User:MaiyaH78/sandbox

Variation
Theodian varies between syllable timing and stress timing. In rapid speech, it is almost always stress-timed; in educated speech, it is typically syllable-timed; and in day-to-day speech, it fluctuates between them.

Theodian fricatives, affricates, and plosives freely variate their voicing and aspiration, often varying pragmatically. For example, in rapid speech, they are often nearly all voiced; in careful speech, they are typically devoiced, and often aspirated; in formal music, they are often entirely voiced and frequently aspirated; and in day-to-day speech, the beginnings of stressed syllables and the ends of words are typically devoiced and unaspirated, while everything else is voiced and varyingly aspirated. Their prototypical forms are devoiced, and usually unaspirated.

Like in many dialects of English, diphthongs become more closed before voiceless consonants.

Vowels also freely variate their voicing, with creaky voicing being particularly common at the ends of statements, and breathy voicing often coinciding with statements of graditude or humbleness.

Although Theodian has a lax/tense vowel duality, it does not contrast them, and with the exception of the two pseudo-schwa sounds, either version can occurr in any stressed or unstressed position. These freely variating vowels of course function semantically as allophones in the language, but there is occaisionally some pragmatic difference between them. For example, in careful speech, vowels are usually tense, whereas in rapid speech, they are usually lax. The schwa-like sounds, however, are quite stable in their distribution, but like the other vowels they are treated as allophones.

Nasals reduce to nasalization of the preceding vowel if followed immedietely by a fricative, except in careful speech. They are occaisionally so reduced in other consonant clusters, particularly in fast speech. Regularly nazalized vowels always use their lax form, except in very careful speech.

is an allphone of before, , , , and ; and  is an allophone which occurrs in consonant clusters (example: , , , which means 'France'). is sometimes further reduced to either velarization of the preceding consonant or (if after a vowel) to.

The in Theodian freely variates between an approximant, a rhotacized fricative, and a flap. The approximant is the prototypical form, although the flap is more common intervocalically.

is often reduced to a tap when occurring intervocalically and a glottal stop when occurring word-finall; while and  are often reduced to fricatives.

is prototypically pharyngealized, but it is frequently velarized as well. *distribution chart coming*