Dendana/Vuuyin Zayxa/Phonology

Phoneme inventory

Consonants

	labial	dental	alveolar	palatal	velar
nasal	m	n
plain plosive	p	t			k
nasal-trigger plosive	Np	Nt			Nk
aspirated plosive	pʰ	tʰ			kʰ
plain continuant	f		s	ʃ	x
nasal-trigger continuant	Nʋ		Nz
voiced continuant	ʋ	l	z	j

• Nasal-trigger consonants are phonetically identical to their non-nasal-trigger correspondents, but trigger nasalization of a preceding vowel, even if that vowel is part of another word (this does not apply across clause boundaries, however). Additionally, all nasals automatically trigger nasalization of a preceding vowel.
• All labial, dental, and alveolar consonants have palatalized allophones after a front vowel within words.
• Plain and nasal-trigger stops are voiced intervocalically within words.

Orthographically, the consonants will be represented as follows:

	labial	dental	alveolar	palatal	velar
nasal	m	n
plain plosive	p	t			k
nasal-trigger plosive	p	t			k
aspirated plosive	ph	th			kh
plain continuant	f		s	x	h
nasal-trigger continuant	v		z
voiced continuant	v	l	z	y

• In the dictionary and when a word is given alone, nasal-trigger plosives and continuants are notated with a preceding <n> word-initially.

Vowels

	front	central	back
high	i ḭ	ɨ̃ ɨ̰̃	u ṵ
mid	e ḛ		o o̰
low	ɛ̃ ɛ̰̃	a a̰	ɔ̃ ɔ̰̃

• Tense-lax allophony: a,e,i,o,u and their laryngeal counterparts > ǝ,ɛ,ɩ,ɔ,ʊ / unstressed
• Nasalization: before a nasal-trigger consonant or a nasal consonant, a,e,i,o,u and their laryngeal counterparts > ɔ̃,ɛ̃,ɨ̃,ɔ̃,ɨ̃
• Additionally, unstressed /a/ and /a̰/ > ɨ̃ ɨ̰̃ before a nasal-trigger or nasal consonant.

Orthographically, the vowels will be represented as follows:

	front	central	back
high	i iq	in inq	u uq
mid	e eq		o oq
low	en enq	a aq	on onq

However, since the vowels are nasalized by default before a nasal, the <n> will not be written before a nasal.

Tones and Stress

• Low, high? High implies stress, low can imply stress
• how do we indicate all this in the orthography?
• Allophony based on phonation and _V/_C/_#

	high stressed <á>	low stressed <â>	mid unstressed <a>	low unstressed <à>
modal other	44	22	3	21
modal prevocalic	5	1	3	1
laryngeal other	34	23	23	21
laryngeal prevocalic	5	1	3	1

Phonotactics

The maximum syllable is (C)V(C), where the initial consonant can be any consonant, and the final consonant is restricted to /j/ or /ʋ/. Syllables with low tone, nasalization, and/or laryngeal quality seldom have a coda.