Decééyinéeqi ([de1.t͡ɕeˑ55.d͡ʑi1.nẽˑ53.ŋĩ1) is a new conlang I've been working on for a whole one days now. Decééyinéeqi is spoken by a bunch of guys living in an agricultural culture with cities but not much else. (What about Čəsač? Yes, I definitely should be working on that instead, but at least this is something.) Decééyinéeqi has some morphophonology, but not tooo much cause I'm lazy. Mostly for this langu I'm concentrating on some suprasegmentals and maybe some grammar or something later.
Phonology
This shall be the phonology post. Decééyinéeqi has a phonemic inventory of 12 consonants and two or three or four vowels. Notable features include the complete lack of labial consonants and real fricatives; as well as the janky vowel system.
Consonants
/t d tɕ dʑ k ɡ/ <t d c y k g>
/r j ɣ/ <r j h>
/n ɲ ŋ/ <n ñ q>
The lack of labials or labialised consonants comes from an old shift which took place in three stages
1. /p b v m/ → /kʷ gʷ ɣʷ ŋʷ/
2. /k ɡ ɰ ŋ/ → /kʲ ɡʲ ɰʲ ŋʲ/ → /tɕ dʑ j ɲ/
3. /kʷ ɡʷ ɣʷ ŋʷ/ → /k ɡ ɣ ŋ/
Yes, I used <j y> for /j dʑ/ not the other way round, and <q> for /ŋ/.
Vowels
Analysis 1: /i e o/ <i e a>
Analysis 2: /i e1 e2 o/ <i e e a>
Analysis 3: /e o/ <e~i a~e>
These analyses are based on how you analyse palatal harmony; this is explained in the vowel harmonies section. I'll talk about these in spoilers because words.
Vowel harmonies
Decééyinéeqi uses two types of phoneme harmony; palatal harmony, affecting vowels but based on consonants, and nasal harmony, affecting both vowels and consonants.
Palatal harmony
Palatal harmony is a system in which [e o] correspond to [i e] when things happen; ie /e/ gets raised and /o/ fronted. If a word has one or more palatals (i.e. /tɕ dʑ j ɲ/) in it, all underlying /e o/ in the word become [i e], including those in affixes. Even if an affix has a palatal in it, all the vowels in the world are "palatalised".
/ɣóːròdʑè/ > [ɣeː55.re1.dʑi1] hééreyi
/ɣóːròdʑè/ + –/ŋè/ > [ɣeː55.re1.dʑiː53.ŋĩ1] hééreyíiqi
/ɡóɡènè/ > [ɡo5.ve1.nẽ1] gágene
/ɡóɡènè/ + –/jôː/ > [ɡe5.vi1.nĩ1.ɲẽ53] géginiñée
You can always tell whether an [e] is underlyingly /e/ or /o/; it’s /e/ if there’s no palatals in the word and /o/ if there are.
Nasal harmony
There’s also some nasal harmony; any vowel directly following a nasal is nasalised ([i e o] > [ĩ ẽ õ]), and any /r j ɣ/ to the right of a nasal in a word become [n ɲ ŋ], even if there are some phonemes or syllables in between them. Any vowels which then come after a phonetic nasal ([n ɲ ŋ] < /r j ɣ/) still nasalise. This is indicated in the orthography by writing all [n ɲ ŋ] as <n ñ q>, but the nasal vowels are not written.
/ŋòdérôːróː/ > [ŋõ1.de5.nõ53.nõ55] qadénáanáá
This also affects affixes:
/ŋòdérôːróː/ + –/jôː/ > [ŋẽ1.di5.nẽ53.nẽ55.ɲẽ53] qedínéenééñée
It’s impossible to tell in monomorphemic words whether [n ɲ ŋ] in syllables following a nasal syllable are underlyingly /r j ɣ/ or /n ɲ ŋ/. This doesn’t really matter cause the orthography would write them as nasals either way, but in // I’ll pretend that they’re all nasals too.
Other Allophony
Tones
Decééyinéeqi has four tones, which are:
/eː55 e4 eː53 e1/ <éé é ée e>
(abbrev. HH H HM L)
These could be treated in a bunch of different ways but the important thing is that /eː55/ and /eː53/ are about twice as long as /e4/ and /e1/ and so they're written like that. Phonemically I write them as /éː é êː è/ and phonetically as /e55 e4 e53 e1/, or not depending on how I'm feeling.
There’s not much tone sandhi (yet), but notably a sequence of three L tones makes the middle one HM and written as such.
/dóːròɲè/ + –/ŋè/ > [deː55.re1.ɲĩː53.ŋĩ1] dééreñíiqi