Rotokas language
Rotokas is a North Bougainville language spoken by about 4,320 people on Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea. Central Rotokas is most notable for its extremely small phonemic consonantal inventory, which lacks phonemic nasals. DialectsAccording to Allen and Hurd (1963), there are three identified dialects: Central Rotokas ("Rotokas Proper"), Aita Rotokas, and Pipipaia; with a further dialect spoken in Atsilima (Atsinima) village with an unclear status.[3] PhonologyThe Central dialect of Rotokas possesses one of the world's smallest phonemic consonantal inventories.[4]: 271 Central Rotokas has a vowel length distinction between long and short,[4]: 273 but otherwise lacks distinctive suprasegmental features such as tone, and probably stress.[5] ConsonantsWhereas Central Rotokas has only six consonantal phonemes, Aita Rotokas has nine; Aita adds phonemic nasals (e.g. this example of a minimal pair, /buta/ 'time' vs. /muta/ 'taste'[6]: 208 ). The Central dialect's limited inventory likely arose by collapsing the phonemic distinction between nasals and non-nasals.[6]: 206 Nasals in Aita always correspond to voiced plosives in Central (e.g. "tree" is emaoto in Aita and ebaoto in Central[6]: 208 ), but voiced plosives in Central can correspond to either nasals or voiced plosives in Aita.[6]: 207 Central RotokasConsonants occur in three places of articulation: bilabial, alveolar, and velar, each with a voiced and an unvoiced variant.[6]: 207 The three voiced phonemes each have wide allophonic variation, with the allophonic sets [β, b, m], [ɾ, n, l, d], and [ɡ, ɣ, ŋ].[4]: 274 This makes the choice of symbols for phonemes somewhat arbitrary.[6]: 207 Nasals are rarely heard. They will sometimes be misused when speakers try to pronounce English words (e.g. "bye-bye" being pronounced [maemae]), or when trying to imitate a foreigner speaking Rotokas (even if they were not used by the foreigner).[4]: 274
Aita RotokasThe Aita dialect has nine consonant phonemes, with a three-way distinction required between voiced, voiceless, and nasal consonants.[6]: 207
VowelsVowels in the Central dialect may be long or short, but the Aita dialect seems to have no length distinction.[6]: 209
OrthographyThe Rotokas orthography uses 12 letters of the Latin alphabet, with no diacritics or ligatures. The letters are a, e, g, i, k, o, p, r, s, t, u and v. Long vowels are written as doubled. /t/ is written as s before i and t elsewhere and has also been written with an orthography based on the IPA symbols for its phonemes.[6]: 207 StressStress is probably not phonemic.[5] Words with 2 or 3 syllables are stressed on the initial syllable; those with 4 are stressed on the first and third; and those with 5 or more on the antepenultimate. This is complicated by long vowels, and there are exceptions to the third rule among some verb constructions.[7] Grammar
Typologically, Rotokas is a fairly typical verb-final language, with adjectives and demonstrative pronouns preceding the nouns they modify, and postpositions following. Although adverbs are fairly free in their ordering, they tend to precede the verb, as in the following example: osirei-toarei eye-MASC.DU avuka-va old-FEM.SG iava POST ururupa-vira closed-ADV tou-pa-si-veira be-PROG-2.DU.MASC-HAB The old woman's eyes are shut. VocabularySelected basic vocabulary items in Rotokas:[8]
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