Muna

Last Updated: 2020-07-01

COMPROMISED: Crúbadán seems to represent a different dialect possibly (apostrophes occur more often than what is dictated by the documentation and the uvular fricative is not represented). No additional information could be found to determine which dialect is represented, so I’m classifying this language as compromised

Background

Language Family: Austronesian / Malayo-Polynesian / Western Malayo-Polynesian / Sulawesi / Muna-Buton / Muna

• Muna is spoken throughout the Muna and Buton islands, located in the Philippines.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Stops	p b ɓ	d̪	t d	k ɡ
Stops (prenasalized)	ᵐp ᵐb		ⁿt ⁿd	ᵑk ᵑɡ
Fricatives	f		s ⁿs		ʁ	h
Nasals	m		n	ŋ
Trills			r
Approximants	w		l
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced. The bilabial stops are ordered voiceless, voiced, and implosive. The alveolar fricatives are both voiceless, but the one on the right is prenasalized.

Vowels

• Vowel sequences are interpreted as such, rather than complex nuclei (Berg 1989, 139:25).
  • Sequences of like vowels also occur in the language. The may be realized phonetically long as a result of stress patterns, but they are not phonemic (Berg 1989, 139:26).
  • Although rare, sequences of three vowels also occur. An optional glottal stop (sometimes marked as an apostrophe) may be epenthesized between the first two vowels (Berg 1989, 139:27).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	ɛ		ɔ
Low		a

Alphabet

• ⟨j⟩ is often used in Indonesian loanwords (Berg 1989, 139:18). Realization varies widely between [d̪], [ɟ], and [dʒ].

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
b	/b/
d	/d/
e	/ɛ/
f	/f/
g	/ɡ/
h	/h/
i	/i/
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/ɔ/
p	/p/
r	/r/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
w	/w/
Multigraph
mp	/ᵐp/
mb	/ᵐb/
bh	/ɓ/
dh	/d̪/
gh	/ʁ/	not represented in the Crúbadán corpus
nt	/ⁿt/
nd	/ⁿd/
ns	/ⁿs/
ng	/ŋ/
ngk	/ᵑk/
ngg	/ᵑɡ/

Syllable Structure

• Syllables in Muna follow the order of (C)V (Berg 1989, 139:24).

Misc. Rules

• Just like other Austronesian languages, Muna underwent the loss of final consonants, resulting in the syllable structure it has today (Blevins 2004, 208, 210).
• /w/ is often realized as the labio-dental approximant [ʋ], especially preceding /a/, /ɛ/, and /ɔ/ (Berg 1989, 139:17).
• /w/ varies freely with [β] preceding /u/ (Berg 1989, 139:18).
• /d/ may be realized as an implosive mainly preceding /a/, /i/, and /ɛ/ (Berg 1989, 139:19).
• /k/ and /ɡ/ are fronted preceding front vowels and backed preceding back vowels (Berg 1989, 139:19–20).
• /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are realized as [e] and [o] when adjacent to another vowel (Berg 1989, 139:21).
• Glottal stops may be epenthesized word-initially preceding vowels (Berg 1989, 139:21).

References

Berg, René van den. 1989. A Grammar of the Muna Language. Vol. 139. Verhandelingen van Het Koninklijk Instituut Voor Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde. Dordrecht: Foris.

Blevins, Juliette. 2004. “The Mystery of Austronesian Final Consonant Loss.” Oceanic Linguistics 43 (1). Project Muse: 208–13. doi:10.1353/ol.2004.0003.