Last Updated: 2020-01-17
Background
Language Family: Austronesian / Malayo-Polynesian / Western Malayo-Polynesian / Palauan
- Palauan is spoken in Palau, an archipelagic country off the coast of the Philippines.
Phonology
Consonants
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Place of Articulation
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Manner of Articulation
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Bilabial
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Alveolar
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Velar
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Glottal
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Stops
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b
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t d
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k
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ʔ
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Fricatives
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s
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Nasals
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m
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ŋ
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Taps
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ɾ
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Trills
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r
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Approximants
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l
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Note: Phonemes to the left of each cell are voiceless and phonemes to the right of each cell are voiced.
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Vowels
- /ə/ only appears in unstressed syllables, and consequently, it is not universally considered to be phonemic in Palauan (Josephs 1975, 22). It is interpreted as an allophone of /ɛ/, or a phonetic realization based on context (Carlson 1968, 36). It is represented by ⟨ȩ⟩ in the alphabet; however, this grapheme is not present in the Crúbadán corpus. Nonetheless, I have chosen to represent it in the rule set as /ɛ/.
- Vowel length is contrastive for non-central vowels. Long front vowels glide into [j], while long back vowels glide into [w] (Josephs 1975, 25–26). Long vowels are represented by doubling the vowel character.
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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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ɛ
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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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Comment
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a
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/a/
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b
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/b/
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d
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/d/
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e
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/ɛ/
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ȩ
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/ɛ/
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realized as [ə]
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i
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/i/
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k
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/k/
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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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only in loanwords
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o
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/o/
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r
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/ɾ/
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s
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/s/
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t
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/t/
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u
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/u/
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Digraph
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ch
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/ʔ/
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ll
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/lː/
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ng
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/ŋ/
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rr
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/r/
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Lenition Rules
- Word-initial /d/ spirantizes to [ð], particularly in careful speech (Josephs 1975, 8).
- Intervocalic and word-final /d/ spirantize to [ð] (Josephs 1975, 9).
- /k/ voices to [ɡ] intervocalically (Josephs 1975, 10).
Misc. Rules
- When adjacent to another consonant - except /l/ - /b/ devoices to [p] (Josephs 1975, 6).
- Word-final voiceless stops aspirate (Josephs 1975, 7, 10).
- Word-initial preconsonantal /d/ devoices to [t]; this rule can also co-occur with the spirantization rule mentioned above, resulting in [θ] (Josephs 1975, 9).
- Epenthesis of [ʔ] occurs at the beginning of vowel-initial utterances (Josephs 1975, 11–12).
- /ŋ/ assimilates to the place of subsequent alveolar consonants (Josephs 1975, 13).
- Word-initial preconsonantal sonorants are syllabic, except in the word ⟨mlai⟩ (Josephs 1975, 17–18).
- Epenthesis of [ə] occurs after word-final consonant clusters (Josephs 1975, 24).
- In vowel clusters, unstressed vowels turn to glides in various contexts (Josephs 1975, 27–28).
References
Carlson, Clayton Harold. 1968. “Palauan: Phonology.” Master’s thesis, University of Hawaii.
Josephs, Lewis S. 1975. Palauan Reference Grammar. University of Hawai’i Press.