Sikaritai (Sikwari) is a Lakes Plain language of Papua,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. It is named after ''Sikari'' village in Rafaer District,

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. Alternate names are ''Aikwakai, Araikurioko, Ati, Tori, Tori Aikwakai.'' It is spoken in Haya, Iri, and Sikari villages. Sikaritai, Obokuitai, and Eritai constitute a

dialect cluster A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated vari ...

Phonology

The following discussion is based on Martin (1991).

Consonants

This small consonant inventory is typical of

Lakes Plain languages The Lakes Plain languages are a family of Papuan languages, spoken in the Lakes Plain of Indonesian New Guinea. They are notable for being heavily tonal and for their lack of nasal consonants. Classification The Lakes Plain languages were tenta ...

. The complete lack of nasals is also a feature of these languages. There are however several notable

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 ''s ...

variants: * /d/ is realized as word-initially, between vowels or following another consonants, and as syllable-finally. * /k/ is realized as syllable-finally. When followed by a vowel, the sequence /ik/ is realized as a syllabic fricative . The sequence further varies with . * is in free variation with a glottal fricative . * /s/ is realized as following /k/. * /i/ before another vowel is realized as either a semivowel or an affricate (the latter when following /k/ or when between two low vowels ( or ).

Vowels

Sikaritai has six vowels. Many other Lakes Plain languages have developed a series of extra high "fricativized" vowels from the loss of a final consonant. In Sikaritai the final consonants have been retained; however, extra-high and appear as allophones of /i/ and /u/ before final /g/ and /d/. Martin postulates that Sikaritai is in the process of developing contrastive fricativized vowels as other Lakes Plain languages have done.

Tone

The language has a two-height tone system with H and L tone. More than one tonal element can appear on a single syllable.

Syllables

The syllable template is (C)(C)V(V)(C).

References

Central Lakes Plain languages Languages of western New Guinea {{papuan-lang-stub