Iraniya/Phonology

This article describes the phonology of the Iraniya language.

Consonants
These are the consonants that are used for transcribing the sounds of Iraniya (using IPA notation).

Vowels
Vowels may vary between dialect. This vowel chart below shows those of the northern 'standard' variety.

Syllable structure
Syllables are mainly structured as (C)(S)V(S)(C(C)).

A typical Iraniya syllable is composed of an optional onset, consisting of only one consonant, a mandatory vowel nucleus preceded and succeeded by an optional semivowel, and an optional coda, containing 1 or 2 consonants. The following constraints apply:


 * Onset
 * Consonant (C): Can be any consonant (Onset is only composed of 1 consonant, clusters are only found in loanwords; typically from English or Sanskrit; sometimes an epenthetic /æ/ is inserted between 2 consonants. This also happened to many loanwords as well, such as /ˈiːskʊːl/ 'school (informal)'.).
 * Nucleus
 * Semivowel (S)
 * Vowel (V)
 * Semivowel (S)
 * Coda
 * Consonant (C): Can be any consonant.
 * Consonant (C): Can be any consonant (mostly /d, k, s, z, t, ʃ/).

Geminate consonants are also phonemic as well. They are characterized by such sandhi and in some words, such as bacce.

Allophones

 * /b/ becomes [β] intervocalically.
 * Some speakers may nasalize vowels before /n/.

Elision

 * /n/ is omitted after /h/.
 * /h/ is omitted before fricatives.

Sandhi
Phonological changes occur at morpheme boundaries (sandhi) for specific grammatical morphemes.


 * /pb/, /td/, and /kɡ/ become geminated [pː], [t̪ː] and [kː] respectively.
 * The cluster /dl/ becomes a geminated [lː].

Stress
Stress usually falls from the first to the second syllables. Stress tends to:


 * be always on the first syllable
 * avoid /ɨ/'s
 * avoid being on the negative affix nǝ-.


 * obtain their original stress on loanwords e.g. Obama /oˈbɑːmɑː/.

Pitch
Iraniya has a 'pitch' accent (called a sahad). The sahad of Iraniya can be described as a rising tone e.g. /ǽ/. Sahad tends to be:


 * on the last-stem syllable of most words
 * on the first syllable on interjections, conjunctions and vocatives
 * never on:
 * personal suffixes of verbs
 * clitics
 * one-syllable words
 * loanwords
 * always on:
 * negative suffix nā-
 * non negative verb suffixes, or prefix noun on compound verbs.

Intonation
Iraniya, like English, also has intonation. The four types of intonation can be described as:


 * normal sentence (no intonation)
 * interrogative sentence (/↗︎/ on first word, fourth word)
 * imperative sentence (/↗︎/ on first word, third word, /↘︎/ on second word)
 * information sentence (/↘︎/ on second word, /↗︎/ on fourth word)