Tyap/Phonology

Tyap Phonology

Intonation

Tyap is a tonal language with a high, mid, low, mid low, high-low and low-high ranges, but only one (the high tone indicated by the acute accent) is used for writing. Tyap has no nasal vowel sounds. It, however, has nasal consonants sounds (m /m/, n /n/ and ng /ŋ/) which are also tonal. Tyap also uses the underscore diacritic mark usually placed under vowels "a" and "i"; a̱ denotes the schwa sound /ǝ/ while i̱ denotes the shortened "i" sound /ɨ/.

Vowels

The seven vowels of Tyap can be classified as either short or long monophthongs sounds. Short Monophthongs : a a̱ e i i̱ o u Long Monophthongs : a a̱a̱ ee ii i̱i̱ oo uu The language has five (or six) diphthongs: /ei(/əi) ea əu ai oi/.

Consonants

Labialization and palatalization of consonant sounds are responsible for the many consonant sounds in the language unlike in english. The language has over 80 monographic and digraph labialized and palatalized consonant sounds, classified into fortis and lenis modifications.