Rotokas language - Definition and Overview

Rotokas is a language spoken in Bougainville, an island to the east of New Guinea, part of Papua New Guinea. It is part of the East Papuan language family. Its main claim to fame, linguistically speaking, is that it possesses one of the world's smallest phonemic inventories: 6 consonants (p t k v r g) and 5 vowels (a e i o u); the /t/ phoneme has the allophone [s] before /i/. Only Pirahã has fewer.

Thus, the Rotokas alphabet consists of the eleven letters A E I G K O P R T U V.

Phonology

The phonemes of Rotokas, in SAMPA notation, are as follows:

             Bilabial   Alveolar   Velar
Vl. stop      p          t          k
Vd. stop                            g
Vd. fricative B
Vl. fricative            s
Vd. tap                  4

Vowels A e i o u

In the orthography, v stands for SAMPA /B/, a voiced bilabial fricative, and r for SAMPA /4/.

Grammar

Rotokas normally uses Subject Object Verb word-order, with adjectives and demonstrative pronouns preceding the noun they modify, and most adverbs following the main verb. It uses postpositions.

Link

• Brief grammatical overview (http://www.rosettaproject.org/live/search/showpages?ethnocode=ROO&doctype=morsyn&scale=six&version=1&allpages=1) at the Rosetta Project