Mountain Koiali

Last updated: 2020-02-07

Background

Language Family: Trans-New Guinea / Main Section / Eastern / Central and Southeastern / Koiarian / Koiaric

• Umanakaina is spoken in the Central province of Papua New Guinea.

Phonology

Consonants

• Rather than including /ɸ/ and /x/ (“Mt. Koiali Organised Phonology Data” 1981, 1), R. Garland and Garland (2008) and R. Garland and Garland (1975) use /v/ and /h/ respectively (p. 3; p. 416). I have chosen to stick with /ɸ/ and /x/ because R. Garland and Garland (2008) state that the use of /v/ and /h/ merely makes for simpler phonemic symbolization. The descriptions of the phonemes later on in the paper are consistent with the use of /ɸ/ and /x/ rather than the alternative (pp. 6-7).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Velar
Stops	b	t d		k ɡ
Fricatives	ɸ		ʂ	x
Nasals	m	n
Approximants		l
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

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

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
b	/b/
d	/d/
e	/ɛ/
g	/ɡ/
h	/x/
i	/i/
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
s	/ʂ/
t	/t/
u	/u/
v	/ɸ/

Syllable Structure

• Syllables in Mountain Koiali follow the order of (C)V (R. Garland and Garland 2008, 17).

Lenition Rules

• Fricatives /ʂ/, /ɸ/, and /x/ become voiced word-medially (R. Garland and Garland 2008, 6–8).
• /ʂ/ varies freely with [ɾ] word-medially (R. Garland and Garland 2008, 8).

References

Garland, Roger, and Susan Garland. 1975. “A Grammar Sketch of Mountain Koiali.” In Studies in Languages of Central and South-East Papua, edited by Tom E. Dutton, 29:413–70. Pacific Linguistics: Series c. Canberra: Australian National University.

———. 2008. “Mt. Koiali Phonemics.” http://www.sil.org/pacific/png/abstract.asp?id=49878.

“Mt. Koiali Organised Phonology Data.” 1981.