Phonology
This page gives a basic overview of Mirja's phonology. See the referenced pages for more detailed descriptions of individual phenomena.
Segmental phoneme inventory
Mirja has the following segmental phonemes.
Consonants
Sounds in parentheses appear only as the result of phonological or morphophonemic processes, and do not appear in the underlying representation of any morphemes. /p/ only appears geminate or in loanwords.
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Apical | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Obstruent | Voiceless stop | p | t | k | |||
| Voiceless fricative | (ɸ~w̥) | (f) | s (θ) | x | h | ||
| Voiced | v | d~ð | g~ɣ | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | (ŋ) | ||||
| Liquid | Lateral | l ɬ | |||||
| Rhotic | ɾ ɾ̥ | ||||||
| Approximant | w (ɸ~w̥) | j (j̥) | |||||
/r̥/ is often pronounced closer to something like [ʂ], and /j̥/ is likely best understood phonetically as [ç].
Consonant mutations
There are three processes that can change one consonant into another. The most straightforward is a dissimilation process with /s/: the second of two consecutive syllables with /s/ will replace the /s/ with /θ/:
su-s
3sg-TOP
va-t
do.it-PFV
'They did it'
The second is a merger process when two sufficiently similar consonants come together. Usually, when two consonants come together underlyingly, the result is either gemination (if they're identical) or the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them (if they're different). However, certain pairs of different consonants merge into a geminate when they come together. In the table below, these otherwise unexpected mergers are given in bold. (Expected geminates are non-bold, and epenthetically separated pairs are indicated by '--'.)
| Second phoneme → | t | l | n | k |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First phoneme ↓ | ||||
| t | tt | ll | nn | -- |
| l | ll | ll | nn | -- |
| n | nn | ll | nn | ŋŋ |
An example of this is given below.
don-l
drink-NEG
'didn't drink'
TODO: when three come together (e.g. don-l-t)
The third and most significant process that transmutes phonemes is topicalisation. Mirja's basic topic marker is a feature bundle that docks to the final consonant of a word and transforms it into a voiceless continuant:
no-rV-*
1sg-OBL-TOP
karu
is.visible
'I see it'
Vowels
| Front | Non-front | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | ||
| High | i | ɨ | u |
| Low | e | a | o |
In addition to the above vowel phonemes, Mirja has two different kinds of automatic vowel insertion. One is simple epenthesis - /a ɨ/ are inserted to break up consonant clusters that can't be resolved by the above merger processes (/a/ if the preceding vowel is low; /ɨ/ if it's high). The other is 'empty vowel slots' - certain morphemes have segments specified for being A Vowel, but with no information about which vowel. In these cases, the previous vowel is copied entirely.
Diphthongs must share rounding and height across both elements; as a result, /ɨi ae/ are the only two valid diphthongs. When morphology causes any other vowels to come together, the result is a long version of the second vowel:
e-ima
eat-morning
'eat (some) breakfast'
Suprasegmentals
Mirja has both phonemic tone and an active (non-phonemic) stress system, which interact in complex ways. In general, tones are assigned starting at the left edge of the morpheme they belong to, then stress is assigned in ways that partially depend on tone (but also on syllable weight), and then tones can be moved to better line up with the resulting stress locations.
Mirja has four phonemic tone melodies: /L H LH HL/. Contours are possible on long vowels or diphthongs, though LH contours are dispreferred if avoidable; most contours are the result of a word having too few syllables for the number of tones it has, and needing to squeeze two tones together into one syllable. Since tones must have their own mora to attach to, this will cause short vowels to lengthen; if the short vowel cannot lengthen because of the presence of a consonantal coda mora (i.e. the first half of a geminate), the end result is a surface mid tone. While underlyingly, consonantal moras cannot bear tone, they can be assigned tone as part of the initial left-to-right tone assignment process; later tone processes will offload them elsewhere.
Stress assignment
Mirja stress is assigned in a word-initial trochaic fashion; in other words preferring heavy-light feet with primary stress in the first foot in the word. Given no further complications, a word will simply have primary stress on its initial syllable. However, the stress assignment algorithm is also weight-sensitive and tone-sensitive, and this can cause the primary stress to be on the second syllable instead.
The algorithm largely works this way:
- Check the weights of the first two syllables. If the second is heavier than the first, assign stress to the second.
- If that didn't assign stress, check the tones of the first two syllables. If the second has a high tone (or is a contour) and the first has only a low tone, assign stress to the second syllable.
- If that didn't assign stress, assign it to the first syllable.
After that point, the primary stress projects a grid of trochaic feet until the end of the word. Notably, Mirja does not allow feet in which both syllables are heavy, and thus a heavy syllable simply is its own foot if it's followed by another heavy syllable. At times the footing process creates unfooted syllables on one or both ends of the word; this is fine and Mirja simply accepts it.
Tonological processes
Stress-driven reassignment
If primary stress is assigned to the second syllable, but the first two syllables have either HL or HØ, the H will be shifted to the stressed syllable, pushing along any further tones it displaces. This will leave the initial syllable both unfooted and toneless; the surface result is something of a non-phonological mid-ish pitch on it rather than a default phonological L insertion as in any other cases of otherwise toneless syllables.
EXAMPLES.
If a foot is underlyingly HØ and the following syllable is L, the L will associate leftwards to allow the foot to be HL:
káru-l ̀ > kárulỳ > (ˈkáru)lỳ > (ˈkárù)lỳ
/H/ spread
A high tone will spread rightwards until it encounters some other tone or the end of its phonological word.
káru-t > káruty > kárútý
EXAMPLE WITH SOME OTHER TONE
/HH/ blocking
Mirja disallows two marked high tones from being adjacent to each other, and will insert a low tone between them to break them up. This can look somewhat different depending on the context it happens in. In an underlying /H...ØH/ situation, an L tone is simply inserted before the second underlying H.
karu H 'be.visible' +
In an underlying non-final /HH/ sequence, the inserted L will push the H rightwards to create [HLH].
In an underlying /HØ...H/ sequence where the adjacency is due to the above spread rule, the L is placed to the left of the final H, resulting in an [HH...LH] sequence - in other words, the H spreads rightwards until it hits the automatic L in front of the next H.
káruv-t-gó > káruvytygó > (káru)(vyty)(gó) > (kárú)(výtỳ)(gó)
If this causes a foot with no underlying tones to be (LH), such that secondary stress is on the L-toned syllable and not the H, the H will associate one further syllable leftwards:
káruv-t-é > káruvyté > (káru)(vyté) > (kárú)(vỳté) > (kárù)(výté)
In an underlying /HH#/ sequence, where there's no room to reassign the H rightwards due to the word boundary immediately following, the H simply ends up off the end of the word entirely and is either outright deleted or left floating with no further evidence of its continued presence - in other words, resulting in an [HL#] sequence on the surface.
vá-gó > vágò
Contouring and merging
HL contours can occur simply due to the basic tone assignment algorithm, if there's a long vowel or diphthong in a morpheme's initial syllable:
táèke > táèkè
Morphemes with LH and an initial long vowel or diphthong instead prefer to move the H leftwards to avoid an LH contour:
mỳína > mỳìná
Contours can also be forced to occur if the underlying tones have too few separate syllables to attach to. This will cause an underlying short vowel to lengthen to accommodate both tones:
dèḱ-é > dèékè
If lengthening is impossible due to the syllable already having a coda in the form of the first half of a geminate, the two tones will merge and the end result is a surface mid tone:
símà-ĺlhà > símāllhà
STUFF