Ghayavi language

Ghayavi, or Boianaki, is an Austronesian language of the eastern Papua New Guinean mainland.

Ghayavi
Boianaki
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Milne Bay Province, tip of Cape Vogel
Native speakers	2,800 (2000 census)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Western Papuan Tip Kilivila – Nuclear Papuan Tip Are–Taupota Are Ghayavi
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bmk
Glottolog	ghay1237

Phonology

The phonology of Ghayavi is typical of most Oceanic languages^[2] in that its phoneme inventory is characterised by a small number of phonemes and few complex articulations. Ghayavi has sixteen consonant phonemes, and thirteen vowel phonemes (including five diphthongs). Stress by default occurs on the penultimate syllable, although there are some examples of contrastive stress to encode semantic difference. One such minimal pair includes /kɑˈwam/ 'your mouth' and /ˈkɑwam/ 'your spouse'.

Ghayavi Consonant Inventory

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Labiodental	Velar
Plosive	Voice	b	d			k kw
	Voiceless	p	t ɾ			g gw
Fricative	Voice	v			v	ɣ
	Voiceless	f	s
Nasal		m	n
Approximant		w		j

Ghayavi Vowel Inventory

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid		e	o
Open	a

External links

• Materials on Ghayavi are included in the open access Arthur Capell collections (AC2) held by Paradisec.

References

1. Ghayavi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Lynch, John, Malcolm Ross, and Terry Crowley. 2011. The Oceanic Languages. Abingdon: Routledge.