Uyendur Prosody basics: view article

Uyendur prosody is characterized by a lack of lexical stress and a phrase-level pitch accent that is predictably modified by certain phonemes.

The standard phrase-level pitch accent begins low on the first syllable of an utterance, rises to high on the second syllable, and begins falling gradually after that. This begins anew with the next phrase.

kamankidulmut lamurutumut
Kamankidul mut la murutumut.
"It's possible he spoke to the woman."
Ka-man-ki-dul-mut / la-mu-ru-tu-mut.
L-H-F-F-F / L-H-F-F-F

This sentence contains two phrases, kamankidul mut ("it's possible he spoke") and la murutumut ("to the woman"). Both phrases have five syllables, the first of which is pronounced with low pitch, the second of which with high pitch, and the remaining with a single falling pitch. By the beginning of the second phrase, the pitch of the first phrase will have fallen to low, matching the beginning of the next phrase. As spaces in written Uyendur come between phrases rather than words, the default pitch pattern is fairly clearly indicated in the script.

This default pitch pattern is predictably modified by the slack consonants ḅ, ḍ, and ġ. These consonants induce slack voice on the following vowel, but this is perhaps secondary to the alteration they cause in pitch. Syllables containing slack consonants must be pronounced at low pitch.

When the first syllable of a phrase contains a slack consonant, the default pitch rise is delayed by one syllable:

Durandulmut umurutubuxt
Ḍurandul mut u murutubĭt.
"It's possible he took it to the woman."
Ḍu-ran-dul-mut / u-mu-ru-tu-bĭt.
L-L-H-F / L-H-F-F-F

The first of these two phrases contains a slack consonant, and as a result, the pitch rise in this phrase is delayed by one syllable. In cases where the last syllable is high, the phrase will lack any sort of pitch drop and will end high, even at the end of an utterance.

gukkixdox
G̣ukkĭdŏ.
"We had created (it)."
ġuk-kĭ-dŏ
L-L-H

If there is only one syllable following the slack consonant, then there is no pitch rise at all in that phrase:

Buxrmas murutumul
Ḅĭr mat murutumul.
"He does not know the woman."
ḅĭr-mat / mu-ru-tu-mul
L-L / L-H-F-F

However, if the following phrase has a slack-voiced consonant in the second syllable, the pitch rise of the first phrase will be transferred to the first syllable of the second phrase:

Buxrmas raBalut
Ḅĭr mat raḅalut.
"He does not know the soldier."
ḅĭr-mat / ra-ḅa-lut.
L-L / H-L-L

There are other prosodic pitch patterns based on pragmatic concerns (or there will be, I haven't designed them yet). ✎ Edit Article ✖ Delete Article

Comments