Yil language

Yil is a Torricelli language of Papua New Guinea spoken in twelve villages in Sundaun province.

Yil
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Sandaun Province
Native speakers	2,500 (2000 census)
Language family	Torricelli Wapei Yil
Language codes
ISO 639-3	yll
Glottolog	yill1241
ELP	Yil

Phonology

This section follows Martens and Tuominen (1977). Yil has a small inventory of ten consonants:

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar
Stop	p	t	k
Fricative		s	ɣ
Nasal	m	n	ŋ
Trill		r
Lateral		l

And seven vowels:

	Front		Central	Back
	unrounded	rounded
Close	i	y	ə~ɵ	u
Mid	ɛ~æ			o
Open			a

In addition there are the diphthongs /ai̯ au̯ ay̯ ei̯/. /i u/ have non-syllabic allophones [j w~β] in onset or coda position. /ɣ/ is devoiced to [x] word-finally, e.g. /uəmaɣ/ [wəmax] 'hawk'.

Phonotactics

Maximum syllable structure is (C) (C) V (C) (C). Syllables with two-consonant codas only occur word-finally. Distribution of phonemes in different syllable types is shown in the table below.

Syllable type	Phoneme distribution	Example(s)
V	Any vowels may occur	/i/ "I"
CV	Any consonant or vowel may occur	/ni/ "water"
CVC		/sak/ "pig"
VC	V: /i ə o ɛ a/ C: /p s m n ŋ l r u i/	/an/ "he" /ar/ "she"
C₁C₂VC₃	C₁: /p t k/ C₂: /r/ V: /u o a/ C₃: /p k r/	/prok/ "quickly" /trok/ "thigh" /krup/ "white bird"
C₁VC₂C₃	C₁: any consonant may occur V: /u o a/ C₂: /ɣ m n ŋ l r/ C₃: /p t k ɣ r/	/lank/ "night" /nakalp/ "back of house" /namaŋalk/ "bird"
VC₁C₂	Rarely observed	/ark/ "termite"
*C₁C₂VC₃C₄	Not observed

Stress usually falls on the first syllable, although it is contrastive in some verb forms, e.g. /əˈŋati/ "I bury a man" vs. /ˈəŋati/ "I hurry"

External links

• Paradisec has a collection of Don Laycock's (DL2) that includes Yil language materials.