Sargaĺk Phonology, Orthography and Latinization

A small observation: blogger sometimes apparently eats things between greater than and lesser than brackets. This just shows how bad the blogger editor is. Thus, instead of using such brackets to mark

The Sargaĺk language has already been presented in a latinized form for a while without any phonological or orthographical information presented. So, it is time for a short overview.

Consonants

Sargaĺk has a three-way series of stops: voiced, unvoiced, and ejective: /p t k pʼ tʼ kʼ b d g/. The ejectives are normally written with ', e.g. mak'ugu.
The points of articulation are bilabial, alveolar and velar.

Affricates do not fully fill up the three-way system: /t͡s, t͡sʼ, t͡ɕ, t͡ɕʼ, d͡ʑʼ/. . These are written c, c', č, č', ʒ.

The fricatives are f, s, z, ɕ, ʑ and x. /ɕ/ is transcribed š, /ʑ/ as ž, the others by the obvious Latin letters.

Further there are two laterals - a velarized one, and a (lightly) palatalized one. I will transliterate these l, ly. There are three nasals, /m n ŋ/, transliterated with the same symbols. An alveolar trill also exists, transliterated r.

All consonants except the ejectives and the fricatives /f, x/ have length distinctions, which are marked by doubling the letter, except for the digraph ly, which is lengthened by doubling the y.

Syllabic Consonants

The laterals, the nasals and r can all appear as syllabic cores in open syllables.  However, the syllables might alternate, due to morphological reasons, between being open and closed. This causes alternations where a vowel is inserted before the syllabic consonant, thus rendering it asyllabic. The symbols used for these are: ḿ, ń, ŋ', ĺ, ĺy, ŕ. The diacritic is retained even when the consonant is not syllabic.

An exceptional word with regards to this is Sargaĺk itself - it is formed from a root sargĺ (an endonym) and the root ĺk (an otherwise almost obsolete word for 'language'). In combining the two of them, *sargĺaĺk would be obtained, which later lead to the loss of the first ĺ.

Vowels

Sargaĺk's vowel inventory consists of six vowels, /a e i o u ə/. /a/ is normally in the vicinity of [ɑ ], although depending on consonants such as lʲ and vowels such as /e/ in the same phonetical vicinity can pull it forward towards [a]. The alveolo-palatal consonants also tend to move /a/ towards [a] and even into the territory just 'south' of [æ] in the vowel trapezoid.

/e/ is normally somewhere between [e] and [ɛ]. The sequence /elʲ/ often has a slightly closed, but not retracted articulation. /eɫ/ retracts and closes /e/ a bit, towards [ɨɫ]. /er/ and /eŋ/ often has a slightly opened articulation as well, almost reaching into [æ]-like territory. A palatal consonant in the onset of a syllable may prevent such opening, though.

The vowels /u o/ often cause rounding on preceding consonants. When close - following or preceding /lʲ/, they may front towards [ʉ ɵ]. Much like /e/, /r/ and /ŋ/ cause it to open up a bit, but unlike /e/, /o/ opens up a bit preceding /ɫ/ as well.

/ə/ seems to roam about its bit of the vowel trapezoid according to a similar logic: /lʲ/ before or after it causes some fronting, /ɫ/ some retraction (and opening), an /r/ after it causes some opening.

/i/ moves between [ɨ] when close to velars, [ɪ] when close to palatals, and slightly widened in the vicinity of all the nasals. The presence of /r/ does not cause any widening.

Syllable structure

Word initially, Sargaĺk seldom has any particularly large clusters. Words that begin in consonants almost all have a vowel for their second sound. Inside words, however, up to five consonants in a cluster can appear, although this is not particularly common. For whatever reason, only one cluster is likely to appear in a root.

 Stress

Stress falls on the first syllable of most words. Syllabic consonants in the first syllable can be stressed too. Secondary and tertiary stresses alternative with unstressed syllables according to patterns along the lines of 10203 and 10302, where 0 stands for unstressed.