Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non- Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly ge ...
spoken in
Eastern Highlands Province
Eastern Highlands is a highlands province of Papua New Guinea. The provincial capital is Goroka. The province covers an area of 11,157 km², and has a population of 579,825 (2011 census). The province shares a common administrative boundary w ...
,
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
.
Phonology
Gimi has 5
vowels
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...
and 12
consonants
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
.Gimi Organised Phonology Data. anuscript /ref> It has
voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies ...
and
voiced
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refer ...
glottal consonants where related languages have and . The voiceless glottal is simply a
glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
. The voiced consonant behaves phonologically like a glottal stop, but does not have full closure. Phonetically it is a
creaky-voiced glottal approximant
The creaky-voiced glottal approximant is a consonant sound in some languages. In the IPA, it is transcribed as or . It involves tension in the glottis and diminution of airflow, compared to surrounding vowels, but not full occlusion.
Features
...
.
Vowels
Consonants
Allophony
occurs word initially only in
loanwords
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
.
can surface as either or in
free variation
In linguistics, free variation is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers.
Sociolinguists argue that describing such ...
.
becomes before .
and tend to fluctuate with one another word initially.
Syllables
The syllable structure is (C)V(G), where G is either or .
Tone
The final vowel of a word takes either a level or falling tone. The falling tone is written with an
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ...
.
Orthography
Gimi uses the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...