Awara

Last Updated: 2020-04-13

COMPROMISED: conflation between /nd/, /mb/, /nɡ/ and /d/, /b/, /ɡ/, respectively

Background

Language Family: Trans-New Guinea / Main Section / Central and Western / Huon-Finisterre / Finisterre / Wantoat

• Awara is spoken in the Morobe province of Papua New Guinea.

Phonology

Consonants

• S. R. Quigley (2002) and E. C. Quigley (2003) disagree slightly on the consonant inventory of Awara (p. 4; p. 14); I have chosen to predominantly follow the more recent source.

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b	t d		k kʷ ɡ ɡʷ
Fricatives	β	s		ɣ	h
Nasals	m	n		ŋ ŋʷ
Approximants		l	j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced. Velar consonants that have the diacritic (ʷ) are labialized.

Vowels

• Both S. R. Quigley (2002) and E. C. Quigley (2003) indicate a mid central vowel (p. 4; p. 35, 37); however, they represent it as /ʌ/. I have chosen to use /ɘ/, as it’s more reflective of the description.

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

Alphabet

• Surface level prenasalization of consonants /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ is orthographically represented intervocalically (E. C. Quigley 2003, 155). This compromises the language because there is uncertainty whether the sequence ⟨ambi⟩, for example, always represents /abi/ (with an [ambi] realization) or /ambi/ in some instances. I have chosen to transcribe the language how it appears; that is, every ⟨mb⟩ sequence, for example, transcribes to /mb/.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
ä	/ɘ/
b	/b/
d	/d/
e	/e/
g	/ɡ/
h	/h/
i	/i/
k	/k/
l; r	/l/	intervocalically
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
p	/p/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
w	/β/
x	/ɣ/
y	/j/
Multigraph
gw	/ɡʷ/
kw	/kʷ/
ng	/ŋ/
ngw	/ŋʷ/

Syllable Structure

• Syllables in Awara follow the order of (C)V(C) (E. C. Quigley 2003, 175).

Lenition Rules

• Voiceless stops (including /kʷ/) lenite intervocalically at morpheme boundaries (E. C. Quigley 2003, 26).
• /t/ and /k/ may be realized as [l] and [ɣ] word-initially (E. C. Quigley 2003, 20–21).
• /k/, /p/, and /t/ are realized as [ɣ], [w], and [l] intervocalically (S. R. Quigley 2002, 6).
• /pu/ may be realized as [βu] or [wu] word-initially (E. C. Quigley 2003, 22).

Misc. Rules

• Voiced stops have prenasalized variants (E. C. Quigley 2003, 16–17).
  • Word-initially, they are realized as prenasalized consonants.
  • Syllable-initially, following open syllables, the homorganic nasal is realized as the coda of the preceding syllable and the voiced stop is realized as the onset of the following syllable.
• Voiceless stops tend to be aspirated word-initially and syllable-initially intervocalically (E. C. Quigley 2003, 17).
• Glottal stop epenthesis may occur word-initially, preceding vowels (E. C. Quigley 2003, 18).

References

Quigley, Edward C. 2003. “Awara Phonology.” Master’s thesis, University of North Dakota.

Quigley, Susan R. 2002. “The Awara Verbal System.” Master’s thesis, University of North Dakota.