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Section 1: Phonology

In this section I discuss the sound patterns of Tokana. In 1.1 I present the consonant and vowel sounds of Tokana, with notes on their pronunciation. In 1.2 I discuss syllabification and stress assignment. And in 1.3 I list some common sound changes which occur at morpheme boundaries (e.g. between a stem and an affix).

A note on orthography: Tokana is normally written in a syllabic script called ilo. However, in this sketch Tokana will be represented in transcription using the following fourteen letters of the Roman alphabet: a, e, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, s, t, u, y. With the exception of three digraphs (lh, th, and ts), each sound is represented by a single letter, and each letter represents a single sound. In addition to the basic symbols, a vowel diacritic (`) is used to indicate stress in certain words, e.g. napè.

1.1. The sounds of Tokana

Consonants: The consonant sounds of Tokana are as follows:

Oral Stops: p, th, t, k
Nasal Stops: m, n
Affricates: ts
Fricatives: s, lh, h
Approximants: l

Of these, p, t, k, m, n, ts, s, h, and l have their normal phonetic (IPA) values. (Note that the oral stops are unaspirated, as in Spanish.)

The digraph th represents a laminodental stop, produced at roughly the same point of articulation as English th. This stop is usually unaspirated like p, t, and k, except before another consonant, when it is released with a certain amount of aspiration or affrication (e.g. the th in uthma "give" and athpa "play music" sounds quite a bit like the t + th sound at the end of the word eighth).

The digraph lh represents a postalveolar lateral fricative. It is quite similar to the lateral fricative of Welsh, Zulu, and other languages, except that it is produced with the body of the tongue instead of the blade or tip of the tongue (the point of articulation for lh is actually quite close to that of English sh).

Note also that the symbol n, in addition to representing the alveolar nasal (as in English net), also represents an assimilated nasal before a non-labial consonant. Thus nk (e.g. tunku "pain") is pronounced as in English think, while nth (e.g. pekunthe "last") is pronounced roughly as in English tenth.

Vowels: Tokana has a fairly typical six vowel system: i, e, a, y, o, u. Of these, i, e, a, o, and u have their standard 'European' values - i.e. as in beet, bet, father, bore, and boot, respectively. The central vowel y is similar to the sound in English but, but somewhat higher. In closed syllables (i.e. before a syllable-final consonant), i, u, and o are somewhat more 'lax' than in open syllables. Thus for instance the vowels in his "star", tuk "group", and sot "word", are similar to (but not identical to) the vowels in hiss, took, and sought, respectively.

In addition, i and u are pronounced as glides ([j] and [w]) when they occur adjacent to another vowel. Thus iom "world" is pronounced [jom], luan "hair" is pronounced [lwan], and ikei "dog" is pronounced [ikej]. (The combinations iu and ui are pronounced [ju] and [wi], respectively; e.g. uima "love", pronounced [wima].)

Note also that a following i glide causes palatalisation of a preceding consonant: Thus katia "house" is pronounced [kacja].

1.2. Syllable structure, stress, and phonotactics

Except word-initially, syllables in Tokana observe the following templatic structure:

(C)-V-(V)-(C/V)

That is, a syllable may consist minimally of a single vowel, and maximally of an initial ('onset') consonant, a diphthong (or glide + V sequence), and a final ('coda') consonant or glide. This yields ten possible syllable types, nine of which can be illustrated by a full word, as shown below:

Word-initially, a small number of consonant clusters are also attested, among them kl, ks, ps, sl, st, sth, sk:

klohana "go through"
ksohe "darkness"
psyta "spit out"
sliahte "story, tale"
sten "deer"
sthoka "destroy"
skona "watch, look at"

Syllabification (the division of words into syllables) is fairly straightforward in Tokana. The following rules are observed for dividing up consonant and vowel sequences:

(1) VCV syllabifies as V.CV: E.g. pama "on" is pronounced pa.ma.

(2) VVV syllabifies as V.VV if the middle V is a glide: E.g. paua "wash" is pronounced pa.ua (cf. huai.ta "like", where the VVV sequence is homosyllabic).

(3) VCCV syllabifies as VC.CV: E.g. mukta "close" is pronounced muk.ta, and misla "turn" is pronounced mis.la.

Stress is assigned according to the following rules:

(1) If the word ends in a consonant or a glide, main stress falls on the final syllable (e.g. kauén "chicken", totsát "table", kamái "for it", inlonól "tomorrow").

(2) If the word ends in a (full) vowel, main stress falls on the penultimate syllable (e.g. téne "steep hill", itskána "arrive", inlótka "yesterday", mósie "shoulders").

Note that stress is a property of (phonological) words rather than stems. Adding suffixes to a stem thus causes main stress to shift rightward:

hiéla "see"
hielámpa "be able to see"
hielampóti "not be able to see"
hielampotíke "not be able to see you"
hielampotikím "not be able to see us"

Note also that the stress rules apply to monosyllables as well as polysyllabic words: If a monosyllabic word ends in a consonant or a glide (e.g. lai "light", elh "and") then it receives stress; otherwise it is inherently unstressed, and cliticises onto - i.e. forms a phonological unit with - a following stress-bearing word.

The only (apparent) exceptions to the above stress rules are a handful of stems and inflectional forms which end in a full vowel but nevertheless have their main stress on the final syllable. In the orthography used here, these forms are all marked with a diacritic (`) over the final vowel:

sò "rope"
napè "daughter"
ipalà "herb, medicinal plant"

Certain pairs of monosyllabic words are distinguished solely by the presence versus absence of underlying stress (together with a slight lengthening of the vowel in the case of the stressed forms):

mà "what"
ma "1s:Erg" [determiner]

kì "time"
ki "and"

sù "rain"
su "or, and/or"

These stressed final vowels have two sources in the phonology of Tokana:

(a) Noun stems which end in h underlyingly drop the h word-finally, but retain their word-final stress as if they still ended in a consonant. Since h is only dropped word-finally, we get alternations of the following sort:

There is also a suffix -h, which marks third person singular inanimate arguments on the verb (see section 2.1.3). As with the stem-final h in the nouns above, this -h suffix drops at the end of a word, but causes main stress to shift to the final syllable:

(b) In some inflected forms, two adjacent vowels fuse to become a single stressed vowel. For instance, the dative noun suffix -e fuses with a stem final e or i (see section 2.2.3):

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