Consonants Phonetic Realizations The glottal stop is
realized in some contexts, though usually not as a full closure and is instead presented as
falling pitch,
laryngealization, re-articulation, or by
lengthening of the segment before. Some example of possible occurrences are listed below: • Syllable Initial • Full closure [ʔ] at the beginning of words — (ʔ / #__) • Re-articulation [Syllable Final • Full closure at the end of words — (ʔ / __#) or when following a vowel and preceding a voiceless consonant — (ʔ / V__C[-voice]) • Laryngealization following a vowel and preceding a glottal stop — (◌̰ / V__ʔ) • And falling pitch in all other contexts The glottal fricative /h/ is realized in many ways and it is much more predictable in the environments that realizations occur. For example: • In the case of two contiguous segments, if at the beginning of a word the first phoneme becomes
voiceless • If at the end of a word then the second phoneme becomes voiceless • the word aal (meaning 'the track or scent of an animal') is phonemically transcribed as [ḁal] • and the word samm (meaning 'fuzz of bamboo') is phonemically transcribed as [samm̥] • Strong aspiration occurs on voiceless obstruents • the word phek (meaning 'broom') is phonemically transcribed as [phek] • Breathy voice on the initial part of the syllable in the environment of voiced obstruents • the word gaŋ (meaning 'hole') is transcribed as [ɡ̈a̤ŋ] • /h/ may become /s/ in fast speech when following /j/ and preceding /k/ • /h/ may also become /x/ when contiguous to /j/ and preceding /ʔ/ The voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ is also realized as /ʃ/ before front vowels. /w/ when directly next to front vowels is realized as the labio-dental approximant [ʋ]
Vowels Research suggests that Chepang may have had a three vowel system at one point in time. Those vowels being /i/ /u/ and /ə/, this is uncommon for a three vowel system as commonly they consist of /a/ /i/ and /u/ as seen in
Classical Arabic,
Greenlandic and
Quechua. == Syntax ==