Phonology
Vowels
Siluila
has the five cardinal vowels. Stress is ordinarily on the penultimate, but when
irregular, it is marked with an acute accent (á).
Consonants
There
are 15 consonants in Siluila. Any of them may start a word, but words must end
in a vowel.
Morphophonemics
Diphthongs
Certain grammatical changes can make the stressed vowel of the root word into a diphthong. If the root vowel already is a diphthong, no change is made.
| Vowel | Diphthong |
| a | ai |
| e | ei |
| i | ia |
| o | ou |
| u | ua |
nari > nairi
eli > eili
di > dia
golui > goului
uldo > ualdo
Mutation
Some grammatical changes mutate the initial consonant of a word (if it starts with a consonant). Clusters have their own forms. A few consonants are marked with 0 as their mutation. For these, 0 indicates that the consonant disappears. If there are two forms listed, the first is regular, while the second is only used in some words.
| consonant |
p
|
t
|
k
|
b
|
d
|
g
|
f
|
s
|
h
|
v
|
z
|
m
|
n
|
l
|
r
|
br
|
fl
|
sk
|
st
|
| mutated |
f
|
s
|
h
|
v
|
z
|
h
|
f / 0
|
r / l
|
0
|
v
|
l
|
b
|
d
|
l
|
r
|
fr
|
l
|
r
|
z
|
hado > ado
kialdea > hialdea
sevi > revi
zeva > leva
Vowel Dropping
Before adding an ending to a noun or verb, drop the final vowel. If it ends in two vowels, only drop the last one.
toruma + -ora > torumora
Epenthesis
If an affix creates a consonant cluster, an e is added at the morpheme boundary to prevent the cluster from occuring.
toruma + -no > torumeno
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© 2003 J. J. Fatula, III, all rights reserved.