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Ghayavi
Boianaki
Native to Papua New Guinea
Region Milne Bay Province, tip of Cape Vogel
Native speakers
2,800 (2000 census) [1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 bmk
Glottolog ghay1237

Ghayavi, or Boianaki, is an Austronesian language of the eastern Papua New Guinean mainland.

Phonology

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'.

Ghayavi Consonant Inventory
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
Ghayavi Vowel Inventory
Front Central Back
Close i u
Mid e o
Open a


External links

References

  1. ^ Ghayavi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Lynch, John, Malcolm Ross, and Terry Crowley. 2011. The Oceanic Languages. Abingdon: Routledge.