Background

Language Family: Austronesian / Malayo-Polynesian / Central-Eastern / Eastern Malayo-Polynesian / Oceanic / Western Oceanic / North New Guinea / Huon Gulf / South / Hote-Buang / Buang

Mapos Buang, also referred to as Central Buang, is spoken in the Morobe province of Papua New Guinea.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Bilabial	Dental	Palatal	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Labiovelar	Uvular
Stops	p ᵐb	t̪ ⁿd̪				k ᵑɡ	kʷ ᵑɡʷ	q ᶰɢ
Affricates			tʃ ⁿdʒ
Fricatives	β					ɣ		ʁ
Nasals	m	n̪			ɲ	ŋ	ŋʷ	ɴ
Flaps				ɽ
Approximants		l̪			j		w
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

Vowel length is contrastive in Mapos Buang (Hooley 2006, 5–6). Long vowels are indicated by duplicate graphemes.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
High-Mid	e		o
Low-Mid	ɛ		ɔ
Low		a

Alphabet

In unstressed syllables, ⟨e⟩ represents [ə]; it is not contrastive with other vowels, generally manifesting in consonant sequences (Hooley 2006, 6). ⟨e⟩ also represents /ɛ/ and, for the purposes of this project, shouldn’t necessarily compromise the language. However, it seems that, based on the description provided in Hooley (2006), ⟨e⟩ represents a surface realization that may in some instances stem from nothing underlyingly. In the rules, I have transcribed ⟨e⟩ to /ɛ/ by default in all instances, but this may skew the representation of /ɛ/, such that it appears more frequently than it actually should.

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
b	/ᵐb/
d	/ⁿd̪/
e	/ɛ/
ë	/e/
g	/ᵑɡ/
ġ	/ᶰɢ/
h	/ʁ/
i	/i/
j	/ⁿdʒ/
k	/k/
ḳ	/q/
l	/l̪/
m	/m/
n	/n̪/
ö	/ɔ/
o	/o/
p	/p/
r	/ɽ/
s	/tʃ/
t	/t̪/
u	/u/
v	/β/
w	/w/
y	/j/
Multigraph
kw	/kʷ/
gg	/ɣ/
gw	/ᵑɡʷ/
ng	/ŋ/
nġ	/ɴ/
ny	/ɲ/
ngw	/ŋʷ/

Misc. Rules

/ɽ/ may be realized by some speakers as [ɭ] (Hooley 2006, 4).
/l̪/ and /j/ may be realized with some frication (Hooley 2006, 4–5).

References

Hooley, Bruce Arthur. 2006. “Mapos Buang Dictionary.” Edited by Bruce Arthur Hooley.

Mapos Buang