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Rotokas language

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Rotokas
Native toPapua New Guinea
RegionBougainville
Native speakers
(4,300 cited 1981)[1]
North Bougainville
Dialects
  • Central
  • Pipipaia
  • Aita
  • Atsilima[2]
Latin (Rotokas alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-3roo
Glottologroto1249
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

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, lacking phonemic nasals, and for having perhaps the smallest modern alphabet.

Dialects

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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]

Phonology

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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]

Consonants

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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 

Central Rotokas

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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 

Aita Rotokas

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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, oral b d ɡ
Voiced, 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

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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 () u ()
Close-mid e () o ()
Open a ()

Orthography

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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/, but <t> elsewhere.[7]

Rotokas has also been written with an orthography based on the IPA symbols for its phonemes.[6]: 207 

Stress

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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.[8]

Grammar

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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:

osirei-toarei

eye-MASC.DU

avuka-va

old-FEM.SG

iava

POST

ururupa-vira

closed-ADV

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.

Vocabulary

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Selected basic vocabulary items in Rotokas:[9]

gloss Rotokas
bird kokioto
blood revasiva
bone kerua
breast rorooua
ear uvareoua
eat aio
egg takura
eye osireito
fire tuitui
give vate
go ava
ground rasito
hair orui
hear uvu
leg kokotoa
louse iirui
man oidato
moon kekira
name vaisia
one katai
road, path raiva
see keke
sky vuvuiua
stone aveke
sun ravireo
tongue arevuoto
tooth reuri
tree evaova
two erao
water uukoa
woman avuo

Sample text

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No. Rotokas[10] Translation (English)
2 Vo tuariri rovoaia Pauto vuvuiua ora rasito pura-rovoreva. Vo osia rasito raga toureva, uva viapau oavu avuvai. Oire Pauto urauraaro tuepaepa aue ivaraia uukovi. Vara rutuia rupa toupaiva. Oa iava Pauto oisio puraroepa, Aviavia rorove. Oire aviavia rorova. In the beginning God created heaven and earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep water. The spirit of God was hovering over the water. Then God said, "Let there be light!" So there was light.

Footnotes

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  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. ^ "Organised Phonology Data" (PDF).
  8. ^ Firchow, Irwin B.; Firchow, Jacqueline; Akoitai, David (1973). Vocabulary of Rotokas--Pidgin--English. The Long Now Foundation. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
  9. ^ Firchow & Firchow (2008)
  10. ^ Jenesis (Rotokas Genesis Translation). The Long Now Foundation. Summer Institute of Linguistics.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)

References

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Further reading

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