Last updated: 2019-11-06
Background
Language Family: Trans-New Guinea / Madang-Adelbert Range / Madang / Mabuso / Hanseman
- Nobonob is spoken in the Madang province of Papua New Guinea.
Phonology
Consonants
- /r/ and /s/ appear only in loanwords (Aeschliman 1992, 4).
- Nobonob makes an interesting four way distinction between stops. That is, not only does it have the standard voiceless and voiced series, it also has a voiceless geminate series and a voiced implosive series (Aeschliman 1992, 1).
- Reesink (1987) states that prenasalized stops are present in the language, which is consistent with others within the language family (p. 12); however it seems that such consonants are very marginal. Also, given that other documentation on the matter could not be found, I have opted for the inventory described in Aeschliman (1992).
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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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Palatal
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Velar
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Glottal
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Stops (voiceless)
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p pː
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t tː
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k kː
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Stops (voiced)
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b ɓ
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d ɗ
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ɡ ɠ
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Fricatives
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h
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Nasals
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m
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n
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Approximants
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w
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l
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j
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Note: The voiceless stops are ordered plain and geminate and the voiced stops are ordered plain and implosive.
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Vowels
- Vowel length is contrastive in Nobonob (Aeschliman 1992, 4). Long vowels are indicated by repeated graphemes.
- Just like other Trans-New Guinea languages, Nobonob has an abundance of vowel sequences (Aeschliman 1992, 3). It is, however, unclear whether they are realized as complex phonemes or independent vowels. Therefore, they will not be transcribed in the rules.
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Front
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Central
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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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e
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o
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Low
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a
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Alphabet
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Grapheme
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Phoneme
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a
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a
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b
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b
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q
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ɓ
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d
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d
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ḏ
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ɗ
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e
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e
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g
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ɡ
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g̱
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ɠ
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h
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h
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i
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i
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k
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k
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ḵ
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kː
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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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p̱
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pː
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t
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t
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ṯ
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tː
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u
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u
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w
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w
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y
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j
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Lenition Rules
- Following a vowel or a nasal consonant, /ɓ/ debuccalizes (Aeschliman 1992, 3).
Misc. Rules
- /l/ is rounded preceding /u/ (Aeschliman 1992, 4).
- /ɗ/ is realized as [t̪ʰ] in some dialects (ibid.).
References
Aeschliman, Ulys. 1992. “Nobonob Organised Phonology Data.”
Reesink, Ger P. 1987. Structures and Their Functions in Usan: A Papuan Language of Papua New Guinea. Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS), v. 13. Amsterdam ; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.