Paicĩ language

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Paicĩ
Spoken in: New Caledonia 
Region: East coast between Poindimié and Ponérihouen and inland valleys
Total speakers: 5,498
Language family: Austronesian
 Malayo-Polynesian
  Central-Eastern
   Eastern
    Oceanic
     Central-Eastern
      Remote
       New Caledonian
        Northern
         Central Northern
          Paicĩ
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: map
ISO/FDIS 639-3: pri

The Paicĩ language is the most populous of the two dozen languages on the main island of New Caledonia. It is spoken in a band across the center of the island.

Contents

[edit] Phonemic inventory

Paicĩ has a rather simple inventory of consonants, compared to other languages of New Caledonia, but it has an unusually large number of nasal vowels.

Paicĩ syllables are restricted to CV.

[edit] Consonants

The palatal stops are "heavily fricated, and could be considered affricates". The lateral and tap do not occur word initially except in a few loan words, and the prefix /ɾɜ/ they.

Because nasal stops are always followed by nasal vowels, while prenasalized stops are always followed by oral vowels, it might be argued that nasal and prenasalized stops are allophonic. This would reduce the Paicĩ consonant inventory to 13.

  Bilabial Labialized bilabial Postalveolar Palatal Velar Labialized velar
Plosive p c k
Prenasalized stop mb m ɲɟ ŋɡ
Nasal stop m ɲ ŋ
Tap ɾ̠
Approximant j w

[edit] Tones

Paicĩ has three tones: high, mid, low. Additionally, there are vowels with no inherent tone. (That is, their tone is determined by their environment.) Words commonly have the same tone on all vowels, so tone may belong to the word rather than the syllable.

[edit] Vowels

Paicĩ has a symmetrical system of 10 oral vowels, all found both long and short without significant difference in quality, and seven nasal vowels, some of which may also be long and short. Because sequences of two short vowels may carry two tones, but long vowels are restricted to carrying a single tone, these do appear to be phonemically long vowels rather than sequences.

Oral vowels

All oral vowels occur both long and short.

i
ɨ
u
e
ɘ
o
ɛ
ɜ
ɔ
a

Nasal vowels

Most nasal vowels are attested as both long and short.

ĩ
ĩ
ũ
ɛ̞̃
ɜ̞̃
ɔ̞̃
ɐ̃

[edit] External links