Hatzonian phonology

This page discusses the phonology of Hatzonian.

Hatzonian is a syllable-timed, dynamic-accent language. Due to its wide range, Hatzonian phonology is also quite variable from dialect to dialect.

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

	Labial			Alveolar			Post- alveolar/ palatal			Velar			Uvular			Glottal
Nasal	m			n			ɲ			ŋ
Stop	pʰ	p	pʼ	tʰ	t	tʼ	t͡ʃʰ	t͡ʃ	t͡ʃʼ	kʰ	k	kʼ	qʰ	q	qʼ
Fricative				s		z							χ			h
Approximant				l		(ɹʷ)	j		ʎ	w
Trill				r

Allophony

In most dialects of Hatzonian, the labialized alveolar approximant [ɹʷ] only occurs in syllable codas and can be considered allophonic to /r/, though the Matta Hatzonian dialect family uses the approximant for all /r/.

Additionally, the aspirated plosives are pronounced in most dialects released by the non-sibilant fricative with the same place of articulation [pɸ̆ tθ̆ t͡ʃç̆ kx̆ qχ̆].

In the Amcel, Mondo, Stera, and Rot'a dialect families of Hatzonian, the velar nasal /ŋ/ is merged with the alveolar nasal /n/: the first three only have /n/, while the last only has /ŋ/.

Soleya Hatzonian phones ejective consonants as uvularized in unstressed syllables, and thus can be considered to have merged /q/ and /qʼ/ as that consonant is already uvular.

Vowels

Vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i (ĩ)		u (ũ)
Close-mid	e (ẽ)		o (õ)
Open-mid	ɛ	ɜ	ɔ
Open		a (ɐ̃)

Nasal vowels tend to be longer than their non-nasal counterparts, and derive from a historic uvular nasal [ɴ], which elsewhere has merged with the velar nasal /ŋ/.

Prosody

Hatzonian is generally described as syllable-timed.

Stress

Hatzonian is a dynamic-accent language. Stressed syllables are louder and longer than non-stressed syllables.

Stress is phonemic in Hatzonian. This is indicated with an acute accent on the vowel (the first one of the pair in digraphs). For example, the words dánkae [ˈtaˑŋkʰɛ] and dankáe [taŋˈkʰɛˑ] are considered phonemically distinct.

Phonotactics

Hatzonian is a (C)(C)V(A) language, where A represents any of the consonants in the Approximant row of the phoneme table above. The allowed CC sequences are any nasal or the sibilant /s/ followed by a plosive, the same consonant twice (though if it is an ejective, the first consonant of the pair is plain), any non-ejective plosive followed by the alveolar trill /r/ or the non-lateral approximants /j w/, and either the plain or aspirated alveolar stops followed by a sibilant (though these become the alveolar affricates /ts tsʰ dz/). A word cannot start with a geminated consonant, but can start with any other onset besides /h/.