Kairiru language
language
Kairiru is one of three Kairiru languages spoken mainly on Kairiru and Mushu islands and in several coastal villages on the mainland between Cape Karawop and Cape Samein near Wewak in East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea.
Phonology
Consonants
The tap /ɾ/ varies freely between [ɾ] or a retroflex [ɻ].
[ʃ] is heard as an allophone of /tʃ/ among young speakers.
/b/ is heard as [p] in word-final position.
/k/ may vary between a voiced [ɡ] or [k] when in between a high and non-high vowel.
The back-velar /k̠/ may also be heard freely as uvular [q], and may vary between a stop or fricatives [k̠], [x̠] or voiced [ɡ̠], [ɣ̠] when preceded and followed by /a/ or /o/.
Vowels
Sounds /i, u, e, o/ may have lax allophones as [ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ɔ] in closed syllables.
Vowels /e, o/ may have a lax allophone of [ə] when following other vowels.
/a/ may be heard as [æ] when preceding a velar nasal /ŋ/ in free variation with [a].
Morphology
Pronouns and person markers
One remarkable feature of the pronoun system of Kairiru is that it appears to have lost the distinction between first-person inclusive and exclusive pronouns throughout its affix paradigms, but then recreated inclusive forms in its independent pronouns by combining first-person and second-person forms along the lines of Tok Pisin yumi (< yu + mi).
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This entry incorporates text from “Kairiru language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.