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.

Like Welsh, the mutated vowel is written how it is pronounced, but with an accent to show which process had been used, even 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, specifically "-e-". I-mutation is shown by adding a grave accent on the new vowel (indicating the former vowel was lower) and A-mutation is shown by adding an acute accent to the new vowel (indicating that the former vowel was higher).

I-mutation marks plurality in nouns, e.g. toc>tùś (dog>dogs), and future tense in verbs, for example iha>àìha (I hit>I will hit), while A-mutation is used exclusively in verbs to mark the past tense, to use the previous example iha>éha.

These diacritics do not have to be used, but are used by the majority of people in order to distinguish the root vowel of a word from its suffixes.

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 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 2 syllables of a word before the final suffix, but does not affect vowels subjected to I or A-Mutation. “i” and “u”, though, are not affected by i-affection and “a” is not affected by a-affection. Affection only occurs when a derivational suffix is added. This changed the root vowel and also the meaning of the word, e.g. lap (laugh) > lèp (laughs) but lap (laugh) > lepfi (chuckle).

It should also be noted that only the letters "i", "e", "a", "o" and "u", "ö" and "ä" undergo affection.

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