Yil language explained

Yil is a Torricelli language of Papua New Guinea spoken in twelve villages in Sundaun province.

Phonology

This section follows Martens and Tuominen (1977).^[1] Yil has a small inventory of ten consonants:

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar
Stop	p	t	k
Fricative		s	ɣ
Nasal	m	n	ŋ
Trill		r
Lateral		l

And seven vowels:

	Front		Central	Back
	unrounded	rounded
Close	i	y	ə~ɵ	u
Mid	ɛ~æ			o
Open			a

In addition there are the diphthongs /ai̯ au̯ ay̯ ei̯/. /i u/ have non-syllabic allophones [j w~β] in onset or coda position. /ɣ/ is devoiced to [x] word-finally, e.g. /uəmaɣ/ [wəmax] 'hawk'.

Phonotactics

Maximum syllable structure is (C) (C) V (C) (C). Syllables with two-consonant codas only occur word-finally. Distribution of phonemes in different syllable types is shown in the table below.

Syllable type	Phoneme distribution	Example(s)
V	Any vowels may occur	/i/ "I"
CV	Any consonant or vowel may occur	/ni/ "water"
CVC		/sak/ "pig"
VC	V: /i ə o ɛ a/C: /p s m n ŋ l r u i/	/an/ "he"/ar/ "she"
C₁C₂VC₃	C₁: /p t k/C₂: /r/V: /u o a/C₃: /p k r/	/prok/ "quickly"/trok/ "thigh"/krup/ "white bird"
C₁VC₂C₃	C₁: any consonant may occurV: /u o a/C₂: /ɣ m n ŋ l r/C₃: /p t k ɣ r/	/lank/ "night"/nakalp/ "back of house"/namaŋalk/ "bird"
VC₁C₂	Rarely observed	/ark/ "termite"
C₁C₂VC₃C₄	Not observed

Stress usually falls on the first syllable, although it is contrastive in some verb forms, e.g. /əˈŋati/ "I bury a man" vs. /ˈəŋati/ "I hurry"

External links

• Paradisec has a collection of Don Laycock's (DL2) that includes Yil language materials.

Notes and References

1. Martens . Mary . Tuominen . Salme . 1977 . A tentative phonemic statement in Yil in West Sepik province . Workpapers in Papua New Guinea Languages . 19 . 29-48.