Ghayavi, or Boianaki, is an Austronesian language of the eastern Papua New Guinean mainland.
| 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 |
Phonology
editThe 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'.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Labiodental | Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | Voice | b | d | k kw | ||
| Voiceless | p | t ɾ | g gw | |||
| Fricative | Voice | v | v | ɣ | ||
| Voiceless | f | s | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||
| Approximant | w | j |
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Open | a |
External links
edit- Materials on Ghayavi are included in the open access Arthur Capell collections (AC2) held by Paradisec.
References
edit- ^ Ghayavi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Lynch, John, Malcolm Ross, and Terry Crowley. 2011. The Oceanic Languages. Abingdon: Routledge.
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