Difference between revisions of "Akachenti"

Latest revision as of 12:02, 1 August 2017

Akachenti is the most commonly spoken major dialect of the Kachan language, spoken by the Ogunn people. It is an incorporating fusional polysynthetic language with fluid-S active morphosyntactic alignment and relatively free word order with default OVS.

Other Links

• Akachenti on CALS

Phonology

Orthography

The phonemic inventory of Pre-Modern Akachenti was somewhat captured at the adoption of the Tongchan writing system, a series of glyphs for the perceived phonemes of the language. In particular, the current ae diphthong was considered a vowel, length was distinguished for five of the six vowels, and several current consonantal phonemes were and are considered consonant clusters.

• Vowels: a, a:, o, o:, u, u:, ae, e, e:, i, i:
• Consonant "Clusters": nl, hl, tl, dl, ngl, khl, kl, gl

The above are all clicks with pre-glottalized allophones in glottalic tone syllables.

Vowels

The phonemic vowel inventory contrasts five qualities, three heights, and length.

Long vowels are pronounced with a low tone. The phonemic diphthong in the bottom row is the only one treated as a phonemic vowel in Akachenti's orthography and is romanized as ae. Other diphthongs are treated orthographically as vowel clusters.

The close diphthongs in the top row are typically falling diphthongs, with the first vowel more prominent, though iɪ can realize as rising "diphthong" jɪ. The remaining four diphthongs are typically rising, with e and a being prominent.

Consonants

Akachenti has 25 consonants.

Romanization

Clusters

Regional dialect variations may allow sɹ, ʃɹ, dɹ, or ɹɦ and ɹx, but this is disfavored in most Akachenti dialect regions.

Prosody

Register

Tone goes hand in hand with variations in quality, duration, and phonation of affected syllables.