Abrugoan

*Notes:
1.

The Abrugoan consonant inventory is fairly large having 36 phonemically contrastive consonants - 11 plosives, 7 nasals, 8 fricatives, 3 trills, and 9 approximants. However, many consonants occur less frequently than others. As one might expect, those consonants with voiceless or plain (modal voiced) phonations appear far more pervasively than those with glottalic (ejective, aspirate, or glottalized) phonations.

The dental series of consonants are pronounced with an apical positioning of the tongue against the upper teeth. The exception to this is the dental trill  /r̻/  which is pronounced with a laminal articulation..

The voicing of obstruents is common intervocally.

Syllable Structure
The syllable structure of Aw̌r ukoo  is CVC. The onset can either be nuller or occupied by any consonant with a few exceptions. The trills w̌,ř, and ǧ cannot occupy an onset position if the syllable is either standing alone or if it heads a word. They can, however, exist in word-medial positions, in which case they would be analyzed as the onset of the proceeding syllable.

A good deal of syllabification is utilized in Aw̌r ukoo. Excluding ḥ,h, and glottalized resonants; all nasals, fricatives, trills, and approximants can be syllabified and act as the nucleus of a syllable. However, the relative frequency of this is restricted to word boundaries. In the case of bisyllabic words, either the initial or final syllable may have a syllabic nucleus. If the syllabic nucleus occurs word-finally, a coda consonant cannot proceed it. In addition to syllabic nuclei, any vowel can be used as a syllable nucleus.

Although the onset position can be occupied by essentially any consonant, the coda position is slightly more restrictive. The set of allowable coda consonants is any non-ejected plosive, any non-glottalized resonant, any fricative excluding h, or any trill. As was stated before, if a word-final syllable ends with a syllabic nucleus a coda consonant cannot occur after it. However, a coda consonant can occur after a syllabic nucleus if it occurs word-medially.

Consonant Clustering (Morphophonology)
Because Aw̌r ukoo  syllables can both begin and end with consonants, contact between these consonants is frequented. This leads to a number of Sandhi processes and alternations which would ultimately be superfluous to describe individually. Therefore, a table is given for ease and convenience of analysis:

KEY:

Pl. = Plosive

Ns. = Nasal

Fr. = Fricative

Lt. = Lateral

Tr. = Trill

Lq. = Liquid

Rh. = Rhotic

Sm. = Semivowel

Ej. = Ejective

Im. = Implosive

As. = Aspirated

Gm. = Geminated

Gl. = Glottalized

Vl. = Voiceless

Vc. = Voiced

POA = Similar Place

Stress
--falls on "heavy" syllables

--heaviness of syllables determined by both progression of added constituents and their relative sonority

m > ma > maa > pa> paa> par > mpa > paar > mpaa >  mpar > paak > mpak >  mpaar > paakr > mpaak > mpaakr

--realized as quality shift ?

Class and Case
Syntactic Roles

Relation and Form

Location and Direction

Time

Syntax
1.Clause Structure

2.Subclauses

3.Noun Phrase

4.Verb Phrase