Tobati, or Yotafa, is an Austronesian language spoken in

Jayapura Jayapura (formerly Dutch: ''Hollandia'') is the capital and largest city of the Indonesian province of Papua. It is situated on the northern coast of New Guinea island and covers an area of . The city borders the Pacific Ocean and Yos Sudarso ...

Bay in Papua province, Indonesia. It was once thought to be a Papuan language. Notably, Tobati displays a very rare object–subject–verb word order. Crowley, Terry; Lynch, John; Ross, Malcolm (2002). The Oceanic Languages. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 186-88

Phonology

also shows allophony as . However, it does not behave as a stop (see

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). Tobati has a five-vowel system of / /, realized as / / in closed syllables.

Phonotactics

Tobati permits three consonants in the onset, and at most a single consonant or a nasal-stop cluster in the coda. Nasal-stop clusters only permit a nasal and a stop of the same

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. For the sequence, becomes dental []. Neither the bilabial, consisting of and the allophone , nor palatal nasal-stop clusters distinguish voice (i.e. they are and respectively). The sequence voices to .

References

{{Languages of Indonesia Languages of western New Guinea Sarmi–Jayapura languages