Acehnese phonology
Acehnese, the language spoken by the Acehnese people of Aceh, Indonesia, has a large vowel inventory compared to Indonesian, with ten oral monophthong vowels,[1] twelve oral diphthongs,[2] seven nasal monophthong vowels,[3] and five nasal diphthongs.[4]
Vowels
[edit]Native-speaking linguists divide vowels in Acehnese into several categories: oral monophthongs, oral diphthongs (which are further divided into the ones ending with /ə/ and with /i/), nasal monophthongs, and nasal diphthongs.[5]
Oral vowels
[edit]Oral monophthong vowels in Acehnese are shown in the table below.[6]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | ɯ | u |
| Close-mid | e | ə | o |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ʌ | ɔ |
| Open | a |
Oral diphthong vowels ending with /ə/ are shown in the table below.[7]
| Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|
| /iə/ | /ɯə/ | /uə/ |
| /ɛə/ | /ʌə/ | /ɔə/ |
Oral diphthong vowels ending with /i/ are shown in the table below.[8]
| Central | Back |
|---|---|
| /ui/ | |
| /əi/ | /oi/ |
| /ʌi/ | /ɔi/ |
| /ai/ |
Nasal vowels
[edit]Nasal monophthong vowels in Acehnese are shown in the table below.[9]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | ĩ | ɯ̃ | ũ |
| Open-mid | ɛ̃ | ʌ̃ | ɔ̃ |
| Open | ã |
Consonants
[edit]The table below shows the Acehnese consonant phonemes and the range of their realizations.[10]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | plain | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |
| post-stopped | (mᵇ) | (nᵈ) | (ɲᶡ) | (ŋᶢ) | ||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | c | k | ʔ |
| voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | ||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | h | |
| voiced | z | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||
| Trill | r | |||||
Notes:
- Syllable-final k always represents /ʔ/ save in certain recent loans
- /f/, /z/, and /ʃ/ are borrowed sounds, and are often replaced by /ph/, /d/, and /ch/ respectively
- The nasals /m/, /n/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/ are realized as post-stopped nasals (also called "funny nasals") before oral vowels and consonants.[11][12] They are distinct from the nasal-stop sequences /mb/, /nd/, /ɲɟ/, /ŋɡ/, e.g. in /banᵈa/ 'port' vs /mandum/ 'all'.[13] The orthography does not distinguish these sounds.
Orthography
[edit]The orthography of Achenese features 31 letters: the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet, è, é, ë, ô, and ö.
| Grapheme | Phoneme (IPA) |
Open syllable | Closed syllable |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | /a/ | ba /ba/ ‘carry’ | bak /baʔ/ ‘at, tree’ |
| e | /ə/ | le /lə/ ‘many’ | let /lət/ ‘pull out’ |
| é | /e/ | baté /bate/ ‘cup, betel tray’ | baték /bateʔ/ ‘batik’ |
| è | /ɛ/ | bèe /bɛə/ ‘smell’ | bèk /bɛʔ/ ‘prohibitive "don't" (e.g. bèk neupajôh boh gantang teucrôh lôn 'don't you eat my fries')' |
| eu | /ɯ/ | keu /kɯ/ ‘for’ | keuh /kɯh/ ‘so (e.g. nyan keuh), pronominal affix for second person (e.g. droe-keuh)’ |
| i | /i/ | di /di/ 'in, from' | dit /dit/ 'few, small amount' |
| o | /ɔ/ | yo /jɔ/ ‘afraid’ | yok /jɔʔ/ ‘shake’ |
| ô | /o/ | rô /ro/ ‘spill’ | rôh /roh/ ‘enter’ |
| ö | /ʌ/ | pö /pʌ/ ‘fly’ | pöt /pʌt/ ‘pluck, pick’ |
| u | /u/ | su /su/ ‘sound, voice’ | cut /cut/ ‘small’ |
Notes
[edit]- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1030), citing Asyik (1987:17)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1031), citing Asyik (1987:17–18)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1032), citing Asyik (1987:17)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1032), citing Asyik (1987:17)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1031), citing Asyik (1987:17–18)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1031), citing Asyik (1987:17)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1031), citing Asyik (1987:17–18)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1031), citing Asyik (1987:17–18)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1033), citing Asyik (1987:17)
- ^ Asyik (1982:3)
- ^ Durie (1984:24)
- ^ Asyik (1982:2)
- ^ Long & Maddieson (1993) "Consonantal evidence against Quantal Theory", UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 83, p. 144.
References
[edit]- Asyik, Abdul Gani (1982). "The Agreement System in Acehnese" (PDF). Mon-Khmer Studies. 11: 1–33. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 February 2012.
- Asyik, Abdul Gani (1987). A Contextual Grammar of Acehnese Sentences (PDF) (PhD thesis). The University of Michigan. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 July 2011.
- Durie, Mark (1984). A grammar of Acehnese (PhD thesis). Australian National University. doi:10.25911/5d6fa25bcc31c. hdl:1885/138059.
- Lawler, John M. (1977). "A Agrees with B in Achenese: A Problem for Relational Grammar". In Cole, P.; Sacock, J. (eds.). Grammatical Relations. Syntax and Semantics 8. New York: Academic Press. pp. 219–248. doi:10.1163/9789004368866_010.
- Pillai, Stefanie; Yusuf, Yunisrina Qismullah (2012). "An Instrumental Analysis of Acehnese Oral Vowels" (PDF). Language and Linguistics. 13 (6): 1029–1050. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 31 October 2014.