Rotokas is a North Bougainville language spoken by about 4,320 people on Bougainville Island in New Guinea.
Central Rotokas is most notable for its extremely small phonemic consonantal inventory, which lacks Phoneme nasals.
Dialects
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.
[Allen and Hurd, 1963. Cited in : "it appears to be heavily influenced by Language contact with Ramopa language"]
Phonology
The Central dialect of Rotokas possesses one of the world's smallest phonemic consonantal inventories.
Central Rotokas has a
vowel length distinction between long and short,
but otherwise lacks distinctive suprasegmental features such as tone, and probably stress.
Consonants
Whereas Central Rotokas has only six consonantal phonemes, Aita Rotokas has nine; Aita adds phonemic nasals (e.g. this example of a minimal pair, vs.
). The Central dialect's limited inventory likely arose by collapsing the phonemic distinction between nasals and non-nasals.
Nasals in Aita always correspond to voiced plosives in Central (e.g. "tree" is emaoto in Aita and ebaoto in Central
Central Rotokas
Consonants occur in three places of articulation: bilabial, alveolar, and
Velar consonant, each with a voiced and an unvoiced variant.
The three voiced phonemes each have wide allophonic variation, with the allophonic sets , , and .
This makes the choice of symbols for phonemes somewhat arbitrary.
Nasals are rarely heard. They will sometimes be misused when speakers try to pronounce English words (e.g. "bye-bye" being pronounced ), or when trying to imitate a foreigner speaking Rotokas (even if they were not used by the foreigner).
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In the 1960s, was described as being before .
Aita Rotokas
The Aita dialect has nine consonant phonemes, with a three-way distinction required between voiced, voiceless, and nasal consonants.
-
varies between and .
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is chiefly realized as .
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is before .
Vowels
Vowels in the Central dialect may be long or short, but the Aita dialect seems to have no length distinction.
Orthography
The Rotokas orthography uses 12 letters of the Latin alphabet, with no
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 and t elsewhere and has also been written with an orthography based on the IPA symbols for its phonemes.
Stress
Stress is probably not phonemic.
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.
Grammar
Typologically, Rotokas is a fairly typical verb-final language, with
and demonstrative pronouns preceding the
they modify, and
following. Although
are fairly free in their ordering, they tend to precede the verb, as in the following example:
Vocabulary
Selected basic vocabulary items in Rotokas:
>|
! gloss !! Rotokas |
| kokioto |
| revasiva |
| kerua |
| rorooua |
| uvareoua |
| aio |
| takura |
| osireito |
| tuitui |
| vate |
| ava |
| rasito |
| orui |
| uvu |
| kokotoa |
| iirui |
| oidato |
| kekira |
| vaisia |
| katai |
| raiva |
| keke |
| vuvuiua |
| aveke |
| ravireo |
| arevuoto |
| reuri |
| evaova |
| erao |
| uukoa |
| avuo |
Sample text
Footnotes
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(Unpublished manuscript)
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(Brief grammatical sketch)
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Further reading
