Rotokas language (original) (raw)

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North Bougainville language

Rotokas is a North Bougainville language spoken by about 4,320 people on Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea.

Central Rotokas is most notable for its extremely small phonemic consonantal inventory, which lacks phonemic nasals.

According to Allen and Hurd (1963), there are three identified dialects: Central Rotokas ("Rotokas Proper"), Aita Rotokas, and Pipipaia; with a further dialect spoken in Atsilima (Atsinima) village with an unclear status.[3]

The Central dialect of Rotokas possesses one of the world's smallest phonemic consonantal inventories.[4]: 271 Central Rotokas has a vowel length distinction between long and short,[4]: 273 but otherwise lacks distinctive suprasegmental features such as tone, and probably stress.[5]

Whereas Central Rotokas has only six consonantal phonemes, Aita Rotokas has nine; Aita adds phonemic nasals (e.g. this example of a minimal pair, /buta/ 'time' vs. /muta/ 'taste'[6]: 208 ). The Central dialect's limited inventory likely arose by collapsing the phonemic distinction between nasals and non-nasals.[6]: 206

Nasals in Aita always correspond to voiced plosives in Central (e.g. "tree" is emaoto in Aita and ebaoto in Central[6]: 208 ), but voiced plosives in Central can correspond to either nasals or voiced plosives in Aita.[6]: 207

Consonants occur in three places of articulation: bilabial, alveolar, and velar, each with a voiced and an unvoiced variant.[6]: 207 The three voiced phonemes each have wide allophonic variation, with the allophonic sets [β, b, m], [ɾ, n, l, d], and [ɡ, ɣ, ŋ].[4]: 274 This makes the choice of symbols for phonemes somewhat arbitrary.[6]: 207

Nasals are rarely heard. They will sometimes be misused when speakers try to pronounce English words (e.g. "bye-bye" being pronounced [maemae]), or when trying to imitate a foreigner speaking Rotokas (even if they were not used by the foreigner).[4]: 274

Central Rotokas

| | Bilabial | Alveolar | Velar | | | -------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | | Voiceless | p | t | k | | Voiced | b | d | ɡ |

• In the 1960s, /t/ was described as being [ts]~[s] before /i/.[4]: 274 Later research in the 2000s found this to no longer be true, possibly due to widespread bilingualism with Tok Pisin.[6]: 207

The Aita dialect has nine consonant phonemes, with a three-way distinction required between voiced, voiceless, and nasal consonants.[6]: 207

Aita Rotokas

| | Bilabial | Alveolar | Velar | | | -------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | | Voiceless | p | t | k | | Voiced | b | d | ɡ | | Nasal | m | n | ŋ |

• /b/ varies between [b] and [β].[6]: 207
• /d/ is chiefly realized as [ɾ].[6]: 207
• /t/ is [s] before /i/.[6]: 207

Vowels in the Central dialect may be long or short, but the Aita dialect seems to have no length distinction.[6]: 209

| | Front | Central | Back | | | ------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Close | i (iː) | | u (uː) | | Close-mid | e (eː) | | o (oː) | | Open | | a (aː) | |

The Rotokas orthography uses 12 letters of the Latin alphabet, with no diacritics or ligatures. The letters are a, e, g, i, k, o, p, r, s, t, u and v. Long vowels are written as doubled. /t/ is written as s before i and t elsewhere and has also been written with an orthography based on the IPA symbols for its phonemes.[6]: 207

Stress is probably not phonemic.[5] Words with 2 or 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. This is complicated by long vowels, and there are exceptions to the third rule among some verb constructions.[7]

[](/wiki/File:Wiki%5Fletter%5Fw%5Fcropped.svg)	This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (January 2025)

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:

tou-pa-si-veira

be-PROG-2.DU.MASC-HAB

osirei-toarei avuka-va iava ururupa-vira tou-pa-si-veira

eye-MASC.DU old-FEM.SG POST closed-ADV be-PROG-2.DU.MASC-HAB

The old woman's eyes are shut.

Selected basic vocabulary items in Rotokas:[8]

1. ^ Rotokas at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. ^ "Rotokas". Retrieved 22 October 2018.
3. ^ Allen and Hurd, 1963. Cited in Robinson (2006, p. 206): "it appears to be heavily influenced by contact with Keriaka"
4. ^ a b c d e "An abbreviated phoneme inventory | Languages of Papua New Guinea". pnglanguages.sil.org. Retrieved 2025-02-24.
5. ^ a b "Organised Phonology Data" (PDF). p. 3.
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m "The Phoneme Inventory of the Aita Dialect of Rotokas". ResearchGate. Archived from the original on 2023-03-23. Retrieved 2025-02-24.
7. ^ Firchow, Irwin B.; Firchow, Jacqueline; Akoitai, David (1973). Vocabulary of Rotokas--Pidgin--English. The Long Now Foundation. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics.{{[cite book](/wiki/Template:Cite%5Fbook "Template:Cite book")}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
8. ^ Firchow & Firchow (2008)
9. ^ Jenesis (Rotokas Genesis Translation). The Long Now Foundation. Summer Institute of Linguistics.{{[cite book](/wiki/Template:Cite%5Fbook "Template:Cite book")}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

• Allen, Jerry; Hurd, Conard (1963). Languages of the Bougainville district. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
• Firchow, Irwin (1974). Rotokas Grammar (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-04-01. (Unpublished manuscript)
• Firchow, Irwin (1987). "Form and Function of Rotokas Words". Language and Linguistics in Melanesia. 15 (1–2): 5–111. ISSN 0023-1959. Archived from the original on 2019-07-05.
• Firchow, Irwin B.; Firchow, Jacqueline (2008). Rotokas-English dictionary. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
• Firchow, Irwin B.; Firchow, Jacqueline (1969). "An abbreviated phonemic inventory". Anthropological Linguistics. 11 (9): 271–276. JSTOR 30029468.
• Firchow, Irwin B.; Firchow, Jacqueline; Akoitai, David (1973). "Introduction". Vocabulary Rotokas-Pidgin-English. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics. pp. vii–xii. (Brief grammatical sketch)
• Robinson, Stuart (2006). "The Phoneme Inventory of the Aita Dialect of Rotokas" (PDF). Oceanic Linguistics. 45 (1): 206–209. doi:10.1353/ol.2006.0018. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0013-192E-4. JSTOR 4499953. S2CID 145809531.
• Wurm, Stephen; Hattori, S. (1981). Language atlas of the Pacific area. Canberra: Australian Academy of the Humanities. ISBN 9780858832398.
• Firchow, Jackie (1992). Organised Phonology Data. Archived from the original on 2023-12-09.
• Robinson, Stuart (2011). Split intransitivity in Rotokas, a Papuan language of Bougainville (PDF) (PhD thesis). Nijmegen: Ipskamp Printers. hdl:2066/85822. Retrieved 6 January 2022.