Rotokas is a language (part of the East Papuan language family) spoken by some 4000 people in Bougainville, an island to the east of New Guinea, part of Papua New Guinea. There are at least three dialects of the language: Central Rotokas ("Rotokas Proper"), Aita Rotokas, and Pipipaia. Central Rotokas is most notable for its extremely small phonemic inventories and for having perhaps the smallest modern alphabet. Location of North Solomons (Bougainville) Province in Papua New Guinea This article is about the island; Bougainville is also the name of a commune in the Somme département of France. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... The East Papuan languages, also called the East Papuan phylum, is a hypothetical family of Papuan languages spoken on the islands east of New Guinea, including New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, the Solomon Islands, and the Santa Cruz Islands. ... The East Papuan languages form a hypothetical and seemingly spurious family of Papuan languages spoken on the islands to the east of New Guinea, including New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, the Solomon Islands, and the Santa Cruz Islands. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2:1998 Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code Twenty-two of the languages have two three-letter codes: a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B) a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T). ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The East Papuan languages, also called the East Papuan phylum, is a hypothetical family of Papuan languages spoken on the islands east of New Guinea, including New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, the Solomon Islands, and the Santa Cruz Islands. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families Most languages are known to belong to language families. ... Location of North Solomons (Bougainville) Province in Papua New Guinea This article is about the island; Bougainville is also the name of a commune in the Somme département of France. ... In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ...

Phonology

The Rotokas alphabet is perhaps the smallest in use (only Pirahã has been claimed to have fewer speech sounds, but it is not written). It consists of the twelve letters A E I G K O P R S T U V, comprising six consonants (P T/S K V R G) and five or ten vowels (A E I O U). The phoneme /t/ is written either T or S, the latter before an I and in the name 'Rotokas'. The language has a vowel length distinction (i.e., all vowels have a short and long counterpart) but otherwise lacks distinctive suprasegmental features (i.e., no tone and no contrastive stress). The Rotokas alphabet used in writing the Rotokas language is a subset of the Latin alphabet consisting of only the eleven letters: A E I K O P R S T U V, and is arguably the smallest alphabet of any known language, save the Pirahã language. ... The Pirahã language is a language spoken by Pirahã people of Brazil. ... A consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

With only six consonants, it's difficult to choose IPA symbols to represent Rotokas without being misleading. The places of articulation are bilabial, alveolar, and velar, each with a voiced and an unvoiced phoneme. The voiceless consonants are straightforward as plosive [p, t, k]; there is an alveolar allophone [ts]~[s], but this only occurs before [i]. However, there is a great deal of variation among the voiced consonants, with allophonic sets [β, b, m], [ɾ, n, l, d], and [g, ɣ, ŋ]. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... Alveolars are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, the internal side of the upper gums (known as the alveoles of the upper teeth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ...

Firchow & Firchow (anthropological linguistics) have this to say on the subject:

In the Aita dialect the nasal [allophones] predominate. [...] In Rotokas Proper, however, nasals are rarely heard except when a native speaker is trying to imitate a foreigner’s attempt to speak Rotokas. In this case the nasals are used in the mimicry whether they were pronounced by the foreign speaker or not.

There does not seem to be any reason for positing phonological manners of articulation (that is, fricative, approximant, tap, stop, lateral) in Rotokas. Rather, a simple binary distinction of voice is sufficient, at least in Rotokas proper. In the Aita dialect of Rotokas, a three-way distinction is required between voiced, voiceless, and nasal consonants.

Note that when an [l] and [r] are given as variants, without their being determined by their environment, it's likely that they are actually either a lateral flap, [ɺ], or else a flap that is consistently ambiguous as to centrality (that is, neither specifically [ɾ] nor [ɺ], as in Japanese), and that the linguist has mistranscribed the sound. The lateral alveolar flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... A central or medial consonant is a consonant sound that is produced when air flows across the center of the mouth over the tongue. ...

Since a phonemic analysis is primarily concerned with distinctions, not with phonetic details, the symbols for voiced stops could be used: plosive [b, d, g] for Rotokas Proper, and nasal [m, n, ŋ] for Aita dialect. (In the proposed orthography for Rotokas Proper, these are written v, r, g. However, b, d, g would work equally well.) In the chart below, the most frequent allophones are used to represent the phonemes, without a decision being made on the laterality of the flap.

Consonants

In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... Alveolars are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, the internal side of the upper gums (known as the alveoles of the upper teeth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... In phonetics, a voiceless consonant is a consonant that does not have voicing. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ...

Vowels

ɑ e i o u (ɑɑ ee ii oo uu)

Vowels may be long (written doubled) or short. It is uncertain whether these represent ten phonemes or five; that is, whether 'long' vowels are distinct speech sounds or mere sequences of two vowels that happen to be the same. Other vowel sequences are extremely common, as in the word upiapiepaiveira.

Stress

It does not appear that stress is phonemic, but this is not certain. Words with 2-3 syllables are stressed on the initial syllable; those with 4 are stressed on the first and third; and those with 5 or more on the antepenultimate (third-last). This is complicated by long vowels, and not all verbal conjugations follow this pattern.

Grammar

Typologically, Rotokas is a fairly typical verb-final language, with adjectives and demonstrative pronouns preceding the nouns they modify, and postpositions following. Although adverbs are fairly free in their ordering, they tend to precede the verb, as in the following example: In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear (usually) in that order. ... An adjective is a part of speech which modifies a noun, usually describing it or making its meaning more specific. ... A noun, or noun substantive, is a part of speech (a word or phrase) which can co-occur with (in)definite articles and attributive adjectives, and function as the head of a noun phrase. ... A postposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that expresses some sort of relationship between a noun phrase (its object) and another part of the sentence; an adpositional phrase functions as an adjective or adverb. ... An adverb is a part of speech-class. ...

 osirei-toarei avuka-va iava ururupa-vira tou-pa-si-veira eye-MASC.DL old-FEM.SG POST closed-ADV be-PROG-2.DL.MASC-HABITUAL "The old woman's two eyes are shut." 

References

• Firchow, I & J, 1969. "An abbreviated phonemic inventory". In Anthropological Linguistics, vol. 11 #9.

• Robinson, Stuart. 2006. "The Phoneme Inventory of the Aita Dialect of Rotokas". In Oceanic Linguistics, vol. 45 #1, pp. 206-209.

• Brief grammatical overview available at the Rosetta Project