Rattssaw

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Creation-Date: 2015-04-12T16:50:43+02:00

====== Rattssaw ======
Created Sunday 12 April 2015

Rattsaw (#rattssá in its native orthography, ër̲atťtsauu in [[Egonyota Pasaru]]) is the language spoken by the [[Countries:Jesdic Senlis|Jesdic Senlis]]. Low Rattsaw (#saalittrattssá) is for administrative purposes while Popular Rattssaw (#kangpritsrattssá) is the more colloquial version, separated into multiple smaller dialects.

===== Introduction =====
Rattssaw

===== Phonology =====
The phonology of Rattssaw is none too spectacular, except for a series of consonants known as "leaky consonants".

==== Consonants ====
The consonant inventory of Rattssaw is displayed below.
''              Labial   lab-dnt  Dental   Alveolar   Dnt-Alv   Velar  Uvular   Glottal''
''Nasal             m                          n                 ŋ  ''
''Stop           p  b              t  d                          k  g               ʔ #''
''Fricative      ɸ       f  v      θ  ð      s  z       ʃ        x                  h''
''Leaky          p+ b+             θ+        s+ z+     tʃ        k+''
''Trill                                      r                          ʀ''
''Approximant                                l                   w''

These are written, in its simplest orthographic system:
''              Labial   lab-dnt  Dental   Alveolar   Dnt-Alv   Velar  Uvular   Glottal''
''Nasal             m                          n                 ng ''
''Stop           p  b              t  d                          k  g               j #''
''Fricative      ff      f  v      þ  þþ     s  z       ś        x                  h''
''Leaky          pp bb             tt        ss zz      c        kk''
''Trill                                      rr                         r''
''Approximant                                l                   w''


=== /ʔ/, /h/, and /x/ ===
The phonemes /ʔ/, /h/, and /x/ are obsolete in most versions of Rattssaw. Only Low Rattssaw retains it. Of course, Low Rattssaw is the administrative variant, so it ends up in the official lexicon anyway. In other places, the three become #/[ə], ø and [k] respectively.

=== /#/ ===
The phoneme labelled  "#" is one of the most mindnumbing parts of the phonology of Rattssaw – phonemic prevocalisation.

Yes, really.

"Prevocalisation" is the small phone that occurs when your vocal cords start vibrating but your tongue and mouth haven't quite moved into position yet. In other words, it is the gap between vocalisation and articulation. Since it only ever occurs in word boundaries, (and probably not even then!), it is given the symbol #, which is the phonological symbol for "word boundary". However, due to its word-initial constraint in Rattssaw and its propensity to appear in front of keywords or as an honorific, it is much easier for the common man on the street to relate the symbol as something called a "hashtag".

When the push comes to shove and /#/ needs to be written down as a phone, it has several possible realisations, all of which are speaker specific and are allophones of each other.

* [ə̆], a tiny schwa. Usually appears before plosives.
* [ŋ̆], a tiny velar nasal. Usually appears before closed vowels, i ɪ u ɛ, nasals or fricatives.
* [ʔ], a glottal stop. Usually appears before non-closed vowels a o ə.

# is never stressed; if it were, then it'd be a full on [ə], which is the reason why the Egonyota Pasaru names the langauge with a beginning ë, which is its orthography for /ə/.

The Rs → EP rule for # is:
* Ë_ when read [ə̆]
* J_ when read [ʔ]
* NG_ when read [ŋ̆]
So the letters are named Ja̲, Jo̲ Jə̲ and NGi̲ NGe̲ NGî̲ NGu̲.

==== Vowels ====
The vowel system of Rattssaw is similarly unspectacular.

''       Front                   Back''
''Close    i                      u''
''            ɪ''
''              ɛ        ə        o''

''Open                   a''

These are written:

''       Front                   Back''
''Close    i                      u''
''            y''
''              e        ə        o''

''Open                   a''

Possible diphthongs and tripthongs: /ɛɪ̯ aɪ̯ əu̯ au̯ ɪ̯əu̯ u̯ai̯/ «é ay ó á yé wá». If one wishes to write /aɪ ɪəu̯ wau̯/, then these are «aỳ yè wà».

==== Phonotactics and Syllabic Denial ====
Rattssaw is a langauge that explicitly [[Syllabic denial|denies syllables]]. Instead, phonemes in the languages are divided into discrete phonoruns.

**Open** phonemes are all vowels plus «h».
**Closed** phonemes are «p b t d pp bb tt dd þ f ff k g kk j ss #»
**Inheritable** phonemes are all remaining phonemes, that is «l r rr þþ z s f x ś m n ng».

Further restrictions apply:

* No two plosives in a row. If one is formed by concatenating two words together, then the first one or the one that isn't j or g gets doubled.
* Multiple fricatives placed together cannot differ only by voice or be fff.
* Multiple vowels placed together cannot be identical in modifiers such as adjectives and adverbs. If one is created by chaining adverbs and/or adjectives together, intrusive peaks, usually «h», is used.

==== The Annoying «#» ====
# is usually a closed segment, but this is not necessarily so.

When analysing runs, any word that begins with an inheritable phoneme is prepended with # to assist in "snapping" the inheritable segment into a closed segment (which is not actually exactly "closed" when it only contains one segment because in this case they phonologically behave differently). However, # itself is not necessarily phonetically "closed", as it can take on values, most notably [ŋ] and [ə], that are phonetically open.

As the # never actually shows up in the pronuncation, it means that sometimes an inheritable phoneme can appear all by itself, and in that case it gently

==== Allophony ====
Inheritable phonemes sometimes get strange values depending on where in the run and which run you find them in. Remember that "isolated" inheritable runs can only appear at the start of words (where things can get ugly due to the special nature of #) and one cannot start a phonorun with an inheritable phoneme.

''      +----------+---------+---------+''
''      | Isolated |  Middle |   End   |''
''      |          |  O   C  |  O   C  |''
''+-----+----------+---------+---------+''
''| /l/ |    [ɾ]   | [ɫ] [l] | [w] [ɾ] |''
''| /ʀ/ |    [ʀ]   | [ɹ] [̞ʁ] | [ɚ] [ʀ] |''
''| /w/ |    [w]   | [ʊ]  ×  |   [w]   |''
''+-----+----------+---------+---------+''

==== Run structure ====
Oaula ael hoaə "A small creek ate [killed] him"
Psk bbfzr bffs "I read the newspaper"

Most loanwords are very tricky for Rattssaw speakers to deal with. For instance, the name "Frykkəncykkən" /fʀ ɪ k͡x̆ ən t͡ʃ ɪ k͡x̆ ən/ contains too many undulations; its signature is C21121112. Therefore, such a name would undergo metatheses. Our example would transform the name to "Frkkyənckkyən" /fʀk͡x̆ ɪən t͡ʃk͡x̆ ɪən/, which has a much smaller signature of C3323.

===== Morphology =====

===== Derivational morphology =====

===== Syntax =====

===== Semantic fields and pragmatics =====

===== Writing system =====

===== Examples =====