Phonotactics

All words except particles contain at least two syllables.
Words cannot begin on a vowel; in the romanization, words that are written with a vowel as their first letter actually have an unwritten glottal stop onset preceding the vowel.

Pitch accent

All words bear a pitch accent, or ‘word-tone’, which is a tone contour that extends across the whole word, and which emphasizes one specific syllable called the ‘prominent syllable’, homologuous to the stressed syllable in stress-based languages. In this language, words always begin with a pitch level that is low but still at least a little higher than the pitch level of the last syllable of the immediately preceding word in the same breathe group, if any. Then, until the prominent syllable is met (it is marked in the romanization orthography with an acute accent or a double acute accent), which bears the highest pitch of the whole word, any of the two following scenarios are possible, in free variation: ① each syllable's pitch is a little higher than that of the preceding syllable, or ② the pitch remains flats, mid-level, until the prominent syllable is met, where the pitch raises to a peak. After the prominent syllable, the pitch goes down more or less abruptly until the end of the word is reached. There again, the pitch level may become low and flat after the prominent syllable is passed, especially if the word is long (as it may not be comfortable to keep the pitch going progressively down on a long word).

Syllable structure

/ʎi/ and /ɲi/ are not allowed, except possibly as allophonic realizations of /li/ and /ni/ respectively.

Words never begin with a consonant clusters, with a few exceptions:

• /w/ may appear after certain consonants, and is realized as labialization of the preceding consonant.
• One of the Anchoring proclitics, the nasal proclitic /ʔm̩꞊/, realized as a syllabic nasal (a bilabial one most of the time) preceded by an unwritten glottal stop, can appear at the beginning of a word immediately before another consonant; the syllabic nasal assimilates in place of articulation with certain (not all) consonants:
    — coronal plosives and affricates (/ʔm̩꞊t/ → [ʔn̩꞊t]);
    — velar and uvular plosives (/ʔm̩꞊k/ → [ʔŋ̩꞊k]; /ʔm̩꞊q/ → [ʔɴ̩꞊q]).
  The assimilation is shown in the romanized orthography:
    /ʔm̩꞊takóju/ ↦ ⟪ntakóyu⟫.
  The [ɴ] allophone is written ⟪ŋ⟫:
    /ʔm̩꞊qakóju/ ↦ ⟪ŋqakóyu⟫.

Similarly, the coda of the last syllable of a word never contains a consonant cluster.

Consonant clusters may only occur across syllable boundaries, where two-consonant clusters may occur, as well as CCw clusters like /t͡skw/. More complex clusters are not allowed.

⸨TODO: List allowed and disallowed clusters.⸩

Word boundaries

Word-final occlusives (plosives and affricates) are mildly aspirated, which prevents the eventuality of misinterpreting them as belonging to the next word.