Selkup phonology

There are 25 vowel and 16 consonant phonemes in the Taz dialect.


 * Voicing is not phonemic. Stops and fricatives may be voiced between vowels or after sonorant consonants.
 * The palatalized stop and fricative, are most typically rendered as an alveolo-palatal affricate  and fricative.
 * Before front vowels, palatalized varieties of other consonants are also found.
 * and are allophones of  when occurring before nasals and liquids, respectively.
 * The non-coronal stops, , have optional fricative allophones , ,  when occurring before  or.


 * Vowel length is phonemic. alone, deriving from proto-Selkup, has no short counterpart.
 * The tenseness contrast, an innovation of northern Selkup, is independent of length (e.g. all contrast).
 * The full range of vowel quality contrasts is only possible in the initial syllable of a word: in later syllables, of either length do not occur, nor does long . (Shown on a darker gray background.)
 * The non-phonemic lax central vowel only occurs in unstressed non-first syllables; it is normally treated equivalent with short tense.

Selkup has a syllable structure (C)V(C). Word-initial and word-final  or  do not occur. Various consonant clusters and geminate consonants such as may occur, though many potential combinations occurring morphologically are simplified.

Stress in Selkup is marginally phonemic. Generally the rightmost long vowel in a word is stressed, or otherwise the first syllable, but certain suffixes with short vowels may acquire stress, leading to minimal pairs such as "to stamp down" vs. "to stamp once".