Yupik sound system

Consonants
Central Yup’ik Consonants:

b, c ~, d, g, gg , j , jj , k, l , ll , m,  (voiceless m), n (alveolar), ń (voiceless n), ng , ńg (voiceless ŋ), p, q , r , rr , s , ss , t (alveolar), û , v ~, vv , w , y , z ~, ’ (gemination of preceding consonant)

Vowels
Yupik languages have five vowels: 'a', 'æ', 'i', 'ɒ', 'u' and schwa. They have from 13 to 27 consonants.

Central Yup’ik Vowels:

a, aa, æ, e (ə) (schwa), i, ii, o, oo , u, uu

(In proximity to the uvular consonants 'q', 'r' or 'rr', the vowel is pronounced, and  is pronounced .)

Syllable
Yup'ik verbs always begin with a root morpheme like "kaig"- to be hungry and always end with a pronoun. Yupik is a polysynthetic language that can have analytic alternatives; speakers can express similar ideas in a series of words with a number of bound morphemes.

Stress
The stress pattern of Central Siberian and Central Alaskan is generally iambic where stress occurs on the second syllable of each two-syllable metrical foot. This can be seen in words consisting of light (L) syllables. Here the parsing of syllables into feet is represented with parentheses:


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 * (L'L)L || qayáni || || (qa.yá).ni || "his own kayak"
 * }

As can be seen above, the footing of a Yupik word starts from the left edge of the word. (Therefore, a foot parsing of L(L'L)(L'L) is not permitted.) And syllables that cannot be parsed into feet in words with an odd number of syllables are not stressed. (Thus, a parsing of (L'L)('L) is impossible.)

Additionally, heavy (H) syllables (consisting of two moras) are obligatorily stressed:


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 * (L'H)L || qayá:ni || || (qa.yá:).ni || "in another's kayak"
 * }

However, there is a restriction against stress falling on the final syllable of a phrase.


 * (L'L)(L'L) (phrase-internal)
 * (L'L)LL (phrase-final)

Stressed syllables undergo phonetic lengthening in Yupik although the details differ from dialect to dialect. Generally, a foot consisting of light CV syllables will have the stressed vowel at a greater length than the unstressed vowel. This can be analyzed as light syllables changing to heavy under stress:


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(qayá:)ni || → || (L'H)L [qayá:ni] [(qa.yá:).ni] || "in another's kayak" saguyá:ni || → || (L'H)('H)L [sagú:yá:ni] [(sa.gú:).(yá:).ni] || "in another's drum"
 * - style="vertical-align: top;"
 * (L'L)L
 * - style="vertical-align: top;"
 * (L'L)('H)L
 * }

Both Central Siberian and Central Alaskan Yup'ik show this iambic lengthening of light syllables.

When the stressed syllable is underlyingly heavy (e.g. LHL)), there is dialectal variation. The Chaplinski variety of Central Siberian Yupik shows no extra lengthening of the already long vowel – in other words, the heavy syllables remain heavy (no change). The St. Lawrence variety of Central Siberian Yupik has further iambic overlengthening resulting in a change from underlying heavy to a phonetically superheavy syllable (S). In these cases, Central Alaskan Yup'ik changes the first light syllable in what would be a (LH) foot to a heavy syllable which then receives stress. The light to heavy shift is realized as consonant gemination (of the onset) in CV syllables and as consonantal lengthening of the coda in CVC syllables:

Note that in the Chaplinski variety because of iambic lengthening there is a neutralization of vowel length contrast in nonfinal stressed syllables.