Sisiwön

"Sisiwön" is the provisional name of a collaborative Conlang, started in early 2004, by a small group of members of the Conlang list.

The name itself, while phonologically compatible with the language, doesn't actually mean anything (yet).

This page is essentially a public repository of information on Sisiwön. Work on the language is conducted in a Yahoo group at [1]. If you'd like to participate, feel free to join the group (as opposed to changing this page directly).

I know nothing about editing this Wiki, and the help page is blank. Help! (PaulBennett)

Vowels:

There are a total of twenty phonetic vowels:

i ii ü üü ï ïï u uu e ee ö öö ë ëë o oo ä ää a aa
ɪ i: ʏ y: ɯ ɯ: ʊ u:

However, due to vowel harmony, any given word will only contain a subset of these, either

i ii ü üü e ee ö öö ä ää

or

ï ïï u uu ë ëë o oo a aa

Thus, it could be said that the language has 10 vowel phonemes, plus a +-back suprasegmental phoneme.

Also, given the syllable structure, it makes sense to think of vowel length as provided by a single /:/ phoneme, reducing the inventory even further to just five basic vowels: ï u ë o a, plus two vowel-modifying phonemes, /:/ and [+front], the last of which occurs zero or one times in each word, affecting all the vowels in it.

Consonants:

From the group's phonology file, still in X-Sampa:

                  lab   alv   lat   alvpa pal   vel   uvu   glo
Stops plain       p     t                       k     q
      aspirated   p_h   t_h                     k_h
      ejective    p_>   t_>                     k_>
Affricates              ts)   tK)   tS)
Fricatives        f     s     K     S           x           h
Nasals            m     n                       N
Liquids                 r     l
Semivowels

Labialized        lab   alv   lat   alvpa pal   vel   uvu   glo
Stops plain                                     k_w   q_w
      aspirated                                 k_w_h
      ejective                                  k_w_>
Affricates              ts)_w       tS)_w
Fricatives              s_w                     x_w
Nasals                                          N_w
Liquids           
Semivowels                                      w

Palatalized       lab   alv   lat   alvpa pal   vel   uvu   glo
Stops plain       
      aspirated   
      ejective    
Affricates              ts)_j
Fricatives              s_j
Nasals                  n_j
Liquids                 r_j   l_j
Semivowels                                j

There may be a restriction preventing labialized and palatalized consonants from occurring before [i(:)] and [u(:)], respectively.

Paul (?) had written:

Some of the consonants seem to be in a bit of a state of flux, particularly the labialised and palatalised series. There are definitely the following ...

     p    t           k     q
     pʼ   tʼ          kʼ
     pʰ   tʰ          kʰ
     m    n           ŋ
f         s     ʃ     x           h
          ts    tʃ    
          ɾ
          l     
          ɬ     
          tɬ    
     w          j

... plus labialised and palatalised variants of some of them.

Syllable structure:

It seems the consensus is CV(N) with N being any non-stop, non-affricate, or alternatively the aforementioned vowel-lengthening phoneme /:/. The symbol C may also stand for a word-initial ∅, allowing vowel-initial words.

Word structure:

Any number of syllables, as defined above, with no other constraints known at this time.