Kelabit language: Difference between revisions
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The flap is alveolar. It's not clear if /n/ and the other coronal sonorants are alveolar like /d/ or dental like /t/. |
The flap is alveolar. It's not clear if /n/ and the other coronal sonorants are alveolar like /d/ or dental like /t/. |
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Vowels are {{IPA|/ə a e i o u/}}. |
Vowels are {{IPA|/ə a e i o u/}}. All consonants but the aspirated voiced stops are lengthened after {{IPA|/ə/}}. |
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==References== |
==References== |
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Revision as of 22:01, 12 August 2015
| Kelabit | |
|---|---|
| Region | Borneo |
Native speakers | (5,000 cited 2000–2011)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | kzi |
| Glottolog | kela1258 |
Kelabit is one of the remotest languages of Borneo, on the Sarawak–Kalimantan border, and spoken by one of the smallest ethnicities in Borneo, the Kelabit people.
Phonology
Kelabit is notable for having "a typologically rare series of true voiced aspirates" (that is, not breathy voice/murmured consonants; for some speakers they are prevoiced) along with modally voiced and tenuis consonants but without an accompanying series of voiceless aspirates.[2] [3] It is the only language known to have voiced aspirates or murmured consonants without also having voiceless aspirated consonants, a situation that has been reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. (See glottalic theory.)
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Postalveolar /Palatal |
Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tenuis | p | t̪ | k | ʔ | ||
| Modally voiced | b | d͇ | (dʒ) | ɡ | ||
| Aspirated voiced (or prevoiced) |
b͡pʰ ~ b͡p | d͇͡t͇ʃʰ ~ d͇͡t͇ | ɡ͡kʰ ~ ɡ͡k | |||
| Fricative | s | h | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||
| Sonorant | l, ɾ | j | w | |||
The aspirated voiced series only occurs intervocalicly, and may have arisen from geminate consonants. They are at least impressionistically twice as long as other stops.
At the end of a word, /t/ is pronounced [θ]. For some speakers, /dh/ in affricated; in neighboring Lun Dayeh, the reflex of this consonant is an unaspirated affricate [d͡tʃ]. /dʒ/ is rare, and is not attested from all dialects. The flap is alveolar. It's not clear if /n/ and the other coronal sonorants are alveolar like /d/ or dental like /t/.
Vowels are /ə a e i o u/. All consonants but the aspirated voiced stops are lengthened after /ə/.
References
- ^ Kelabit at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Robert Blust, 1974. A double counter-universal in Kelabit. Papers in Linguistics :309-24.
- ^ Robert Blust, 2006, "The Origin of the Kelabit Voiced Aspirates: A Historical Hypothesis Revisited", Oceanic Linguistics 45:311
External links
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