Phonology
Sound inventory and phonological rules
14 consonants
7 vowels
Consonant Inventory
| Manner | Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p | · | t | · | · | k | ||||||
| Nasal | m | · | n | · | · | ŋ | ||||||
| Trill | · | · | r | · | · | · | ||||||
| Fricative | · | fv | s | ʃ | · | · | ||||||
| Affricate | · | · | · | tʃ | · | · | ||||||
| Approximant | · | · | · | · | j | · | ||||||
| Lateral approximant | · | · | l | · | · | · | ||||||
Vowel Inventory
| Height | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | iy | · | u |
| Close-mid | ø | · | o |
| Near-open | æ | · | · |
| Open | a | · | · |
Syllable Structure
(C)(C)V(C)(C)Phonological Rules
Stress → penultimate syllable /r j ŋ/ → no gemination Word-final consonants restricted to /m n l s/
Phoneme Frequency
Distribution of phonemes across 753 transcribed dictionary entries (3,764 total tokens)
/a/
619 (16.4%)
/r/
483 (12.8%)
/i/
394 (10.5%)
/l/
265 (7%)
/n/
235 (6.2%)
/u/
221 (5.9%)
/t/
210 (5.6%)
/k/
187 (5%)
/m/
180 (4.8%)
/v/
157 (4.2%)
/s/
135 (3.6%)
/æ/
135 (3.6%)
/ʃ/
106 (2.8%)
/j/
102 (2.7%)
/p/
88 (2.3%)
/o/
84 (2.2%)
/ø/
81 (2.2%)
/y/
40 (1.1%)
/f/
23 (0.6%)
/ŋ/
19 (0.5%)