Prefix toneme

In the Prefix Reform, prefixes are pronounced in a mid-level tone [˧] preceding the stress and tone-contour of the word they're attached to.

We can reanalyze this as a fifth toneme — a mid-flat tone that avoids stress and nullifies vowel length: jıa /ˈdʑiːa˥˩/ versus jīa /dʑɪa˧/.

This suggests a new way of writing prefixed words that makes prefixes more like clitics: instead of puchumtào, we write pū chūm tao, still pronounced [pʊ˧ t͡ɕʊm˧ ˈtaːw˥˩].

Some parts of speech "conjugate into" this toneme nicely, i.e. pu means the same as pū but has slightly different grammar. For other parts of speech, what was previously "prefixes existing in a different lexical space from roots" now corresponds to simply being a lexical tone: ge "stimulus" is unrelated to diminutive marker gē.

We may look at the neat symmetry in which focus markers behave when alternated between their inherent and this new :

luı	do	jí	súq	kú	tú	maoja
‘I have given you all the apples.’
luı	do	jí	súq	kū	tú	maoja
‘I have given you all the apples.’