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	ɓ~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 velarized, and thus can be considered to have merged /k/ and /k’/ as that consonant is already velar.

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 historic short nasal, while long nasals have effectively been shortened, and may still phonetically nasalize the preceding vowel. The missing nasals are prototypically merged with the adjacent nasal of the same column, though [ɛ̃ ɔ̃] do exist in some dialects.

The open-mid central vowel is the most variable vowel cross-dialectally, with various dialects pronouncing it as any of [ɘ ə ɵ ɜ ɐ ɞ]; this may also depend on its surroundings. For example, Soleya Hatzonian pronounces it normally as [ɜ], but rounds it to [ɞ] before labial and labialized consonants.

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 the corresponding 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/). Beginning nasals have a tendency to blur syllables together, bunching up with the prior vowel phonetically in many dialects, but in some dialects, it is more parsimonious to regard it as prenasalization, and as such it is not considered a coda consonant phonemically. A word cannot start with a geminated consonant, but can start with any other onset besides /h/.