Nabak

Last Updated: 2019-11-19

Background

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

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

Phonology

Consonants

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

Vowels

• Vowel sequences are interpreted as such, never as complex nuclei (E. Fabian and Fabian 1971, 8).

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

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
â	/ɔ/
b	/b/
d	/d/
e	/e/
g	/ɡ/
i	/i/
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
ŋ	/ŋ/
o	/o/
p	/p/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
w	/w/
y	/j/
z	/z/
Digraph
gw	/ɡʷ/
kw	/kʷ/

Syllable Structure

• Syllables in Nabak have the following structures (E. Fabian and Fabian 1998, 3):
  • V
  • VC
  • CV
  • CVC
  • C (see note below)
• Syllabic nasals are present in Nabak (E. Fabian and Fabian 1971, 5); however, in word-initial and word-medial positions, most speakers insert a vowel between it and the following consonant.

Lenition Rules

• /ɡ/ spirantizes to [ɣ] between like vowels (E. Fabian and Fabian 1998, 3).

Misc. Rules

• /s/ and /z/ vary freely with [ts] and [dz], respectively (E. Fabian and Fabian 1998, 3).
• /kʷ/ and /ɡʷ/ vary freely with [kp] and [gb], respectively (ibid.).
• /l/ varies freely with [r] word-medially (ibid.).
• /w/ varies freely with [v] (ibid.).
• ⟨kw⟩ and ⟨gw⟩ are always realized as /kʷ/ and /ɡʷ/ as such sequences do not occur across syllable boundaries (E. Fabian and Fabian 1971, 7).

References

Fabian, Edmund, and Grace Fabian. 1971. “Nabak Phonemic Statement.”

———. 1998. “Nabak Organised Phonology Data.”