Abawiri

Abawiri
Doa
Abawiri
Native toIndonesia
RegionWestern New Guinea
Native speakers
350 (2010)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3flh
Glottologfoau1240
ELPFoau

The Abawiri language is a Lakes Plain language of Papua, Indonesia. It is spoken in the village of Fuau, located along the Dijai River, a tributary to the Mamberamo River. Clouse tentatively included Abawiri and neighboring Taburta (Taworta) in an East Lakes Plain subgroup of the Lakes Plain family;[2] due to the minimal data that was available on the languages at that time.[3] With more data, the connection looks more secure.

Like other Lakes Plain languages, Abawiri is notable for being heavily tonal[4] and for lacking nasal consonants: there are no nasal or nasalized consonants or vowels, even allophonically.[5]

Phonology

Abawiri has sixteen obstruent consonants (eight plain and eight labialized), as well as one sonorant consonant /ɾ/. The consonant and vowel charts below show the phonemes, followed by their representations in the community orthography (in <brackets>) where that representation is different from the phoneme symbol.

Abawiri consonants
Labial Alveolar Alveolo-palatal Velar
plain rounded plain rounded plain rounded plain rounded
Plosive voiceless t tʷ ⟨tw⟩ k kʷ ⟨kw⟩
voiced b bʷ ⟨bw⟩ d dʷ ⟨dw⟩ dʒ ⟨j⟩ dʒʷ ⟨jw⟩ g gʷ ⟨gw⟩
Fricative f fʷ ⟨fw⟩ s sʷ ⟨sw⟩
Flap ɾ ⟨r⟩

Abawiri has seven vowels, including three high front vowels: /i/, /y/, and /i̝/.

Abawiri vowels
Front Back
Extra-high i̝ ⟨yi⟩
High i y ⟨yu⟩ u
Mid ɛ ⟨e⟩
Low a ɒ ⟨o⟩

References

  1. ^ Abawiri at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Clouse, Duane (1997). "Toward a reconstruction and reclassification of the Lakes Plain languages of Irian Jaya". Papers in Papuan Linguistics. 2: 133–236.
  3. ^ Voorhoeve, Clemens L. (1975). Languages of Irian Jaya: checklist, preliminary classification, language maps, wordlists. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics Series B-31.
  4. ^ Yoder, Brendon (2018). "The Abawiri tone system in typological perspective". Language (Phonological Analysis). 94 (4): e266 – e292. doi:10.1353/lan.2018.0067. S2CID 150242777 – via Project MUSE.
  5. ^ Yoder, Brendon (2020). A grammar of Abawiri, a Lakes Plain language of Papua, Indonesia (PhD dissertation thesis). University of California Santa Barbara.


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