Sanpogo/sandbox

Sanpōgo Acoustic and Articulatory Phonology

Sanpōgo possesses a rhythmic phonology concentrated primarily in the labial and alveolar regions regarding place of articulation, dominated by voiceless plosives and approximants regarding manner of articulation.

Consonant Inventory

Sanpōgo Consonant Phonemes

Manner \ Place	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labio-velar
Obstruent • Voiceless Plosive • Voiced Plosive • Voiceless Fricative	p (b) —	t (d) s	— — —	k (g) —	— — —
Nasal	m	(n)	—	—	—
Tap / Liquid	—	ɾ	—	—	—
Approximant	—	—	j	—	w

Parenthesized sounds (b), (d), (g), and (n) are secondary allophones that surface only during compounding [Rendaku] and nasal assimilation processes.

Vowel Dynamics

Sanpōgo Vowel Matrix

	Front	Central	Back
High (Close)	i [i]		wu [wɯ] / u [ɯ]
Mid	e [e]		o [o]
Low (Open)		a [a]

Phonological Rules

• Nasal Labial Assimilation: When a word or morpheme ending in the nasal -m precedes a voiceless plosive p, it undergoes full bilabial closure due to articulatory efficiency:
  • <math>/pukan/ + /pana/ \rightarrow [pukampana]</math>
• Monophthongization: Adverse sequence of <math>/a/ + /i/</math> vowels does not form a diphthong; instead, it collapses into a single long front-mid vowel:
  • <math>/ka/ + /i/ \rightarrow [ke\text{ː}]</math>
• Coda Constraint (Open Syllable Bias): Sanpōgo strictly restricts syllable codas. The only permissible syllable-final consonant is the moraic nasal -m.