Phonology
Sound inventory and phonological rules
11 consonants
6 vowels
Consonant Inventory
| Manner | Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p | t | · | · | k | · | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | · | · | ŋ | · | ||||||
| Trill | · | r | · | · | · | · | ||||||
| Fricative | · | s | · | · | · | h | ||||||
| Affricate | · | · | dʒ | · | · | · | ||||||
| Approximant | · | · | · | j | · | · | ||||||
Vowel Inventory
| Height | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | · | u |
| Near-close | ɪ | · | · |
| Close-mid | · | · | o |
| Open | a | · | ɑ |
Syllable Structure
CVPhonological Rules
/k/ -> [g] / V_V /k/ -> [g] / N_ Monomoraic vowels carry High/Low register. Contour nuclei /oi oa ui ja/ are toneless.
Phoneme Frequency
Distribution of phonemes across 308 transcribed dictionary entries (1,231 total tokens)
/a/
234 (19%)
/r/
119 (9.7%)
/o/
114 (9.3%)
/u/
109 (8.9%)
/i/
106 (8.6%)
/t/
92 (7.5%)
/n/
92 (7.5%)
/m/
87 (7.1%)
/s/
65 (5.3%)
/k/
47 (3.8%)
/h/
42 (3.4%)
/p/
39 (3.2%)
/ŋ/
29 (2.4%)
/oɪ/
19 (1.5%)
/uɪ/
14 (1.1%)
/dʒ/
13 (1.1%)
/oɑ/
6 (0.5%)
/ja/
4 (0.3%)