Malayalam

Last Updated: 2020-06-16

SLIGHTLY COMPROMISED: conflation between dental and alveolar /n/

Background

Language Family: Dravidian / Southern / Tamil-Kannada / Tamil-Kodagu / Tamil-Malayalam / Malayalam

• Malayalam, the official language of Kerala and Lakshadweep, is a Dravidian language from South India. It is also heavily influenced by Sanskrit, and has become influenced by English with the introduction of /f/.
• It is spoken in the states of Karnataka, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Puducherry, and Tamil Nadu located in southern India.

Phonology

Consonants

• Consonant length is contrastive for voiceless (unaspirated) stops (including /tʃ/), nasals, and laterals /l/ and /ɭ/, and it is indicated orthographically by duplicate characters separated by a virama (Panel 2018, 6; Jiang 2010, 8), see Alphabet.
• /t̪ʰ/, /d̪ʱ/, /ʈʰ/, and /ɖʱ/ are very marginal (Jiang 2010, 17).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops (plain)	p b	t̪ d̪		ʈ ɖ		ɟ	k ɡ
Stops (aspirated)	pʰ bʱ	t̪ʰ d̪ʱ		ʈʰ ɖʱ		ɟʱ	kʰ ɡʱ
Affricates					tʃ tʃʰ
Fricatives			s	ʂ	ʃ			h
Nasals	m	n̪	n	ɳ		ɲ	ŋ
Flaps			ɾ
Trills			r
Approximants	ʋ		l	ɻ ɭ		j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced. Both retroflex approximants are voiced, but the one on the right is lateral.

Vowels

• Vowel length is contrastive. The diphthongs listed below do not have a length contrast (Jiang 2010, 18).
• Most sources (e.g. Jiang 2010, 18) include schwa as part of the vowel inventory; however, its phonemic status is somewhat vague. The only minimal pairs Jiang (2010) lists involve contrast word-finally (pp. 18-19), which some sources argue merely as the reduction of /u/ (Swenson 2016, 133; “Malayalam,” n.d., 2). I have chosen not to include /ə/ below, treating /u/ as the underlying form.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Diphthongs
/ai/, /au/

Alphabet

• Note: /n/ and /ɟʱ/ are not represented in the Crúbadán corpus.

Consonant Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
ക	/ka/
ഖ	/kʰa/
ഗ	/ɡa/
ഘ	/ɡʱa/
ങ	/ŋa/
ച	/tʃa/
ഛ	/tʃʰa/
ജ	/ɟa/
ഝ	/ɟʱa/
ഞ	/ɲa/
ട	/ʈa/
ഠ	/ʈʰa/
ഡ	/ɖa/
ഢ	/ɖʱa/
ണ	/ɳa/
ത	/t̪a/
ഥ	/t̪ʰa/
ദ	/d̪a/
ധ	/d̪ʱa/
ന	/n̪a/; /na/	/n̪a/: used as default in the rules
ഩ	/na/	rare
പ	/pa/
ഫ	/pʰa/
ബ	/ba/
ഭ	/bʱa/
മ	/ma/
യ	/ja/
ര	/ɾa/
റ	/ra/
ല	/la/
ള	/ɭa/
ഴ	/ɻa/
വ	/ʋa/
ശ	/ʃa/
ഷ	/ʂa/
സ	/sa/
ഹ	/ha/
Consonant Grapheme		called chillaksharams, these characters don’t carry an inherent vowel (Panel 2018, 9)
ൺ	/ɳ/
ൻ	/n̪/
ർ	/r/
ൽ	/l/
ൾ	/ɭ/
ൿ	/k/
Vowel Grapheme (word-initial)
അ	/a/
ആ	/aː/
ഇ	/i/
ഈ	/iː/
എ	/e/
ഏ	/eː/
ഉ	/u/
ഊ	/uː/
ഐ	/ai/
ഒ	/o/
ഓ	/oː/
ഔ	/au/
Diacritic
ാ	/aː/
ി	/i/
ീ	/iː/
െ	/e/
േ	/eː/
ു	/u/
ൂ	/uː/
ൈ	/ai/
ൊ	/o/
ോ	/oː/
ൌ; ൗ	/au/
്	∅; /u/	called a virama, this diacritic either removes the inherent vowel or reduces word-final /u/ to [ə] (“Malayalam,” n.d., 2)
ം; ൦	/m/	called an anusvara(m), this character follows a vowel, often resulting in assimilation to the following consonant (Panel 2018, 9)
ഃ	/h/	called a visarga(m), this character follows a vowel (ibid.)

Syllable Structure

• Syllables in Malayalam follow the order of (C)(C)(C)V(V)(C) (Jiang 2010, 24).

Lenition Rules

• Voiceless stops become voiced intervocalically (Jiang 2010, 22).

Misc. Rules

• Nasals and lateral approximants are unreleased word-finally (Jiang 2010, 22).

References

Jiang, Haowen. 2010. Malayalam: A Grammatical Sketch and Text. Rice University.

“Malayalam.” n.d.

Panel, Neo-Brhmi Generation. 2018. “Proposal for a Malayalam Script Root Zone Label Generation Ruleset (Lgr).”

Swenson, Amanda. 2016. “A Temporal Semantics for Malayalam Conjunctive Participle Constructions.” In.