Sanese phonology

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Sanese language.

Phonotactics[edit | edit source]

-a -i/ʲi -ɯ̥ -e -o -ʲa -ʲu -ʲo
'-
k- きゃ きゅ きょ
g- ぎゃ ぎゅ ぎょ
s-
ɕ- しゃ しゅ しょ
z-
dʑ- じゃ じゅ じょ
t-
tɕ- ちゃ ちゅ ちょ
t͡s-
d-
n- にゃ にゅ にょ
h-
ç- ひゃ ひゅ ひょ
ɸ-
p- ぴゃ ぴゅ ぴょ
b- びゃ びゅ びょ
m- みゃ みゅ みょ
j-
ɺ- りゃ りゅ りょ
ɰᵝ-
special mora
-t̚

Sanese words have traditionally been analysed as composed of moras; a distinct concept from that of syllables.[1] Each mora occupies one rhythmic unit, i.e. it is perceived to have the same time value. A mora may be "regular" consisting of just a vowel (V) or a consonant and a vowel (CV), or may be one of two "special" moras, /N/ and /Q/. A glide /j/ may precede the vowel in "regular" moras (CjV). Some analyses posit a third "special" mora, /R/, the second part of a long vowel. In this table, the period represents a mora break, rather than the conventional syllable break.

Mora Type Example Sanese moras per word
V /o/ o 'tail' 1-mora word
jV /jo/ yo 'world' 1-mora word
CV /ko/ ko 'child' 1-mora word
CjV /kjo/Template:Ref kyo 'hugeness' 1-mora word
N /N/   in /ko.N/ or /ko.n/ kon 'deep blue' 2-mora word
Q /Q/   in /ko.Q.ko/ or /ko.k.ko/ kokko 国庫 'national treasury' 3-mora word
^1 Traditionally, moras were divided into plain and palatal sets, the latter of which entail palatalization of the consonant element.

Consonantal moras are restricted from occurring word initially, though utterances starting with [n] are possible. Vowels may be long, and consonants may be geminate (doubled). In the analysis with archiphonemes, geminate consonants are the realization of the sequences /ɴn/, /ɴm/ and sequences of /Q/ followed by a voiceless obstruent, though some words are written with geminate voiced obstruents. In the analysis without archiphonemes, geminate clusters are simply two identical consonants, one after the other.

In English, stressed syllabless in a word are pronounced louder, longer, and with higher pitch, while unstressed syllables are relatively shorter in duration. In Sanese, all moras are pronounced with equal length and loudness. Sanese is therefore said to be a mora-timed language.

  1. Moras are represented orthographically in katakana and hiragana–each mora, with the exception of CjV clusters, being one kana–and are referred to in Sanese as 'on' or 'onji'.