1. Phonology and Phonotactics

1. PHONOLOGY AND PHONOTACTICS

The phonetic architecture of Somi is cross-linguistically minimal, selected specifically from phonemes posessing the highest frequency distribution across all known language families. This guarantees zero articulatory barriers for any speaker.

1.1 Phonemic Inventory

Somi contains exactly nine consonants and five vowels. There are no diphtongs, triphtongs, or co-articulated consonants.

• Consonants: p (/p/), t (/t/), k (/k/), m (/m/), n (/n/), s (/s/), l (/l/), w (/w/), j (/j/)

• Vowels: a (/a/), e (/e/), i (/i/), o (/o/), u (/u/)

1.2 Syllable Structure and Prosody

The structural formula for all morphemes is strictly CV (Consonant-Vowel). There are no null-onset syllables (V) and no codas (C)V(C). Consequently, no consonant clusters or vowel hiatuses can occur.

Stress: Suprasegmental stress is completely fixed and invariant. In multi-syllabic compound expressions, stress falls uniformily on the primary initial syllable of the word boundary. Pitch is flat; there are no phonemic tonal phonemes or intonational shifts indicating syntactic variations