Editing Koasati language (section)

===Vowels===
Koasati has three vowels, all of which occur as short and long and can be nasalized. The following chart is based on Kimball's work. Kimball describes what is normally the close-mid back vowel /o/ as "high back" vowel, hence its placement in the chart below.<ref>Geoffrey Kimball. 1991. Koasati Grammar. Reprinted in 1994 in: Koasati Grammar. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. p. 23.</ref> He notes that /o/ sometimes has the allophone [u] and is raised to [ʊ] in closed word-final syllables.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! rowspan=2 |
! colspan=3 | &nbsp;[[Vowel length|Short]]&nbsp;
! colspan=3 | &nbsp;[[Vowel length|Long]]&nbsp;
|-
! &nbsp;[[Front vowel|Front]]&nbsp;
! &nbsp;[[Central vowel|Central]]&nbsp;
! &nbsp;[[Back vowel|Back]]&nbsp;
! &nbsp;[[Front vowel|Front]]&nbsp;
! &nbsp;[[Central vowel|Central]]&nbsp;
! &nbsp;[[Back vowel|Back]]&nbsp;
|-
! align=center | &nbsp;'''[[High vowel|High]] (close)'''&nbsp;
| align=center | {{IPA link|i}}
| align=center | 
| align=center | {{IPA link|o}}
| align=center | {{IPA link|iː}}
| align=center | 
| align=center | {{IPA link|oː}}
|-
! align=center | &nbsp;'''[[Low vowel|Low]] (open)'''&nbsp;
| align=center | 
| align=center | {{IPA link|a}}
| align=center | 
| align=center | 
| align=center | {{IPA link|aː}}
| align=center | 
|}

In 2007, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana developed and approved its own [[Orthography|orthographic]] system.<ref>The Coushatta Alphabet. {{cite web |url=http://web.wm.edu/linguistics/coushatta/alphabet.php |title=The Coushatta Alphabet &#124; |access-date=2010-05-05 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100719110321/http://web.wm.edu/linguistics/coushatta/alphabet.php |archive-date=2010-07-19 }}</ref> In this system, long vowels are written by doubling the vowel (e.g., [aː] as ''aa''), and nasalized vowels are underlined (e.g., [õ] or [ǫ] as ''o̱'').

Vowel length in Koasati can be contrastive. For example, vowel length distinguishes meaning for ''palana'' "bean" and ''palaana'' "plate", as well as ''choba'' "big" and ''chooba'' "horse". Vowel nasalization most often occurs word-finally as a phrase-terminal marker. In Koasati, the end of a phrase is basically marked by either deletion of the final unaccented vowel or the nasalization of the final vowel when deleting it would eliminate phonological information relevant to the phrase's meaning. For example, the final vowel in ''hopoonilaho̱'' "he/she will cook it" is nasalized instead of deleted, and therefore is distinguished from the more emphatic ''hopoonilaha̱'', where the [[irrealis mood|irrealis]] future suffix -''laha''- indicates that the action will certainly occur, whereas the irrealis future suffix -''laho''- does not provide such certainty.