also frequently denasalize /ɛ̃/, pronouncing it as [ɛ] in word-final position.

Vocalic Allophones

A degree of allophony applies to certain vowels, depending on whether or not they are adjacent to a palatal consonant. When open-mid vowels occur adjacent to a palatal consonant (Š), open-mid vowels are raised to close-mid vowels. Additionally, when the open back vowel /ɑ/ occurs adjacent to a palatal consonant, /ɑ/ is fronted to [æ]. The allophonic rules can be summarized below:

-/ɛŠ/ or -/ŠɛŠ/- → -[eŠ] or -[ŠeŠ]-

-/ɔŠ/ or -/ŠɔŠ/- → -[oŠ] or -[ŠoŠ]-

-/ɑŠ/ or -/ŠɑŠ/ → -[æŠ] or -[ŠæŠ]-

Voicing and Devoicing

Czecklish obstruents are subject to voicing and devoicing in certain positions. This leads to neutralization of voiced/voiceless pairs in those positions. The phenomenon applies in word-final position and in consonant clusters. In a Czecklish consonant cluster, including across a word boundary, the obstruents are either all voiced or all voiceless. To determine whether a given cluster has voiced or voiceless obstruents, examine whether the last obstruent in the cluster, excluding /v/ or /ʑ/, appears to be voiced or voiceless. Sonorants do not represent obstruents, and therefore do not affect the voicing of other consonants; they are also usually not subject to devoicing except when surrounded by unvoiced consonants. At the end of a word obstruents are pronounced voiceless, unless followed by a word beginning with a voiced obstruent, in which case the above cluster rules apply. However in some regional dialects, final obstruents are voiced if the following word starts with a sonorant.

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	p b	t d	c ɟ	k g
Affricate	pf	ts dz	tɕ dʑ
Fricative	f v	s z	ɕ ʑ ɕʷ	x ɣ	ɦ
Approximant			j	w
Trill		r	r̝
Lateral app.		l	ʎ

/ɕʷ/

The labialized voiceless palatal fricative /ɕʷ/ is a rare phoneme that is found in only 58 lexemes. /ɕʷ/ cannot appear before back vowels or nasal vowels. As such, it is only found before short or elongated front vowels. It can also appear before /ɑ/.

/p͡f/

The labial affricate /p͡f/ is not a true labial affricate; it is actually a labial plosive that is released as a labiodental fricative. It is a rare consonant worldwide, but is actually a quite frequent Czecklish phoneme, occurring in 26% of Czecklish lexemes.

Syllable Structure

The maximum syllable structure of Czecklish is:

[(C₁)(C₂)(C₃)]V(S)[(C₄)(C₅)]

Where [(C₁)(C₂)(C₃)] is the optional onset. The onset can have a maximum of three consonants, with certain restrictions. The nucleus V is a mandatory oral or nasal monophthong, and can followed by a semivowel (S) in diphthongs. The optional coda [(C₄)(C₅)] is slightly less complex than the onset, but has more restrictions. Overall, the syllable structure is very typical of an IE language. The syllable structure has been in particular, compared to Italian, in regards to its phonotactics.

Phonotactics

Below is a description of Czecklish phonotactics:

Onset [(C₁)(C₂)(C₃)]

Czecklish allows up to three consonants in syllable-initial position, though there are limitations:

• (C₁)
  • Any consonant
    

• (C₁)(C₂)
  • /s z/ + [±plosive] or /f v/
  • /s z/ + [±affricate] or /f v/
  • [±nasal] + /r r̝ l ʎ/ or /j w/
  • [±plosive] + /r r̝ l ʎ/ or /j w/
  • [±affricate] + /r r̝ l ʎ/ or /j w/
  • [±fricative] + /r r̝ l ʎ/ or /j w/
    

• (C₁)(C₂)(C₃)
  • /s z/ + [±plosive] or /f v/ + /r r̝ l ʎ j w/
  • /s z/ + [±affricate] or /f v/ + /r r̝ l ʎ j w/
  • [±plosive] + /r r̝ l ʎ/ + /j w/
  • [±affricate] + /r r̝ l ʎ/ + /j w/
  • [±fricative] + /r r̝ l ʎ/ + /j w/
    

Nucleus V(S)

• The nucleus is the only mandatory part of a syllable and must be an oral or nasal monophthong.
• The nucleus can also be an oral or nasal diphthong.
  • Nasal diphthongs, if present, cannot precede a nasal consonant.
    

Coda (C₄)(C₅)

• (C₄)
  • Any consonant
    

• (C₄)(C₅)
  • /r l m n/ + [±plosive]
  • /r l m n/ + [±affricate]
  • /r l m n/ + [±fricative]
  • /s z/ + [±plosive]
  • /s z/ + [±affricate]
  • /s z/ + [±fricative]
    

Stress

Primary Stress

Stress is almost always placed upon the penultimate syllable. In other words, a polysyllabic word has stress is placed on the second-to-last syllable. Stress is not weighted, and is not affected by syllabic structure or gemination.

Secondary Stress

Elsewhere, word stress is placed on the either the antepenultimate or ultimate syllable. Words that have antepenultimate stress are usually of foreign origin. Words with ultimate stress are often borrowings from another language family. There are some native Czecklish words that naturally have antepenultimate stress. A few rare words in Czecklish have ultimate stress.