Ghayavi language


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

Phonology

The phonology of Ghayavi is typical of most Oceanic languages 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. 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'.
BilabialAlveolarPalatalLabiodentalVelar
PlosiveVoicedbdg gw
Voicelesspt ɾk kw
FricativeVoicedvvɣ
Voicelessfs
Nasalmn
Approximantwj