Biritai language explained

Biritai
Nativename:	Aliki
States:	Indonesia
Region:	Biri village in East Central Mambermano District, Mamberamo Raya Regency, Papua
Speakers:	250
Date:	1988
Ref:	e18
Familycolor:	Papuan
Fam1:	Lakes Plain
Fam2:	Central
Iso3:	bqq
Glotto:	biri1259
Glottorefname:	Biritai

Biritai (Biri) is a Lakes Plain language of Papua, Indonesia. It is named after Biri village in East Central Mambermano District, Mamberamo Raya Regency.^[1]

Phonology

The following inventory is taken from Donohue (2017),^[2] with a very small consonant inventory typical of the Lakes Plain languages.

Consonants

		Labial	Coronal
Stop			pronounced as /link/
		pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
Fricative		pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/

In an earlier paper co-authored by Donohue,^[3] the approximants /j w/ are also included as phonemes. The authors note that Biritai is typologically unusual for missing series of velar, nasal and liquid consonants.

Vowels

	Front	Back
		unrounded	rounded
Close	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
Close-mid	pronounced as /link/
Open-mid	pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/
Open	pronounced as /link/

Tone

Biritai is tonal.

Notes and References

1. Web site: Indonesia languages . Ethnologue

   Languages of the World

   . 22nd . Eberhard . David M. . Simons . Gary F. . Fennig . Charles D. . 2019 . Dallas . SIL International.
2. Donohue, Mark. (2017) "Introduction to Typology 4: investigating phonological typology". Living Tongues Institute, LSA Institute Kentucky, 2017 July 19.
3. Ross . Bill . Donohue . Mark . 2011 . The many origins of diversity and complexity in phonology . Linguistic Typology . 15 . 251-266.