Phonology and Orthography
- Consonants
| Bi-labial | Dental | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless stop | , p | , t | , k | |
| Voiced stop | , b | , d | , q | |
| Voiceless fricative | , s | , h | ||
| Voiced fricative | , v | , z | , g | |
| Nasal | , m | , n | , ng | |
| Lateral | , l | |||
| Trill | , r |
- in left-side = sound (IPA), right-side = orthography
The Roviana alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet and consists of the above letters.
allophones: ~ / V_V → /huhuβe/ ‘bathing’
~ / _V → /ŋiɾa/ ‘strong’
/r/ is lightly trilled in unstressed syllables and strongly trilled in stressed syllables.
- Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |||
| Medium | e | o | |||
| Low | a |
V -> V: / stressed Vs
V -> Ṽ / _N
~ / _V → /leana/
- Phonotactics
(C)V
( C represents a single consonant and V represents a monophthong or diphthong. )
Diphthongs
There are five diphthongs; /ei/, /ai/, /ae/, /au/, and /oi/
The majority of lexical morphemes consist of two or three syllables. Lexical morphemes consisting of four syllables or a single syllable are uncommon whereas morphemes consisting of more than four syllables have never occurred.
- Stress
Stress is not contrastive.
(i) Roots of one syllable, with the exception of prepositions and articles;
/ˈla/ ‘go’, /ˈmae/ ‘come’
(ii) Roots of two syllables are stressed on the initial syllables;
/ˈzama/ ‘talk’, /ˈtalo/ ‘taro’
(iii) Roots of more than two syllables are stressed on the first and second syllables;
/ˈeˈhara/ ‘blood’, /ˈsiˈɡareti/ ‘cigarette’
The nominalising infix ⟨in⟩ occurs within the first syllable of the root, it always receives stress;
/ˈɣani/ ‘eat’, /ˈɣiˈnani/ ‘food’
All material which precedes the root (prefixes and reduplicated material) is assigned stress as if it were a single root;
/ˈβari-ˈpera/ ‘fight’, /ˈhabo-ˈhabotu-ana/ ‘chair’
The transitive suffix /-i/ takes stress;
/ˈseke-ˈi-a/ ‘hit him/her/it’
Other suffixes, however, do not take stress and are ignored in determining the placement of stress. Material following the root is not treated as a unit for the purpose of stress assignment;
/ˈdoɣoˈr-i-ɣami/ ‘see us (EXClusive)’
The suffix /-ɣami/ does not receive stress.
Stress is assigned independently to each root in a compound:
/βetu/ + /lotu/ → /ˈβetuˈlotu/ ‘church (‘pray’ + ‘house’)’
Read more about this topic: Roviana Language