South Tairora

Last Updated: 2019-07-19

Background

Language Family: Trans-New Guinea / Kainantu-Goroka / Kainantu / Tairora / South Tairora

• South Tairora is spoken in the Eastern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea.

Phonology

Consonants

• The contrast between /s/ and /h/ is minor, and is most clearly realized in loanwords (L. E. Vincent 2010, v).
• The palatalized consonants only occur in some dialects (A. Vincent 2003, 1).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Stops (plain)	p ᵐp	t ⁿt	k ᵑk	ʔ
Stops (palatalized)		tʲ ⁿtʲ	kʲ ᵑkʲ
Fricatives	β β̃	s		h
Nasals (plain)	m	n
Nasals (palatalized)		nʲ
Flaps		ɾ ɾ̃
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left of each cell are plain, and phonemes to the right of each cell are nasalized or prenasalized.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	ɛː	ɘ	ɔː
Low		aː

Diphthongs
/ɘj/, /ɘw/

Alphabet

• Note: /tʲ/ and /ⁿtʲ/ are not represented in the Crúbadán corpus.

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/ɘ/
e	/ɛː/
h	/h/
i	/i/
k	/k/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/ɔː/
p	/p/
q	/ʔ/
r	/ɾ/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
v	/β/
Multigraph
ai	/ɘj/
au	/ɘw/
aa	/aː/
ky	/kʲ/
mp	/ᵐp/
mw	/β̃/
nk	/ᵑk/
nky	/ᵑkʲ/
nr	/ɾ̃/
nt	/ⁿt/
nty	/ⁿtʲ/
ny	/nʲ/
ty	/tʲ/

Lenition Rules

• Prenasalization is often omitted in the Suwaira dialect (L. E. Vincent 2010, 578).
• /ᵐp/ and /ⁿt/ can be realized with voicing in the Suwaira dialect (L. E. Vincent 2010, 578).

Misc. Rules

• Word-initial /β/ is realized as [b] (L. E. Vincent 2010, 578).

References

Vincent, Alex. 2003. “Dialects of the Tairora Language of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.” SIL International.

Vincent, Lois E. 2010. Tairora-English Dictionary. Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc.