Ghayavi | |
---|---|
Boianaki | |
Native to | Papua New Guinea |
Region | Milne Bay Province, tip of Cape Vogel |
Native speakers | 2,800 (2000 census)[1] |
Austronesian
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | bmk |
Glottolog | ghay1237 |
Ghayavi, or Boianaki, is an Austronesian language of the eastern Papua New Guinean mainland.
The phonology of Ghayavi is typical of most Oceanic languages[2] in that its phoneme inventory is characterised by a small number of phonemes and few complex articulations. Ghayavi has sixteen consonant phonemes, and thirteen vowel phonemes (including five diphthongs). Stress by default occurs on the penultimate syllable, although there are some examples of contrastive stress to encode semantic difference. One such minimal pair includes /kɑˈwam/ 'your mouth' and /ˈkɑwam/ 'your spouse'.
Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Labiodental | Velar | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plosive | Voice | b | d | k kw | ||
Voiceless | p | t ɾ | g gw | |||
Fricative | Voice | v | v | ɣ | ||
Voiceless | f | s | ||||
Nasal | m | n | ||||
Approximant | w | j |
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | i | u | |
Mid | e | o | |
Open | a |
Nuclear Papuan Tip |
| ||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Central Papuan Tip |
| ||||||||||||||
Other Papuan Tip |
|
Official languages | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Major Indigenous languages |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other Papuan languages |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sign languages |