Paicĩ language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Paicî | ||
|---|---|---|
| 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 Paicî |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | map | |
| ISO 639-3: | pri | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
The Paicî 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
Paicî has a rather simple inventory of consonants, compared to other languages of New Caledonia, but it has an unusually large number of nasal vowels.
Paicî syllables are restricted to CV.
[edit] Consonants
The palatal stops could be considered affricates since they occur with a heavily fricated release. 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 Paicî consonant inventory to 13.
| Bilabial | Labialized bilabial |
Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p | pʷ | t̠ | c | k |
| Prenasalized plosive | mb | mbʷ | n̠d̠ | ɲɟ | ŋg |
| Nasal | m | mʷ | n̠ | ɲ | ŋ |
| Tap | ɾ̠ | ||||
| Approximant | l̠ | j | w |
[edit] Tones
Paicî 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
Paicî 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.
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oral | Nasal | Oral | Nasal | Oral | Nasal | |
| Close | /i/ | /ĩ/ | /ɨ/ | /ɨ̃/ | /u/ | /ũ/ |
| Near-close | /e/ | /ɛ̞̃/ | /ɘ/ | /ɜ̞̃/ | /o/ | /ɔ̞̃/ |
| Near-open | /ɛ/ | /ɜ/ | /ɔ/ | |||
| Open | /a/ | /ɐ̃/ | ||||
