Gapapaiwa

Last-updated: 2020-02-06

Background

Language family: Austronesian / Malayo-Polynesian / Central-Eastern / Eastern Malayo-Polynesian / Oceanic / Western Oceanic / Papuan Tip / Nuclean / North Papuan Mainland-D’Entrecasteaux / Are-Taupota / Are

• Gapapaiwa is spoken in the Milne Bay province of Papua New Guinea.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Stops (plain)	p b	t d		k ɡ
Stops (labialized)				kʷ ɡʷ
Fricatives	v	s		ɣ
Nasals	m	n
Flaps		ɾ
Approximants	w		j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

• E. McGuckin and McGuckin (2008) describe /ɨ/ more accurately as a glide from /ɨ/ to /i/ (p. 5).
  • /ɨ/ is not as fully distributed compared to the other vowels: it is not found word-initially, following approximants, or in closed syllables.
  • McGuckin (2001) explains that the contrast between /i/ and /ɨ/ may be or may be becoming lost (p. 299). This is probably why McGuckin (2011) doesn’t include it as a phoneme and rather as a phonetic realization (p. 2). I, however, have chosen to include it below.
• /ε/ can also be realized as [e]; the realization of /ε/ seems to vary by speaker (ibid.).

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

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
b	/b/
d	/d/
e	/ε/
g	/ɡ/
i	/i/
k	/k/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
p	/p/
r	/ɾ/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
v	/v/
w	/w/
y	/j/
Digraph
gh	/ɣ/
ii	/ɨ/
gw	/ɡʷ/
kw	/kʷ/

Syllable Structure

• Syllables in Gapapaiwa follow the order of (C)V(V)(C) (E. McGuckin and McGuckin 2008, 7).
  • Only /m/, /n/, and /s/ can appear syllable-finally.

Lenition Rules

• /ɾ/ may be realized as [l] (McGuckin 2001, 297).
• /p/ may be realized as a bilabial fricative (ibid.).

References

McGuckin, Catherine. 2001. “The Oceanic Languages.” In, edited by John Lynch, Terry Crowley, and Malcolm D. Ross, 297–321. Taylor & Francis Ltd.

———. 2011. “Gapapaiwa Reduplication: A Phonological Analysis Using Optimality Theory.” GIAL Electronic Notes Series.

McGuckin, Ed, and Catherine McGuckin. 2008. “Gapapaiwa Organised Phonology Data.” SIL.