Central Rotokas is most notable for its extremely small phonemic consonantal inventory, which lacks phonemic nasals.
Dialects
According to Allen and Hurd (1963), there are three identified dialects: Central Rotokas ("Rotokas Proper"), Aita Rotokas, and Pipipaia; with a further dialect spoken in Atsilima (Atsinima) village with an unclear status.[3]
Phonology
The Central dialect of Rotokas possesses one of the world's smallest phonemic consonantal inventories.[4]:271 Central Rotokas has a vowel length distinction between long and short,[4]:273 but otherwise lacks distinctive suprasegmental features such as tone, and probably stress.[5]
Consonants
Whereas Central Rotokas has only six consonantal phonemes, Aita Rotokas has nine; Aita adds phonemic nasals (e.g. this example of a minimal pair, /buta/'time' vs. /muta/'taste'[6]:208). The Central dialect's limited inventory likely arose by collapsing the phonemic distinction between nasals and non-nasals.[6]:206
Nasals in Aita always correspond to voiced plosives in Central (e.g. "tree" is emaoto in Aita and ebaoto in Central[6]:208), but voiced plosives in Central can correspond to either nasals or voiced plosives in Aita.[6]:207
Central Rotokas
Consonants occur in three places of articulation: bilabial, alveolar, and velar, each with a voiced and an unvoiced variant.[6]:207 The three voiced phonemes each have wide allophonic variation, with the allophonic sets [β,b,m], [ɾ,n,l,d], and [ɡ,ɣ,ŋ].[4]:274 This makes the choice of symbols for phonemes somewhat arbitrary.[6]:207
Nasals are rarely heard. They will sometimes be misused when speakers try to pronounce English words (e.g. "bye-bye" being pronounced [maemae]), or when trying to imitate a foreigner speaking Rotokas (even if they were not used by the foreigner).[4]:274
In the 1960s, /t/ was described as being [ts]~[s] before /i/.[4]:274 Later research in the 2000s found this to no longer be true, possibly due to widespread bilingualism with Tok Pisin.[6]:207
Aita Rotokas
The Aita dialect has nine consonant phonemes, with a three-way distinction required between voiced, voiceless, and nasal consonants.[6]:207
The Rotokas orthography uses 12 letters of the Latin alphabet, with no diacritics or ligatures. The letters are a, e, g, i, k, o, p, r, s, t, u and v. Long vowels are written as doubled. /t/ is written as s before i and t elsewhere and has also been written with an orthography based on the IPA symbols for its phonemes.[6]:207
Stress
Stress is probably not phonemic.[5] Words with 2 or 3 syllables are stressed on the initial syllable; those with 4 are stressed on the first and third; and those with 5 or more on the antepenultimate. This is complicated by long vowels, and there are exceptions to the third rule among some verb constructions.[7]
Grammar
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (January 2025)
Typologically, Rotokas is a fairly typical verb-final language, with adjectives and demonstrative pronouns preceding the nouns they modify, and postpositions following. Although adverbs are fairly free in their ordering, they tend to precede the verb, as in the following example:
Vo tuariri rovoaia Pauto vuvuiua ora rasito pura-rovoreva. Vo osia rasito raga toureva, uva viapau oavu avuvai. Oire Pauto urauraaro tuepaepa aue ivaraia uukovi. Vara rutuia rupa toupaiva. Oa iava Pauto oisio puraroepa, Aviavia rorove. Oire aviavia rorova.
In the beginning God created heaven and earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep water. The spirit of God was hovering over the water. Then God said, "Let there be light!" So there was light.
↑ Firchow, Irwin B.; Firchow, Jacqueline; Akoitai, David (1973). Vocabulary of Rotokas--Pidgin--English. The Long Now Foundation. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
