Ghayavi language

Last updated
Ghayavi
Boianaki
Native to Papua New Guinea
Region Milne Bay Province, tip of Cape Vogel
Native speakers
2,800 (2000 census) [1]
Austronesian
Language codes
ISO 639-3 bmk
Glottolog ghay1237

Ghayavi, or Boianaki, is an Austronesian language of the eastern Papua New Guinean mainland.

Contents

Phonology

The phonology of Ghayavi is typical of most Oceanic languages [2] in that its phoneme inventory is characterised by a small number of phonemes and few complex articulations. Ghayavi has sixteen consonant phonemes, and thirteen vowel phonemes (including five diphthongs). Stress by default occurs on the penultimate syllable, although there are some examples of contrastive stress to encode semantic difference. One such minimal pair includes /kɑˈwam/ 'your mouth' and /ˈkɑwam/ 'your spouse'.

Ghayavi Consonant Inventory
BilabialAlveolarPalatalLabiodentalVelar
PlosiveVoicebdk kw
Voicelesspt ɾg gw
FricativeVoicevvɣ
Voicelessfs
Nasalmn
Approximantwj
Ghayavi Vowel Inventory
FrontCentralBack
Closeiu
Mideo
Opena

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References

  1. Ghayavi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. Lynch, John, Malcolm Ross, and Terry Crowley. 2011. The Oceanic Languages. Abingdon: Routledge.