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
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
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
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
The table below shows the Acehnese consonant phonemes and the range of their realizations.[10][11]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | plain | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| post-oralized | (mᵇ) | (nᵈ) | (ɲᶡ) | (ŋᶢ) | |||
| Plosive | voiceless | plain | p | t | c | k | ʔ |
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | cʰ | kʰ | |||
| voiced | plain | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | ||
| aspirated | bʱ | dʱ | ɟʱ | ɡʱ | |||
| Fricative | s | ʃ | h | ||||
| Approximant | plain | l | j | w | |||
| aspirated | lʱ | ||||||
| Trill | plain | r | |||||
| aspirated | rʰ | ||||||
Notes:
- The fricative /s/ is described by Durie as "a laminal alveo-dental fricative with a wide channel area".[12]
- The stop /t/ is slightly retroflex.[13]
- Syllable-final orthographic ⟨k⟩ always represents /ʔ/ save in certain recent loans
- Arabic phonemes such as /z/, /f/, and /q/ are often nativised to /d/, /pʰ/, and /k/ respectively. Arabic /ʃ/ and /x/ varies, /ʃ/ can be realised as /c/, /cʰ/, or /s/, and /x/ can be realised as /kʰ/, /k/, or /h/.
- The phoneme /pʰ/ is often articulated as the affricate /ɸ/, Acehnese speakers realise the phoneme /f/ as /ɸ/, both in Arabic and modern loans.[12]
- The nasals /m/, /n/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/ are realized as post-oralized nasals (also called "funny nasals") before oral vowels and consonants.[14][15] They are distinct from the nasal–plosive sequences /mb/, /nd/, /ɲɟ/, /ŋɡ/, e.g. in [banᵈa] 'port' vs [mandum] 'all'.[16]
Orthography
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
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1030), citing Asyik (1987:17) harvcoltxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFAsyik1987 (help)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1031), citing Asyik (1987:17–18) harvcoltxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFAsyik1987 (help)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1032), citing Asyik (1987:17) harvcoltxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFAsyik1987 (help)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1032), citing Asyik (1987:17) harvcoltxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFAsyik1987 (help)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1031), citing Asyik (1987:17–18) harvcoltxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFAsyik1987 (help)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1031), citing Asyik (1987:17) harvcoltxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFAsyik1987 (help)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1031), citing Asyik (1987:17–18) harvcoltxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFAsyik1987 (help)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1031), citing Asyik (1987:17–18) harvcoltxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFAsyik1987 (help)
- ^ Pillai & Yusuf (2012:1033), citing Asyik (1987:17) harvcoltxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFAsyik1987 (help)
- ^ Asyik (1982:3)
- ^ Durie 1985, p. 11.
- ^ a b Durie 1985, p. 12.
- ^ Asyik, Abdul Gani (1987). A Contextual Grammar of Acehnese Sentences (Complementation) (Thesis thesis). hdl:2027.42/161507.
- ^ Durie (1985:24)
- ^ Asyik (1982:2), citing Lawler (1977)
- ^ Long & Maddieson (1993) "Consonantal evidence against Quantal Theory", UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 83, p. 144.
References
- 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 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.