Ankave

Last Updated: 2020-06-24

Background

Language Family: Trans-New Guinea / Main Section / Central and Western / Angan / Angan Proper

• Also referred to as Angave, this language is spoken in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops (plain)	p	t		k	ʔ
Stops (prenasalized)	ᵐb	ⁿd		ᵑɡ
Affricates (prenasalized)		ⁿdz
Fricatives		s		x
Nasals	m	n		ŋ
Flaps		ɾ
Approximants			j	w

Vowels

• Speece (1992) transcribes ⟨ɨ⟩ as /ə/; however, it is not a true schwa, as some words only contain the one such vowel. Therefore, we have chosen to represent it as /ɘ/.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e	ɘ	o
Low		a

Alphabet

Note: ⟨v⟩ appears in Crúbadán only within “Ankave”. Our guess is that it acts similarly to other languages in the Trans-New Guinea family, such that it varies freely with [w]. However, we have not yet found evidence to support this.

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
b	/ᵐb/
d	/ⁿd/
e	/e/
g	/ᵑɡ/
i	/i/
ɨ	/ɘ/
j	/ⁿdz/
k	/k/
x	/x/
m	/m/
n	/n/
ŋ	/ŋ/
o	/o/
p	/p/
r	/ɾ/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
w	/w/
y	/j/
’	/ʔ/

Syllable Structure

• Ankave syllables include the following structures (Speece 1992, 3):

  • VV
  • VC
  • CV
  • CVV
  • CVVV

Lenition Rules

• When preceded by voicing, stops become fricatives (Speece 1988, 37–38).
• /p/ may spirantize at a word boundary (Speece 1988, 45–46).
• When word-initial /ᵐb/ becomes word-medial (i.e., through prefixation), it weakens to [β] (Speece 1988, 46).

Misc. Rules

• Vowels may be followed optionally by a glottal stop (Speece 1992, 3).

References

Speece, R. 1988. “Phonological Processes Affecting Segments in Angave.” In Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, 1–139.

———. 1992. “Angave Organised Phonology Data.” SIL Langauge and Culture Archives.