Ieba

Ieba is the dialect continuum of the Ieba archipelago. It's known for a number of unusual phonological features, particularly the lack of nasals, tiny consonant inventory, and presence of syllabic fricatives.

Vowels
/i u e/ vary with [ɪ ʊ ɛ].

/ɨ/ is a laminal vowel articulated with the blade of the tongue close to the alveolar ridge. It rises to a syllabic fricative [z̩] after /b d/ and [s̩] between /t k/ and a voiceless sound. It is distinct from syllabic /s/ in other environments: /fɨɨ/ ‘sweet potato’ versus /fs̩da/ ‘month, moon’.

Sequences of vowels are unrestricted, including sequences of identical vowels.

Consonants
Ieba has an extremely small consonant inventory. Notable is the lack of nasals, even phonetically.

/s/ is laminal denti-alveolar.

The following allophones occur:


 * ka > xa (sometimes voiced to [ɣ] between vowels)
 * tɨ > ʦɨ (ɨ further disappears if the next sound is voiceless)
 * ti > ʨi
 * si,se > ɕi,ɕe
 * VdV > VɾV

/f s/ may be syllabic. When syllabic, they are lengthened and count as bimoraic (e.g. /ks̩/ [kss]).

Tone
The tone bearing unit is the mora. Voiced nuclei may carry high or low tone but not every mora is specified for tone. Tone is lexical on lexically "heavy" words (nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and "heavy" verbs) and marks aspect on a closed class of light verbs.

Word structure
Syllables are (C)(V), and if the syllable is a lone C it must be /f/ or /s/.

Lexically heavy words must be at least bimoraic: /tia/, /bɨɨ/, and /ks̩/ are acceptable words, but /kɨ/ is not.

Sentence structure
Ieba is highly topic prominent, and in fact traditional grammatical relations such as subject or object and agent or patient cannot be reliably distinguished in Ieba. Word order is (light) verb-final, but the order of constituents prior to the verb marks information structure rather than subject or object. Resolution of anaphors is based not on syntax but real world knowledge and discourse structure.

Predicates are complex, with a set of around a dozen light verbs that combine with lexically heavy verbs to produce a complex predicate. Pairings of heavy verb + light verb are generally lexicalized, but some heavy verbs may accept multiple light verbs which produce differences in transitivity, volition, etc. Several heavy verbs may be chained in front of one light verb, in which case the choice of light verb is typically determined by the final heavy verb. Chained heavy verbs typically have adverbial meanings applied to the final heavy verb, which acts as the head. The sequence refers to a single complex event rather than a series of events. Heavy verb chains can get quite long:

‘I arrived, running into the temple.’

While the light verb must be the final element of the sentence, a noun may separate the heavy verb from the light verb if the referent(s) are indefinite and unidentifiable. This can be analyzed as a sort of noun incorporation.

Aspect
Ieba is tenseless, but has a complex aspectual system marked by tone changes and a suffix on the light verb. It makes the following aspectual distinctions:

These can coerce a naturally static predicate to dynamic, usually producing an inchoative reading. The telic and atelic situational aspects can combine with the perfective (viewing the situation as a whole without internal structure) or imperfective (viewing the situation as having internal structure) aspects. The imperfective resultative does not occur.
 * Static: the situation is unchanging over a period of time, with no beginning or result state (for example ‘to know’, ‘to be broken’). When applied to naturally dynamic predicates, this produces a habitual reading.
 * Dynamic: the situation is characterized by change. This is further divided:
 * Telic: the situation tends toward a goal. (e.g. ‘John played Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata in 5 minutes.’)
 * Atelic: the situation does not tend toward a goal. (e.g. ‘John played Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata for 30 minutes.’ [i.e. he probably practiced it over and over])
 * Resultative: views the situation as having results that continue on in time (e.g. ‘The house was built.’)