Phonology
Sound inventory and phonological rules
19 consonants
8 vowels
Consonant Inventory
| Manner | Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | pb | · | td | c | k | q | · | |||||||
| Nasal | m | · | n | · | ŋ | · | · | |||||||
| Trill | · | · | r | · | · | · | · | |||||||
| Fricative | · | fv | s | · | · | · | h | |||||||
| Affricate | · | · | dz | · | · | · | · | |||||||
| Approximant | · | · | · | j | w | · | · | |||||||
| Lateral approximant | · | · | ɫ | · | · | · | · | |||||||
Vowel Inventory
| Height | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | · | u |
| Near-close | ɪ | · | · |
| Close-mid | ø | · | · |
| Open-mid | ɛ | · | ɔ |
| Near-open | æ | · | · |
| Open | · | · | ɑ |
Syllable Structure
VC,CV,VCV,(C)VCV,(V)VCVPhoneme Frequency
Distribution of phonemes across 135 transcribed dictionary entries (796 total tokens)
/ɑ/
101 (12.7%)
/ɛ/
78 (9.8%)
/ɪ/
73 (9.2%)
/ɫ/
69 (8.7%)
/s/
59 (7.4%)
/n/
56 (7%)
/ø/
53 (6.7%)
/r/
53 (6.7%)
/u/
48 (6%)
/t/
44 (5.5%)
/c/
31 (3.9%)
/æ/
24 (3%)
/m/
20 (2.5%)
/p/
17 (2.1%)
/h/
14 (1.8%)
/v/
13 (1.6%)
/d/
11 (1.4%)
/dz/
9 (1.1%)
/ŋ/
7 (0.9%)
/f/
4 (0.5%)
/b/
4 (0.5%)
/q/
3 (0.4%)
/k/
2 (0.3%)
/ui/
1 (0.1%)
/j/
1 (0.1%)
/ks/
1 (0.1%)