Last updated: 2019-11-08
Background
Language family: East Papuan / Yele-Solomons-New Britain / New Britain / Wasi
Note: The classification of Pele-Ata carries some controversy. Campbell (2017) classifies it as a language isolate, stating that similarities among such languages within the (tentative) family are far too small to warrant any genealogical relation (also noted in Campbell 2010, 6–7).
Pele-Ata is spoken in the East and West New Britain provinces of Papua New Guinea.
Phonology
Consonants
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Place of Articulation
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Manner of Articulation
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Labial
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Alveolar
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Velar
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Glottal
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Stops
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p
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t
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k
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ʔ
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Fricatives
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β
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s
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x
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|
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Nasals
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m
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n
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ŋ
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|
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Approximants
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l
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|
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Vowels
- Vowel length is phonemic in Pele-Ata (C. Hashimoto, Hashimoto, and Kume 2003, 2). Long vowels are indicated by duplicate graphemes.
- Pele-Ata has a large number of possible diphthongs, which, depending on the syllable structure, can be interpreted as either complex nuclei or sequences of vowels (C. Hashimoto, Hashimoto, and Kume 2003, 3). Thus, they will not be transcribed in the rules.
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Front
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Back
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High
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i
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u
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Mid
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ɛ
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o
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Low
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ɑ
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Alphabet
- Orthographically, ⟨w⟩ and ⟨j⟩ are sometimes used to represent /u/ and /i/ respectively, which will be transcribed as such in the rules (C. Hashimoto, Hashimoto, and Kume 2003, 3).
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Grapheme
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Phoneme
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a
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/ɑ/
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e
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/ɛ/
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i
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/i/
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k
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/k/
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l
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/l/
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m
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/m/
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n
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/n/
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o
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/o/
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p
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/p/
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s
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/s/
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t
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/t/
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u
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/u/
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v
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/β/
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x
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/x/
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’
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/ʔ/
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Digraph
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ng
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/ŋ/
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Syllable Structure
- Syllables in Pele-Ata consist of the following structures (C. Hashimoto, Hashimoto, and Kume 2003, 3):
Lenition Rules
- /x/ becomes voiced intervocalically (C. Hashimoto, Hashimoto, and Kume 2003, 3).
Misc. Rules
- /s/ is palatalized preceding /i/ (C. Hashimoto, Hashimoto, and Kume 2003, 3).
- /i/ and /u/ become [j] and [w] word-initially preceding /o/ and /ɑ/ (C. Hashimoto, Hashimoto, and Kume 2003, 3).
- Epenthetic [j] and [w] are inserted intervocalically (agreeing with the first vowel), in the sequences /io/, /iɑ/, /uo/, and /uɑ/ (ibid.).
References
Campbell, Lyle. 2010. “Language Isolates and Their History, or, What’s Weird, Anyway?” In Proceedings of the Thirty Sixth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.
———, ed. 2017. Language Isolates. First edition. Routledge Language Family Series. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York: Routledge.
Hashimoto, Chiyoko, Kazuo Hashimoto, and Nozomi Kume. 2003. “Ata Organised Phonology Data.”