Iduna is an
Austronesian language spoken on
Goodenough Island
Goodenough Island in the Solomon Sea, also known as Nidula Island, is the westernmost of the three large islands of the D'Entrecasteaux Islands in Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. It lies to the east of mainland New Guinea and southwest ...
of
Milne Bay Province
Milne Bay is a province of Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Alotau. The province covers 14,345 km² of land and 252,990 km² of sea, within the province there are more than 600 islands, about 160 of which are inhabited. The province has ...
of
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
Consonants
The inventory of the Iduna language consists of 14
consonant
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 wi ...
phonemes.
[.]
Voiced plosives generally contrast with their unvoiced counterparts, except for the bilabial series, where /b/ varies freely between
and
Moreover, the phoneme /g/ is commonly realized as
though for some speakers it may be pronounced as a voiced fricative
£without contrast. Finally, /t/ has also two
allophonic
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
realizations:
occurs word initially and word medially before
non-front vowels /a/, /o/ or /u/, whereas
only appears before
front vowels /i/ or /e/. Other minor allophonic realizations may occur. Among these variations only the last one is reflected in the orthography.
Vowels
There are 5
vowel
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 (leng ...
phonemes in Iduna.
Vowels have allophones too. The major allophonic variations are described in the following table. These include the double realization of /a/, which corresponds to
when found in stressed syllables, while it approximates
Œin unstressed environments, and the nasal allophonic variant of /u/.
The language also has 4
monomoraic diphthongs: /ai/, /au/, /ao/ and /oi/. These are distinguished from vowel sequences, which instead are bimoraic, e.g. the word ''giyauna''
i.jau.nʌ"he scrapes it" contrasts with ''giyauna''
i.ja.u.nʌ"he unties it".
Phonotactics
In Iduna
consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
s are forbidden, therefore there are only
open syllables of type V, CV and CVV. Also, the special kind of sequence CuV is generally interpreted as CÊ·V.
Writing system
The Iduna alphabet is shown in the following table:
Notes
References
*
*
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*
Nuclear Papuan Tip languages
Languages of Milne Bay Province
{{PapuanTip-lang-stub