User:Elector Dark/Kti/Remake

Phonology
Kti has a moderately simple phonological system, with a small amount of contrasting consonants and several types of vowels.

Vowels
Kti has six vowel qualities spread relatively evenly across the vowel space: it has two front, two central and two back vowel qualities. It does not contrast rounded and unrounded vowels, though most of its vowels have an innate roundedness feature.

Ktarh monophthongs distinguish three degrees of length; they can either be short, long or overlong. Short vowels are unmarked, long vowels take a macron (such as <ǣ>) and overlong vowels take a circumflex (such as <æ̂>). Some overlong vowels may also end up being written as, for example, ; such phonetically overlong vowels are in fact underlying sequences of a long and short vowel that have undergone coalescence. Kti has a marginal semi-phoneme /ə/ that isn't phonemically contrastive in content words, but does occur in interjections where it contrasts with /a o u/. Its phonetic quality that freely varies between [ɘ] and [ə]. In detailed linguistic descriptions it is represented by <­ə ə̄ ə̂ ə̣ ə̀>, whereas in normal discourse it freely alternates with /ɜ/ and, as such, can be represented by <­æ ǣ æ̂ æ̣ æ̀> without any loss of meaning or contrast.

Kti has five diphthongs that metrically count as a single long vowel. There are also three triphthongs that metrically count as an overlong vowel.

Consonants
Kti has a fairly simplistic consonant system, with twelve native consonant phonemes and four marginal phonemes often considered non-native.

The two primary consonant allophonical processes are the transformations of velars in specific conditions:
 * k g x --> kʲ gʲ xʲ / _{e ē ê i ī î}
 * k g x --> ḵ ḡ h / #_V

Syllabification and Phonotactics
Kti has a moderately complex syllable structure, with a fairly consistent syllable shape. Most Ktarh syllables come in the form of (CC)V(C), with a possible initial cluster but only a simple coda. A particularity of the Ktarh system is that it requires that every vowel is always bordered by at least one consonant. There are four root-initial clusters that violate the CC-initial restriction: /ʂʔn ʐʔn ʂʔmn ʐʔmn/ can begin roots despite being more than two consonants long. These are derived from proto-Ktarh /*štn *ždn *špn *žbn/ that were part of a wider system of tri-consonantal intials that has long since collapsed. The longest sequence of consonants allowed is technically three: roots with one of the four clusters must take epenthetic vowels so that they may take prefixes or be compounded with words that end in consonants. Only one morpheme-final cluster is permitted, /rx/. It is derived from the proto-Ktarh adjective suffix /*-lɨx/.

Not all combinations of consonants are legal onset clusters: Kti limits initial combinations with several criteria. Sequences of a plosive followed by a homorganic fricative are disallowed, but sequences of a plosive and a heterorganic fricative aren't, disallowing **/ts ds tz dz tʂ dʂ tʐ dʐ kx/. Bifricative sequences are permitted only if the second fricative is closer to the lips than the first; all such sequences are thus progressively ordered, disallowing sequences such as **/sx zʐ zx ʂx ʐx/ — the cluster /sʂ/ is the only exception to the rule. Geminates of all consonants are considered valid clusters, but geminates of plosives cannot end up word-initial. Even though voicing assimilation isn't present in Kti, it disallows sequences of an unvoiced and voiced phoneme where the two phonemes differ only in voicing, thus forbidding sequences such as **/td sz ʂʐ/ but, on the other hand, allowing those like /dt zs ʐʂ/. Sequences consisting of a glottal stop followed by an obstruent are metathesised into an obstruent-glottal sequence word-initially and show up unmetathesised word-internally. Sequences containing uncommon and foreign phones and phonemes are generally exempt from these rules as they already occur in a very limited number of constructions.

The syllable boundary in Ktarh is such that intervocalic sequences of two consonants generally tend to be divided between two syllables. Based on the contents of the rime, Ktarh syllables can be light (L), heavy (H) or doubly heavy (D). These have the following shapes:
 * Light syllables can be any one of V, VC, V̄
 * Heavy syllables can be any one of V̄C, VCC, V̂
 * Doubly heavy syllables can be any one of V̂C, V̄CC, V̂CC

Stress
Kti has a right-weighted stress placement system: its primary stress is always found in the three final syllables. Stressed syllables are termed strong (S) and unstressed ones weak (W). Ktarh stress always falls on one of the last three syllables of a morphophonological word. If all three syllables have the same weight, the leftmost one becomes strong and the rest end up weak. If the syllables are of differing weights, only the heaviest syllables are considered. Heavy syllables take precedence over light, and doubly heavy syllables take precedence over heavy ones.

In longer words (7+ syllables), secondary stress falls on one of the first three syllables. The rules for secondary stress placement are a mirror image of primary stress placement rules: stress falls on the heaviest rightmost syllable of the first three.

As Ktarh stress isn't 100% predictable — it can occur in an unexpected position in some word classes, such as postpositional clitics, interjections and particles — it can in exceptional cases be marked with an underdot diacritic, giving graphemes such as <ǣ̣>. Diphthongs and triphthongs that carry such exceptional stress take the underdot on the first grapheme they're written with, giving digraphs such as <­ại> and trigraphs such as <­ụiæ>.

The phonetic realisation of Ktarh stress is primarily a combination of articulatory emphasis in terms of strength and a pitch upshift. Certain clitics exhibit a tone upshift pattern reminiscent of stress, but lack any form of articulatory emphasis. This tonal upshift is marked with a grave diacritic, giving graphemes such as <­à>. As it occurs only on /a (ə) ɛ ɔ ɔː u/, its representation when on a long /ɔː/ is represented by stacking the grave diacritic atop the macron, giving <­ṑ>.

Even though Ktarh stress is strong and acoustically prominent, Ktarh vowels do not undergo reductions in unstressed positions; every vowel phoneme is contrastive in both strong and weak syllables, and they retain their full values regardless of syllable strength.