Sangi/Vowel Mutations

=Sangi Vowel Mutations=

Like Sangi consonant mutations, there are two classes of vowel mutation. "Pure mutation" affects the meaning of the word in changing its phonology and "affection" changes only the phonology"

Pure Mutation
Pure mutation has two subsets; A-mutation and I-mutation. I-mutation involves the raising of the final vowel of the stem, while a-mutation involves the lowering of the final vowel.

¹ long “a” becomes “œ” in a-mutation.

² long “i” becomes “ia” in i-mutation and long “u” becomes “wá”.

Like Welsh, the mutated vowel is written how it is pronounced, so This is not the, however, when a plural noun is used as a stative verb, the vowel marked with the diacritic is kept to mark the plurality and a special tense infix is added.

I-mutation marks plurality in nouns, e.g. toc>tuś (dog>dogs), and future tense in verbs, for example eha>aiha (I hit>I will hit - the root is "i" not "e" so e>ai is actually eai), while A-mutation is used exclusively in verbs to mark the past tense, to use the previous example eha>eha. (In the example of "I hit", the pronunciation of both the present and past tense forms is "eha" due to a-affection which lowers the preceeding "i" to an "e")

Vowel Affection
Affection comes in two subsets; I-affection and A-affection. Under I-affection the vowel is raised and under A-affection the vowel is lowered, and just like pure mutation they are written as they are pronounced. The difference is that vowel affection has no semantic effect on the word and occurs under different circumstances. I-affection occurs when the last vowel of the stem was raised to either an “i”, “y” or “e”. A-affection occurs when the last vowel was lowered to either an “o” or an “a”. Affection only works from the syllable before the suffix and the syllable before this. Therefore affection can only affects the last 3 syllables of a word, but does not affect vowels subjected to I or A-Mutation. “i” and “u”, though, are not affected by vowel i-affection and “a” is not affected by a-affection. Affection also occurs when a derivational suffix is added. This changed the root vowel and also the meaning of the verb, e.g. lap (laugh) > lep (laughs) but lap (laugh) > lepfi (chuckle). Vowel Affection, also, does not affect truly mutated vowels. Unlike normal affection, that which occurs when a new stem is formed, acts with each subsequent suffix added.

It should also be noted that only the letters "i", "e", "a", "o" and "u" undergo affection in non-derivation circumstances. The sounds "œ" and "ę" also undergo affection but only derivation affection.

For example, when "úśem" (mansion) is in the causative case, i.e. it is followed by the suffix "-ma" it becomes "oośamma".

Effect on pronunciation of the penultimate syllable by suffixation
The first "œ" and "ę" columns are for the changes that occur in derivation, the second column is for the "œ" and "ę" that are not affected.

Effect on pronunciation of the antepenultimate syllable by suffixation
The first "ę" column is for the plain, unaffected "ę" while the second column is for the affected derivation "ę".