The Wagiman phonemic inventory is quite typical for a northern Australian language. It has six
places of articulation with a
stop and a
nasal in each. There are also a number of
laterals and
approximants, a
trill and a phonemic
glottal stop (represented in the orthography by 'h'). Wagiman also has a vowel inventory that is standard for the north of Australia, with a system of five vowels.
Consonants Stops that are
fortis (or 'strong') are differentiated from those that are
lenis (or 'weak') on the basis of length of closure, as opposed to the
voice onset time (VOT), the period after the release of the stop before the commencement of
vocal fold activity (or
voice) which normally differentiates fortis and lenis stops in English and most other languages. Lenis stops in Wagiman sound like English voiced stops and are therefore written using the Roman alphabet letters
b,
d and
g. Fortis stops, however, sound more like voiceless stops in English, but are slightly longer than lenis stops. They are written with two voiceless letters,
pp,
tt and
kk when they occur between two vowels. Since the length of closure is defined in terms of time between the closure of the vocal tract after the preceding vowel, and the release before the following vowel, stops at the beginning or end of a word do not have a fortis-lenis contrast. Orthographically in Wagiman, word-initial stops are written using the voiced Roman letters (
b,
d and
g), but at the end of a word, voiceless letters (
p,
t and
k) are used instead.
Vowels As with many languages of the top-end, Wagiman has a standard five-vowel system. However, a system of
vowel harmony indicates that two sets of vowels are closely associated with each other. aligns closely with and similarly, merges with . In this respect, it is possible to analyse Wagiman's vowel inventory as historically deriving from a three-vowel system common among the languages from further south, but with the phonetic influence of a typically northern five-vowel system.
Phonotactics Each
syllable of Wagiman contains an
onset, a
nucleus and an optional
coda. This may be generalised to the syllable template CV(C). The coda may consist of any single consonant, a continuant and a glottal stop, or an approximant and any stop. At the word level, Wagiman has a
bimoraic minimum, meaning that if a word consists of a single syllable, it must have either a
long vowel or a coda. Examples of monosyllabic words in Wagiman include 'yes', or 'eat.'. The retroflex approximant 'r' is not permitted word-initially and instead becomes a lateral 'l'. This only affects verb roots, as they are the only part of speech that takes prefixes and are therefore the only possible part of speech for which word-initial and word-medial environmental effects can be observed. The verb 'throw', for instance, surfaces as when inflected for third-person singular subjects (he/she/it), which are realised by invisible, or
null morphemes. but as when inflected for a first-person singular subject (I). When preceded by a syllable with a coda, the 'r' similarly moves to 'l', as in
ngan-la-ndi 'he/she/it threw you'. In short, the retroflex approximant 'r' is only realised as 'r' when it occurs between two vowels. Elsewhere, it becomes a lateral approximant 'l'.
Heterorganic clusters Consonant clusters across syllable boundaries do not assimilate for place in Wagiman as they do in many other languages. This means that a nasal in a syllable coda will not move to the position of the following syllable onset for ease of enunciation. In English and most other
Indo-European languages with the exception of
Russian, this movement occurs regularly, such that the prefix
in-, for example, changes to
im- when it precedes either a
p, a
b or an
m. :
in +
possible →
impossible :
in +
balance →
imbalance :
in +
material →
immaterial Wagiman does not do this. A nasal in a coda retains its position regardless of the following consonant: : 'tongue' : 'bream'
(fish spec.) : 's/he hit me' If Wagiman constrained against heterorganic clusters and assimilated them for place, as English does, these words would surface as , , and .
Vowel harmony High vowels assimilate in height to following mid vowels across syllable boundaries. That is, will become , and will become , when the following syllable contains a mid vowel; either or . {{interlinear |lang=waq |indent=2 {{interlinear |lang=waq |indent=2 Wagiman vowel harmony and other aspects of Wagiman phonotactics require further investigation. It is not known, for instance, whether vowel harmony equally affects unstressed syllables. ==Grammar==