Sounds
The sounds of Laal are transcribed here using International Phonetic Alphabet symbols. The consonants are:
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | Voiceless | p | t | c | k | ʔ |
| Voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | ||
| Prenasalized | (ᵐb) | (ⁿd) | (ᶮɟ) | (ᵑɡ) | ||
| Implosive | ɓ | ɗ | (ʄ) | |||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Fricative | s | h | ||||
| Trill | r | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||
Implosives and prenasalised stops, as well as h, are found only word-initially. Voiceless stops, as well as s, cannot occur at the end of a syllable. /ŋ/ occurs only intervocalically and word-finally. /s/ appears exclusively in loanwords and certain numbers. The prenasalized stops, as well as the implosive /ʄ/, are extremely rare.
The vowel system for non-initial syllables is: /i/, /ɨ/, /u/, /e/, /ə/, /o/, /a/, and the diphthong /ua/, with no length distinction. For initial syllables, however, it is much more complicated, allowing length distinctions and distinguishing the following additional diphthongs: /ia/, /yo/, /ya/ (though the latter two appear only as morphologically conditioned forms of /e/ and /ia/, and are perhaps better seen as allophonic.) In addition, /y/ may occur very occasionally; Boyeldieu quotes the example of mỳlùg "red (pl.)".
There are three level tones: high (á), middle (a), low (à). Combinations of these may occur on a single vowel, resulting in phonetic rising and falling tones; these are phonemically sequences of level tones. Such cases are transcribed here by repeating the vowel (e.g. àá); long vowels are indicated only by the colon (e.g. a:).
Suffixes may force any of four kinds of ablaut on the vowels of preceding words: raising (takes /ia/, /a/, /ua/ to, ), lowering (takes /e/, /ə/, /o/ to, ), low rounding (takes /i/ and /ɨ/ to ; /e/ and /ia/ to ; /ə/, /a/, and /ua/ to ), and high rounding (takes /i/ and /ɨ/ to ; /e/ and /ia/ to ; /ə/, /a/, and /o/ to ). They are transcribed in the suffix section as ↑, ↓, ↗, ↘ respectively. In some verbs, a/ə is "raised" to rather than, as expected, .
In suffixes, ə and o undergo vowel harmony: they become ɨ and u respectively if the preceding vowel is one of {i, ɨ, u}. Likewise, r undergoes consonant harmony, becoming l after words containing l. Suffixes with neutral tone copy the final tone of the word they are suffixed to.
Read more about this topic: Laal Language
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