Ati

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant system was developed with a serious look at Hawaiian, which has one of the smallest consonant inventories in the world. Unlike Asi, Hawaiian lacks /k/; [k] is an allophone of /t/. This is unusual in the world's languages, though, and speakers can distinguish the two phones with relative ease.

I included only one fricative as there is an entire language family that almost entirely lacks fricatives. Of the four modes of articulation, fricatives are also the most difficult to learn to produce.

The two most common nasals of the world are included as separate phonemes. Although they are difficult to distinguish to the ear, there are few languages that only contain one nasal. Those that do often have nasalized vowels, which Asi lacks, although a nasalized vowel may be considered allophonic with /n/ in coda.

Asi contains one more approximant than the language with the fewest approximants, and that is /r/. I've included it because that language does retain vowel lengthening, so the inclusion of /r/ allows for that possibility for speakers who are accustomed to vowel length being differentiating, while still being understandable as a rhotic to other speakers.

There are 8 consonants in total, which is equal to the number in Hawaiian.

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	p	t		k
Nasal	m	n
Fricative		s
Approximant	w		j	r1

1. Can be realized as any rhotic, rhoticization or lengthening of previous vowel, depending on the position and speaker.

Vowels

There are many languages that in theory only have three vowels: /a/, /i/, and /u/. However, these languages often have diphthongization that adds /e/ (ie Blackfoot) or dialects that include /e/ (ie Arabic) that is recognizable to other speakers. This is sensible, as looking at a vowel chart, it is a further distance from /a/ and /i/ than any back vowel from /u/ and /a/. Asi's vowel system will be ruled by measurements of these distances.

	Front	Back
Close	i	o
Mid	e
Open	a

Phonotactics

Many languages only allow for CV syllables, ie Hawaiian, Japanese, Blackfoot, and Pali. By my understanding, though, all of these languages have wiggle room: casual Hawaiian speech frequently omits vowels, Japanese allows for /N/ in coda and some consonants followed by voiceless vowels (ie su) can be analyzed as syllabic consonants, and Pali allows for gemination.

Asi is going to be more restrictive, allowing for consonantal codas only word-finally so that they may be followed by a voiceless high vowel or schwa if the speaker finds that particular coda difficult. It allows for /n/ or /m/ in coda position word-medially (regressively assimilating place from the following onset), which may be realized as a nasalized vowel.

Syllable structure is therefore (C)V(C#) or (C)V(N).

V may be made up of a single vowel or a combination of two vowels of sufficient distance (ai, ao, eo, ia, io). Note that because of its proximity to schwa, no diphthong or vowel combination ends in /e/, to avoid confusion with a long vowel that may be realized as a vowel with a schwa offglide.

Syntax

Isolating language, right-branching (SVO).

Verbal Grammar

Past-tense particle, preceding the verb, is ta.

Negative - ne

Lexicon

Numbers

1	pi
2	te
3	oki
4	ma
5	nina
6	ase
7	soso
8	awa
9	jai
10	ren
54	nina-ren-ma

Mood Particles

Mood particles are sentence-initial.

Interrogative	ka
Potential	mai
Subjunctive	osi

Open Class

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19KLyPuiCVs3eKDb2YlZBjtjbyeCOcWCelEOLeduBlYo/edit#gid=0