ŋaren crîþa 9 vlefto: Ŋarâþ Crîþ v9

Layer 2s and 3s: the spoken layers

Layer 2s

TODO: deal with complex codas before a clitic boundary

Traditionally, only manifested grapheme phrases are considered to be significant in the conversion from layer 1 to layer 2s. However, other graphemes such as punctuation can affect prosody.

MGPsIPAMGPsIPA
ckpp
eett
n ndnčt͡ʂ
ŋ ŋgŋî
v m· vpvjj
ooii
ssd dtd
þ t·θð d· ðþð
š č·ʂh c·x
rɹħ g·ʕ
l lłlê
łɬô
m mpmâ
aau
f p·ff· v· ð·
g gcɡ
Table 1: Layer 1 to layer 2s conversions.

In some more conservative dialects, ⟨f·⟩ is pronounced as /ʍ/ and ⟨v·⟩ is pronounced as /w/.

Layer 2 has a two-way tone contrast between vowels: the high tone (H) is the default, being contrasted with the low tone (L). For historical reasons, the presence or absence of a low tone on a vowel is called [±creaky].

Layer 3s

The conversion from layer 2s to layer 3s is comparatively more complex.

Segmental changes

First, the following changes are made:

Plosives in a coda are unreleased. All unvoiced plosives and affricates outside of a coda are aspirated. Voiced plosives are sometimes partially devoiced or breathy-voiced after a vowel of the same word.

The words ⟨cenþ’pe⟩ and ⟨cenþ’ve⟩ are pronounced as [kenθe] and as [kenðe].

Stress

In order to describe tone, we must introduce the concept of “stress”, which is placed according to the following rules:

Tone

While Ŋarâþ Crîþ has two tone levels phonemically, their realizations in the phonetic level is more complex. It is common to describe phonetic tone using seven levels, from 0 (the lowest) to 6 (the highest). Each syllable has one or more tones.

We introduce the concept of a tone accounting unit (TAU), which is the level at which tones are realized. That is, the tone of a syllable depends only on the contents of the TAU in which it lies. Instances of content words occupy different TAUs from each other, but some function words occupy the same TAU as the preceding or following word (in particular, such words have no stressed syllable and are confined to a relatively fixed position):

(Stress is accounted by orthographic word, not by TAU.)

First, two adjacent vowels are fused into a diphthong if the vowels are not identical, the first vowel is stressed, the second vowel is [i] or [u̜], and the syllable to which the second vowel belongs can be interpreted as having an empty coda. For purposes of tonekeeping, a diphthong is considered to be composed of two different syllables.

In general, unstressed H and L syllables have tone levels 4 and 2, respectively; stressed H and L syllables have tone levels 5 and 1. However, an open H or L syllable before a stressed syllable gets level 3 or 1, respectively, instead. Diphthongs get different values: 65 for HH, 53 for HL, 13 for LH, and 21 for LL.

If two adjacent copies of an identical vowel have the same tone level at this stage, then the one closer to the stressed syllable rises by one tone level and the one farther from it falls by one level.

A tone level of n is then changed into a tone contour in the following situations, unless doing so would result in an out-of-bounds tone level:

In addition, other syllables change their tone levels:

Finally, if all tones have a level of 4 or higher, then the lowest tone (breaking ties by preferring later tones) is lowered to 3, and all other tones in the same syllable are lowered by the same amount. All level-3 tones are then lowered to level 2.

Isochrony

The isochrony of Ŋarâþ Crîþ falls somewhere between syllable and mora timing, where: