gjax-zym-byn (gzb)

Phonology & writing system


This is somewhat linguistically technical; for a non-technical
presentation see "Lesson 0" (lesson01.txt).

The writing system is phonemic.  My ASCII transcription is a superset
of x-convention Esperanto.  My handwriting for gzb however has evolved
into something that no longer so much resembles the Esperanto alphabet.
Perhaps when I get a scanner I'll put up a sample.

A letter followed by x or q is a digraph; for instance, {sx}
represents the postalveolar fricative in English "shoe" and {iq}
represents the lax front vowel in English "lip".

Whenever in the table below two letters appear paired like {t/d}, the
first is unvoiced and the second voiced.


Stop consonants / fiq-txy keq'pax-baw

p/b		labial stops
t/d		alveolar stops
k/g		velar stops
kx		uvular stop


Fricative consonants / sqix'fy-baw

f/v		labiodental fricatives
px		bilabial trill or strongly aspirated /ph/
tx/dx		dental fricatives
s/z		alveolar fricatives
sx/jx		postalveolar fricatives
sq/jq		palatal fricatives - ich laut 
hx/hq		velar fricatives -  ach laut
h		glottal fricative

fx/vx		labiodental affricates  /pf/ & /bv/
c/zx		alveolar affricates /ts/ & /dz/
cx/gx		postalveolar affricates /tS/ & /dZ/
cq/zq		palatal affricates  /cc,/ & /dj,/


Nasal consonants / niqm-baw

m		bilabial nasal
n		alveolar nasal
nx		velar nasal


Liquids / ler-baw

r		alveolar tap alone syllable-inital (e.g. {raxm}, "cat")
		alveolar approximant if in initial cluster ({rjax}, "seeking") 
		or syllable-final ({hyr}, "hour").

l		lateral approximant, dental or alveolar

Clicks & ejective / kq-pq-baw

kq		velar ejective - same pt of articulation as k, g, hx... tongue
		suddenly pushed forward
lq 		alveolar click - front of tongue pulled from roof of mouth
tq		dental click- tip of tongue pulled from between teeth
pq		bilablial click - lips pulled apart suddenly
mq		similar as {pq}, but nasal

Vowels:

Front:
i		close high unrounded
ix		close high rounded
iq		open high unrounded
e		close mid unrounded
ox		close mid rounded
ax		very open mid unrounded

Central:
rq		high retroflex
eq		mid unrounded (schwa)
a		open low unrounded

Back:
u		close high rounded
y		open high rounded
o		close mid rounded
oq		open mid rounded

All have nasal and oral varieties.  A nasal vowel is indicated by
a following {nq}, as in such minimal pairs as {zunq} (alive) vs. {zu}
(only), {bax} (zero) vs. {baxnq} (permission).

Semivowels, approximants:

j		palatal
w		bilabial
r		alveolar approximant (in initial cluster or syllable-final only)

Many diphthongs occur - almost all the possible combinations of the
vowels and approximants above.  Keep {axw} and {aw} distinct.  The
first is the semivowel in English "how" or Esperanto "aux".  For the
second I am not aware of any natural langauge equivalent.  A
particular tongue-twister is the postposition {rrqr}, "from far beyond".


Nonphonemic letters:
nq		indicates the preceding vowel is pronounced nasally
rx		A non-gzb rhotic sound in a foreign name.

By vowel harmony if any syllable of a word is nasalized, they all are.
So {nq} appears only at the end of a root word (or conjunction), never
in suffixes or clitics.  In other words, nasality is allophonic not
phonemic in clitics & suffixes.  If a compound radical is formed of a
root with a nasal vowel and one with an oral vowel, all vowels in the
compound are nasal.  This can occasionally cause homophony.

There is an unwritten glottal stop between adjacent vowels, as in
{miq-i}, "about", and {vax-onx-zox}, "to eat".  That is, ALL syllables in
gzb begin with a consonant, and the glottal stop appears initially
only in the generic postpositions {i, o, rq}.


-----

Morphophonemics

Any consonant can occur at the beginning of a syllable.  Only a nasal,
lateral or approximant can occur at the end.  An approximant or
lateral can follow the initial consonant, occur alone at the end of a
syllabe, or precede a final nasal.

Samples of syllable types: (c = any consonant, s = approximant, v = vowel)

CV		fu		light
CSV		pwiq		delight
SSV		lju		reading
CVS		muw		subset
CVN		hum		deep
CVSN		kujm		motive
CSVN		sjum		thanks
CSVSN		hwaxwm		roleplaying
CVSS		purj		environment

The vowel in a syllable indicates the type of word it occurs in:

i, o, rq	Postpositions  ({i}, at; {son}, onto)
inq, onq	Certain conjunctions  (e.g. {kinq}, "and")
e, oq		Other conjunctions, adverbial particles, quantifiers, etc.
a, ox		suffixes (e.g. {-van}, the stative verb ending)


ix, eq	(and their nasal variants)		initial or medial syllable of a polysyllabic noun root
u, y, iq, ax (and their nasal variants)		sole or final syllable of a noun root

E.g.:	{fix'sunq}, "Earth"; {runx}, "going, movement"


------

Nonsegmental phonology

Stress & intonation aren't phonemic.  I haven't quite figured out what
the stress and intonation rules are yet, but getting them wrong won't
make a word mean something different (as in Chinese) or turn a
statement into a question (as in English).  The schwa {eq} is never
stressed, and tense vowels are more likely to be stressed than lax
vowels.

------

Writing

My earliest handwritten alphabet used a circumflex for the letters
represented with an x-digraph and a caron for the letters represented
with a q-digraph.  Later on these letters mutated as in rapid writing
I merged the accent mark and the letter into a single glyph.  I'll put
up samples later.

I am working on a Unicode mapping, but I am still not quite satisfied
with some of the tentative equivalents.  (There is no p-circumflex or
p-caron, for instance; I'm trying p-hook and phi.)  Also, converting
all the documents from ASCII text into Unicode-HTML will require a lot
of hand-editing because English words contain a lot of sequences that
look (to my simple conversion script awk) like gzb digraphs.

There are no capital letters.  Proper names are indicated to be such
by suffixes.  

Acronyms are pronounced by inserting {eq} (schwa) after the first and medial
consonants, {u} after the last; stress is on last syllable.

gzb	/g@.z@.'bu/

-----

Punctuation

.		ends every sentence
?		precedes question sentence
!		precedes imperative sentence
*		precedes an especially important sentence (like English use of "!")
{ }		quotation marks (advantage: they can be unambiguously nested unlike "")
; , ( ) 	used much as in English


- 		separates morphemes in most compound words
'		separates syllables in polysyllabic roots (not strictly necessary for 
		showing syllable divisions, but helpful for providing some whitespace)
~~~		ellipsis