Vowel reduction

[So Haleza Grise]

I have a 5-vowel phonology: with [a ~ ɑ], [ɛ], [i] [ɔ] [u] as the full, unreduced qualities in stressed syllables.

I had set a rule for vowel reduction in stressed syllables. I set the values of the unstressed equivalents as [ɐ] [ɪ] [ɪ] [ɘ] [ʊ].

But over time I have started to doubt myself. Is this a realistic set of reduced vowels? Would there be more conditioned variation in a natural language?

[hwhatting]

This looks somewhat like Russian, where unstressed /o/ and /a/ merge as [ɐ] or [ɘ], depending on the degree of reduction after unpalatalized consonants, and into [
i ] after palatalised consonants, unstressed /e/ and /i/ mostly merge into [ i ] after palatalised consonants and stay unchanged otherwise, and /u/ stays unchanged always. (This summary leaves out some details.)

[nebula wind phone]

You could add conditioned variation to this if you wanted. But unconditional reduction-with-mergers in unstressed syllables is totally a thing that happens in natural languages, and merging "adjacent" vowels like you have is the way it usually works. (Check out Catalan for another example if you want.) So yeah, this seems plenty realistic.

[zompist]

Note: I edited your post to make the IPA work. All I did was check "Disable BBCode". (The board was interpreting [i], [u] as "begin italics/underline"). I'll see about a better solution.

[Travis B.]

It took me a moment to realize where the fourth and fifth unreduced vowel qualities were; to write [i], [u], and [b] I have to put an empty [b][/b] in them.

(To me this is preferable over disabling BBCode as it won't break any quoting or intended formatting.)

[zompist]

I added a special BBCode, bk, to avoid this in the future. (You don't have to use it for all brackets, only for things that can be interpreted as BBCodes, like [i] [u].)

[bbbosborne]

depending on your consonants or personal preference you may have nasalization too. but either way it's fine

[So Haleza Grise]

I added a special BBCode, bk, to avoid this in the future. (You don't have to use it for all brackets, only for things that can be interpreted as BBCodes, like [i] [u].)

Thank you! I should have noticed but I was sleep deprived. And thank you everyone for the feedback.