phonologyJuliana

PhonologyJuliana is the study of the sound system of Juliana, a hypothetical language used in linguistic illustration. The article summarizes the core phonemes, phonotactics, and prosodic patterns that characterize Juliana's speech, without presupposing any real-world language.

Consonants and vowels: Juliana has five vowel qualities /i e a o u/ with a phonemic length contrast. Vowel length is phonemic and can be indicated orthographically with a macron. The consonant inventory includes the stops /p t k b d g/; fricatives /f s h v z/, nasals /m n ŋ/; liquids /l r/; and glides /w j/. Phonemes may occur in simple and complex onsets, and some loan sounds may appear in proper context.

Syllable structure and phonotactics: The allowed syllables are (C)(C)V(C)(C), allowing one to two consonants in onset and up to two in codas. Stress is typically on the penultimate syllable; affixes can shift stress. Onset clusters and coda consonants follow general assimilation rules; voicing assimilation occurs in clusters.

Phonological processes and allophony: Final devoicing of obstruents is common; vowels become shorter before certain consonants; nasal place assimilation occurs in nasal + stop sequences. Vowel quality can be affected by adjacent consonants in predictable ways, generating allophones that do not change word meaning.

Orthography: Juliana's writing system uses the Latin alphabet with diacritics to mark vowel length and certain articulations. In many texts, long vowels are indicated with macrons (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū), and some phonemes are represented by digraphs or single letters with diacritics.