Amafjk language

Amafjk (pronunciation: /æṽæɸiᵑkˣ/; or sataxjx Jmefjk, pronunciation: /r̝̊ætˣæx̪͆ix̪͆ iṽeɸiᵑkˣ/) is the de facto lingua franca of Matkha and the official language of Tantj Tasfemjx Province. It is spoken natively by 92% of Tantj Tasfemjx Province and 65% of the Scattered Islands Census Area, and the overwhelming majority of Matkhans are either conversational or fluent in the language.

Amafjk is generally considered to be a language isolate, or otherwise part of a tentative microfamily known as East Matkhan containing itself and (PLACEHOLDER), the latter of which is only attested in toponyms, anthroponyms, and a transcription of a song found in (BOOK PLACEHOLDER). However, recent scholarship has attempted to link the language to the Ngyoic languages under the Macro-Matkhan phylum, though this theory remains highly contested.

Phonology

Amafjk is typically analyzed as having 11 phonemes, giving it the second smallest phoneme inventory of any attested natural language, solely surpassed by the Seŋoŋ language spoken in Xjetjeŋ. These phonemes are divided into 7 consonants and 4 vowels.

Consonants

The consonants, and their underlying pronunciations in Xassj Efjnes dialect, are given here.

	Labial	Alveolar	Velar
Nasal	m /ṽ/	n /ɾ̃/
Plosive		t /tˣ/	k /ᵑkˣ/
Fricative	f /ɸ/	s /r̝̊/	x /x̪͆/

Vowels

Amafjk has a vertical vowel system.

Close	j /i/
Near-close	i /ɪ/
Mid	e /e̞/
Near-open	a /æ/

In many analyses, Amafjk vowels are said to have secondary phonemic status due to the fact that the vast majority of roots in the language are vowelless before the application of transfixes, as well as the fact that sentences can have the vowels of their transfixes freely exchanged without changing the meaning, so long as the relations between transfix vowels (i.e. which ones do and do not match) remain unchanged. However, vowels occasionally do appear in roots and have semantically meaningful minimal pairs, such as fjm–kx– (sp. of fish) and fam–kx– (promontory).

Allophony

As a result of its small phonemic inventory, the phonemes of Amafjk are often quite fluid in pronunciation, and in informal speech each one tends to have free variation between a large range of realizations. Most commonly, they are limited to the following ranges, but exceptions can be found in highly informal speech.

• m: any nasal fricative or approximant, excluding fricative trills
• n: any nasal stop or nasal tap
• t: either any non-guttural stop, or any non-prenasalized stop. Most often, it is in the intersection of these two groups.
• k: any prenasalized guttural stop
• f: any non-dorsal non-trill fricative or non-dorsal approximant
• s: any trill
• x: any dorsal fricative or approximant
• j: any close vowel
• i: any near-close or close-mid vowel
• e: any mid or open-mid vowel
• a: any near-open or open vowel

Formal pronunciations

Allophony in acrolectal forms spoken in Xassj Efjnes is rather complex, entailing several feeding and bleeding orders. The order of rule application is as follows:

• Clusters of two plosives become a geminate form of the second plosive.
• Vowels before dorsal or guttural sounds are backed.
• The vowels of a given word undergo a process called iterative dissimilation. First, even-numbered vowels in sequences of two or more front vowels (ignoring any intermediary consonants) are backed, and then the same process is applied with fronting of alternating vowels in sequences of two or more back vowels. For instance, the word sefjfsakj, which becomes [r̝̊eɸiɸr̝̊ɑ̝ᵑkˣi] after the first two allophony rules, becomes [r̝̊eɸɯɸr̝̊ɑ̝ᵑkˣi], then [r̝̊eɸɯɸr̝̊æᵑkˣi].
• /ɾ̃/ becomes [ŋ] before back vowels.
• /x̪͆/ becomes [j] after vowels other than /i/.
• Various simple contextual changes are applied, shown in the table below:

	word-initial	after mora gap	intervocalic	word-final
/ṽ/	[β̞̃]
/ɾ̃/		[ʀ̆̃]		[ŋ]
/tˣ/		[bˠ]	[dˠ]	[t]
/ᵑkˣ/			[ᵑgˠ]	[ᵑk]
/ɸ/	[s]	[s]	[ɹ]
/r̝̊/	[ʜ]	[ʜ]
/x̪͆/	[ɰ]

• Vowels before [j] are raised.
• [ɸ] is elided postvocalically, and the previous vowel is given compensatory lengthening.
• Epenthetic [ɡ] is added before words which begin with a vowel.
• In sequences of a vowel and a nasal or prenasalized consonant, the vowel is nasalized and the consonant loses its nasal quality.
• Velar aspiration is lost word-finally.

Prosody

Amafjk is a mora-timed language. In the Amafjk system, which includes half-morae, syllables are divided into three sizes: ultralight (half a mora), light (one mora), and heavy (one and a half morae). In addition, a mora can be classified as fixed or movable – the distinction, however, only exists in light morae, as all ultralight or heavy morae are inherently movable.

The ultralight morae are limited to the plosives /tˣ/ and /ᵑkˣ/ in coda position. Light morae include all syllable bodies (onset-nucleus combinations as well as standalone nuclei), with the exception of those with /r̝̊/ as the onset, as well as all codas with the exceptions of /tˣ/, /ᵑkˣ/ and /r̝̊/. The only heavy morae are the aforementioned /r̝̊V/ bodies and /r̝̊/ in coda position.

A nucleus without an onset is the only movable light mora. Movability refers to whether or not a mora's timing will be "quantized" to the following one-mora unit if it is placed immediately after a mora whose ending is not unit-aligned: fixed morae will be quantized, while movable morae will not. The distinction is best demonstrated with a few illustrative examples:

kaxjt efjnes "three clouds"

1		2		3		4		5		6		7		8
ka		xj		t	e			fj		ne		s

kaxjt sjkke "four clouds"

1		2		3		4		5		6
ka		xj		t	sj			k		ke

kaxjt mjtex "five clouds"

1		2		3		4		5		6
ka		xj		t		mj		te		x

Stress and timing

In syllable timing, all coda consonants are transferred to the preceding mora, and all half-aligned morae are rounded down to the earliest unit multiple. For instance:

1		2		3		4		5		6
ka		xj		t	sj			k		ke
ka		xjt		sjk						ke

Stress is on the second mora of the word, or if this would be a coda mora, stress is moved to the first. For this reason, the capped form of "black" natat is stressed as na-tá-t but the uncapped form nattj is stressed as ná-t-tj.