Kuot language

Kuot
Panaris
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	New Ireland
Native speakers	2,400 (2002)
Language family	Language isolate
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kto
Glottolog	kuot1243

The Kuot language, or Panaras, is a language isolate, the only non-Austronesian language spoken on the island of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. There are about 2,400 speakers, concentrated primarily on the northwest coast of the island. Perhaps due to the small speaker base, there are no significant dialects present within Kuot.

Status

Kuot is an endangered language with most if not all children growing up speaking Tok Pisin instead.

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar
Nasal		m	n~ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	k
	voiced	b	d	ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	ɸ~f	s~ʃ
	voiced	β~v
Lateral			l
Flap			ɾ

Vowels

The vowels /i/ and /u/ tend to become glide-vowels in occurrence with other vowels. The length of the vowels is not making differences for the meaning of words. The appearance of /i/ and /u/ with other vowels can not be seen as diphthong or a combination of vowel and glide-vowel. There are never more than three vowels per syllable. The combination of diphthong and vowel is also possible but they are pronounced in conditions of the syllable. Diphthongs are spoken like one sound.

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e	o
Open	a

Allophones

Phoneme	Allophones
/i/	[i~ɪ~j]
/e/	[e~ɛ]
/a/	[a~ʌ]
/u/	[u~ʊ~w]
/o/	[o~ɔ]

Morphophonemic Alternations

't' to 'r' Alternation

The phoneme /t/ in certain possessive markers, such as "-tuaŋ", "-tuŋ" and "-tuo" becomes /r/ when it comes after a stem ending in a vowel. Compare:

• ira-ruaŋ – my father
• luguan-tuaŋ – my house
• i'rama-ruo – my eye
• nebam-tuaŋ – my feather

Vowel Shortening

Where the third person singular masculine suffix "-oŋ" is used on a noun that ends with a vowel, this vowel is typically not pronounced. For instance, "amaŋa-oŋ" is pronounced [aˈmaŋɔŋ], not [aˈmaŋaɔŋ].

Voicing Rule

When vowel-initial suffixes are added to stems that end in voiceless consonants, those consonants become voiced. For example:

• /obareit-oŋ/ [obaˈreidoŋ] he splits it
• /taɸ-o/ [taˈβo] he drinks
• /marik-oŋ/ [maˈriɡoŋ] he prays

The phoneme /p/ becomes [β], not [b].

• /sip-oŋ/ [ˈsiβɔŋ] it comes out
• /irap-a/ [iˈraβa] her eyes

Grammar

The language uses a VSO word order, similar to Irish and Welsh. The morphology of the language is primarily agglutinative. There are two grammatical genders, male and female, and distinction is made in the first person between singular, dual, and plural, as well as between exclusive and inclusive.

For instance, the sentence parak-oŋ ira-ruaŋ kamin literally means 'my father eats sweet potato'. Parak-oŋ is a continuous aspect of the verb meaning 'to eat', ira means 'father', -ruaŋ is a suffix used to indicate inalienable possession ('my father'), and kamin is a simple noun meaning 'sweet potato'.

See also

• East Papuan languages

External links

• Kuot Swadesh 100 Word List