Fásriyya: Difference between revisions

Fásriyya is a [[w:Tone (linguistics)|tonal language]] with two tone levels, high (H) and low (L), with low being the default tone. Contour tones (i.e. rising or falling tone melodies) are usually analysed as separate tones occurring on adjacent tone bearing units (morae) and thus have no phonemic status.  Tone may be both lexical (an inherent feature of a word) or grammatical.  High tones are marked by use of the acute accent (⟨á⟩, ⟨í⟩, ⟨ú⟩) on short vowels, with low tone unmarked.  Atonal long vowels (long vowels with a simple low tone) are written with a macron (⟨ā⟩, ⟨ē⟩, ⟨ī⟩, ⟨ū⟩), whilst tonal vowels are written doubled, with an acute accent placed on the first for falling tone (HL) (⟨áa⟩, ⟨ée⟩, ⟨íi⟩, ⟨úu⟩), on the second for rising tone (LH) (⟨aá⟩, ⟨eé⟩, ⟨ií⟩, ⟨uú⟩), and both for a long high tone (HH or just H) (⟨áá⟩, ⟨éé⟩, ⟨íí⟩, ⟨úú⟩).

Another tone contour, called the broken tone, may appear on long syllables, as an allophone of the peaking tone.  It is written with a tilde over the second vowel (⟨aã⟩, ⟨eẽ⟩, ⟨iĩ⟩, ⟨uũ⟩).  It is realised as a contour from low to mid pitch, with creaky voice manifesting towards the end.  See more bellow.

==== Lexical tone ====

Lexical tone is a feature of Fásriyya's triconsonantal root system, with each root carrying one of the five tone melodies.  For example, the root of the word '''''báskiru''''' ('it blooms') is not simple ''s-k-r'', but rather '''''s-k-r HL''''', with a high-low tone melody.  These melodies play themselves across any words derived from their associated stems, that is, all words derived from '''''s-k-r HL''''' carry the same tone melody. Due to the fact that different vocalisations have different numbers of vowels, these lexical tone melodies manifest differently depending on the number of morae (a short vowel is one mora, a long vowel is two) present.