Fuyug language


Fuyug is a language of Papua New Guinea spoken in the Central Province of the country. The language's 14,000 speakers live in 300 villages in the Goilala District.

Phonology

The usual orthographic convention used to transcribe Fuyug is to use a for, e for, y for, and the corresponding IPA characters for the remaining phonemes.

Vowels

Fuyug possesses five vowel phonemes.
FrontBack
Closeiu
Midɛo
Openɑ

The vowel is pronounced as the diphthong when word-final as well as before a word-final consonant. For example, ateg is pronounced and ode as.
All vowels are nasalised before a nasal consonant, as in in , ung , em .

Consonants

Fuyug has 14 consonant phonemes.
The voiceless plosive are aspirated in a word-final position and before : endanti , oki , eyak .
The nasal phoneme assimilates before a velar consonant becoming : yangos .
The pronunciation of the liquid is in free variation between a lateral and a flap. However, with the exception of words of foreign origin where the word in the source language is written with an r, this is represented in the orthography as l.

Syllables

Fuyug syllables come in the shape V. There cannot be more than two consonants adjacent to one another word-internally and the only final clusters permitted are mb, nd and ng. Within a word vowels may not follow one another.

Stress

in Fuyug is predictable. Stress falls on the final syllable in mono- and disyllabic words and on the antepenult in words of three of four syllables. Affixes do not alter the stressed syllable.

Morphophonology

Certain suffixes cause a change in the end of the word to which it is attached:

Personal pronouns

Fuyug has personal pronouns for three numbers but not gender distinction.
PersonSingularDualPlural
1stnadadi
2ndnuyayi
3rdhutumu

These pronouns can take four different suffixes: the genitive -l or -le, the emphatic -ni, the comitative -noy and the contrastive -v.

Numerals

Numerals in Fuyug are very restricted, having only fidan and yovalo. The numbers 3, 4 and 5 are composed of 1 and 2:
After five English numerals are used. The quantifier huka is also used after three.