Roviana (language)
| Roviana | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Solomon Islands |
| Region | north central New Georgia Island |
|
Native speakers
|
9,900 (1999) L2 speakers: 16,000 (1987) |
|
Austronesian
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | rovi1238 |
Roviana is a member of the North West Solomonic branch of Oceanic languages. It is spoken around Roviana and Vonavona lagoons at the north central New Georgia in the Solomon Islands. It has 10,000 first-language speakers and an additional 16,000 people mostly over 30 years old speak it as a second language (Raymond 2005). In the past, Roviana was widely used as a trade language and further used as a lingua franca especially for church purposes in the Western Province but now it is being replaced by the Solomon Islands Pijin. Few published studies on Roviana language include: Ray (1926), Waterhouse (1949) and Todd (1978) contain the syntax of Roviana language. Corston-Oliver (1996 & 2002) discuss about the ergativity in Roviana. Todd (2000) and Ross (1988) discuss the clause structure in Roviana.
The Roviana alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet and consists of the above letters.
allophones: [h] ~ [ɦ] ([+voiced]) / V_V → /huhuβe/ [huɦuβe] ‘bathing’
[ŋ] ~ [ɲ] / _V [-back] → /ŋiɾa/ [ɲiɾa] ‘strong’
/r/ is lightly trilled in unstressed syllables and strongly trilled in stressed syllables.
V → V: / stressed Vs
V → Ṽ / _N
[a] ~ [ə] / _V → /leana/ [leəna]
(C)V
( C represents a single consonant and V represents a monophthong or diphthong. )
Diphthongs
There are five diphthongs; /ei/, /ai/, /ae/, /au/, and /oi/
The majority of lexical morphemes consist of two or three syllables. Lexical morphemes consisting of four syllables or a single syllable are uncommon whereas morphemes consisting of more than four syllables have never occurred.
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