Bqiqqe

General information
Bqìqqe is a language spoken by the dBaaẖka-ḇaa-ḇšèš people.

Phonology
/p βʲ βˠ t ðʲ ðˠ k ɰʲ ɰˠ/ < p b ḇ t d ḏ k g g̱> /ɸp pf θt ts ɕt̠ tʂ xk qχ/  /mˠ mʲ nˠ nʲ ɲ ŋ/  /ɸ f θ s ɕ ʂ x χ/  /ʋ ɹ l ɦ/

/æ a ɒ ɜ ɨ/ <ę a o e i>

Bqìqqe doesn't have a true tone system as much as it has an odd combination of tone and phonation: it has three tones (high, low and normal) that co-occur with voicing and are co-morbid with phonation differences; some dialects of Bqìqqe completely lose the tonal element.

The low tone implies breathy voicing and high tone implies creaky voicing. Due to the prominence of downsteps and upsteps, the orthography doesn't explicitly distinguish tones. Downsteps are marked with a grave and upsteps with an acute. Downsteps usually occur before voiced consonants and upsteps before voiceless. This isn't a steadfast rule. The first syllable after the shift in tone preserves the tone, but the second syllable after it re-acquires normal tone.

Phonotactics
A Bqiqqe syllable cannot have more than three consecutive consonants or more than five consonants in total; voicing is disregarded and the sonority hierarchy is ignored.

Nouns
Bqiqqe nouns are immensely complex and have a mixture of inflectional and derivational morphology and lots of clitics that do not even apply to them. Their core inflections are for case, noun class, number, definiteness and distance, and they additionally inflect for veracity, frequency of use, possessedness and can receive clitic inflections that show the verb's tense and aspect (both only in the accusative).

Bqiqqe nouns have two stem forms: the basic and construct stems. The construct stem is derived from the basic stem in a plethora of ways, but is also often very irregular.