Yélî Dnye language
| Yele | |
|---|---|
| Yélî Dnye | |
| Native to | Papua New Guinea |
| Region | Louisiade Archipelago |
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Native speakers
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3,800 (1998) |
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Yele – West New Britain ?
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| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | yele1255 |
Yele and the language families of the Solomon Islands.
Yele (lower left)
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The Yele language, or Yélî Dnye, is the language of Rossel island, the easternmost island in the Louisiade Archipelago off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. There were some 4,000 speakers in 1998, comprising the entire ethnic population. For now it is best considered a language isolate, but it may turn out to be related to the Anêm and Ata language isolates of New Britain in a tentative Yele – West New Britain family. Typologically, however, it is more similar to the languages of southern New Guinea than to those of New Britain.
Yele is one of the better-known East Papuan languages. It has been studied extensively by cognitive linguists. It has an extensive set of spatial postpositions. Yele has eleven postpositions equivalent to English on; using different ones depending factors such as whether the object is on a table (horizontal), a wall (vertical), or atop a peak; whether or not it is attached to the surface; and whether it is solid or granular (distributed).
Yele has a uniquely rich set of doubly articulated consonants. In nearly all the languages of the world which have them, these are labial–velar consonants—that is, they are pronounced simultaneously with the lips and the back of the tongue, such as a simultaneous p and k. Only Yele is known to contrast other doubly articulated positions: besides labial–velar, it has two distinct labial–alveolar positions (laminal/dental and apical/postalveolar), as illustrated below.
The two coronal articulations are (1) laminal/dental and slightly pre-alveolar, sometimes transcribed tʸ, nʸ, etc. (see denti-alveolar consonant), and (2) apical and slightly post-alveolar, sometimes transcribed ṭ, ṇ etc., ʈ, ɳ, etc., or simply t, n, etc.
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