Malecite-Passamaquoddy phonology and orthography

The Malecite-Passamaquoddy standard orthography consists of 17 letters and an apostrophe. The following tables are based on the sound system described by Robert M. Leavitt in Passamaquoddy-Maliseet (1996). The bold letters are the spelling in the standard orthography and the symbols in square brackets give the respective IPA pronunciation:

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio -dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labio -velar	Glottal
Nasal	m /m/		n /n/		ŋ /ŋ/
Plosive	p /p/		t /t/	c /tʃ/	k /k/	q /kʷ/
Fricative	f /ɸ/	v /f/	s /s/	j /ç/	x /x/		h /h/
Approximant		ʋ /ʋ/	r /ɹ/	y /j/	g /ɰ/	w /w/
Lateral			l /l/	z /ʎ/	ɣ /ʟ/
Trill	b /ʙ/		d /r/

Additionally, the standard orthography uses an apostrophe (') to represent word-initial consonants that are no longer pronounced due to historic sound changes. It occurs only word-initially before p, t, k, q, s, or c. These "missing consonants" can appear in other forms of the word. For example, the stem ktomakéyu produces the word 'tomakéyu "s/he is poor" (where the apostrophe indicates that the initial k has been dropped) as well as the word nkótomakey "I am poor" (where the k remains pronounced because it occurs after the pronoun n-).

Vowels

There are six monophthongs, five of which are spelled with a single letter and one which is spelled with the combination eh. There are also five diphthongs, which are spelled as a combination of a vowel and a glide:

Monophthongs

	Front	Central	Back
High	i [i]		u [u]
Mid	e [e]	o [ə]	ʌ [ʌ]
Low	æ [æ]	a [a]	ɔ [ɒ]

(When o appears before w, it is written as u to reflect the rounding of the vowel due to the influence of the w). (/e/ may also be pronounced as /ɛ/).

Diphthongs

Spelling	Pronunciation
aw	[au]
ew	[eu]
iw	[iu]
ay	[aɪ]
ey	[eɪ]

Phonological processes

There are many phonological processes that occur in Malecite-Passamaquoddy, the most important of which are outlined below:

• Several consonants have two allophones, which alternate depending on where they appear in the word. When they appear adjacent to another consonant or following an apostrophe, they use the default voiceless pronunciation given in the consonant chart above. When they appear only adjacent to vowels or the prefix n-, they use the voiced equivalent of the same sound. For example, in the word peciye "he/she arrives", c is voiced: [bed͡ʒije]. But the word pihce "far away" the c is unvoiced because it is adjacent to h: [bit͡ʃe]. The following table summarizes these consonants and their voiced and unvoiced allophones:

Consonant(Orthography)	Voiceless allophone	Voiced allophone
p	[p]	[b]
t	[t]	[d]
k	[k]	[ɡ]
q	[kʷ]	[ɡʷ]
f	[ɸ]	[β]
v	[f]	[v]
s	[s]	[z]
c	[t͡ʃ]	[d͡ʒ]
j	[ç]	[ʝ]
x	[x]	[ɣ]

• Syncope of unstressed o is very common. This often occurs when o is in the first syllable of a verb stem used without a prefix. For example, in the word ktomakeyu "if s/he is poor" (from the verb stem -kotomakey-), the first o drops out because it is unstressed. But in nkotomakey "I am poor", which is built off the same verb stem, the first syllable is stressed. Therefore, the first o is not dropped. There are many more environments where this occurs, but the changes due to syncope are usually entirely predictable. LeSourd describes many of the syncope rules in Accent and Syllable Structure in Passamaquoddy (1993).
• Verbs with o (or an underlying o that has undergone syncope) in the first syllable of their stem have an ablaut form in the Changed Conjunct mode, where the o changes to an e. For example, the verb stem -wotom- ("smoke") becomes wetomat ("when he/she smoked").
• With verb stems that end in h, the vowel preceding the h changes to match the first vowel in the inflectional ending that follows the stem. The vowel preceding the h is therefore left as a blank underscore when writing out the stem. In the following example, the verb stem is -nehp_h- "kill":

• nehpah·a "I kill him/her"
• nehpeh·eq "when you killed him/her"
• knehpih·i "you kill me"
• nehpoh·oq "he/she kills me"
• nehpuh·uku·k "they kill me"

• The monophthongs (except "o") are lengthened when they occur in certain positions, although vowel length is not contrastive. One notable difference between the two dialects is that vowels are generally not as long in Passamaquoddy as in Malecite, but the distribution of long and short vowels are similar. LeSourd describes the following generalizations about vowel lengthening:

• vowels are lengthened before a hC cluster but remain short before other consonant clusters
• vowels are lengthened in open penultimate syllables if that syllable is stressed or if the final syllable is stressed
• word final vowels are sometimes lengthened, especially when they occur before a pause

Distributional restrictions and syllable structure

Every phoneme except "o" and "h" can occur initially, medially, or finally; "o" and "h" are never word-final. Clusters of two obstruents, geminate consonant pairs, and clusters of a sonorant followed by an obstruent are all common. Consonant clusters ending in a sonorant usually don't occur except in geminate pairs or when they occur initially through the use of one of the personal pronoun prefixes. Clusters of three consonants can occur, and are almost always of the form CsC.

The most basic and common syllable structures are CV and CVC.

Stress and pitch accent

Stress is assigned based on a set of very complex rules, and difference in stress and accent systems is one of the clearest distinguishing features between Malecite and Passamaquoddy. According to LeSourd, in Passamaquoddy there are vowels that are considered stressable and ones that are considered unstressable. Stressable vowels are available to be acted on by stress rules, while unstressable vowels might undergo syncope. Stress is assigned (to stressable vowels only) to initial syllables and even-numbered syllables, counting from right to left. There is a simultaneous left to right process that reassigns some unstressable vowels as stressable. Unstressable vowels which do not become stressable based on the left to right process are subject to syncope based on five rules LeSourd outlines in Accent and Syllable Structure in Passamaquoddy. Malecite has a similar process but the finer details of the stress assignment rules are different.

In addition to stress rules, there are also rules that assign pitch to some syllables based on their position in the words. As LeSourd describes, Passamaquoddy stressed syllables can be relatively high-pitched or low-pitched, and final unstressed syllables can be distinctively low-pitched. Malecite has similar pitch assignments, but again, differs from Passamaquoddy in ways which serve to distinguish the two dialects.

External links

• Malecite-Passamaquoddy language