| Language name: | YAWA |
| UPSID number: | 8629 |
| Alternate name(s): | YAVA |
| Classification: | Papuan, Geelvink Bay |
| This language has | 19 segments |
| Its Frequency index is | 0.538335862 (average percentage of segments; 0.1: many very rare segments; 0.39: average; 0.7: many common segments) |
| The language has these sounds: | p t k b d dZ s sJ m n nJ r[ j w i "e a "o u |
| Comment: | Yawa is spoken on Yapen island, Irian Jaya, Indonesia. Stress placement is unpredictable. After /u/ the palato-alveolar affricate has the allophone [g]. Nasal + obstruent clusters occur but Jones (1986) reports that they are not homorganic if the obstruent is velar or palato-alveolar, and are phonetically heterosyllabic where intervocalic; hence, even initial cases are analyzed as sequences. Many two-vowel sequences occur. |
| Source(s): | Jones, L.K. 1986. Yawa phonology. Papers in New Guinea linguistics, no. 25, 1-30. Pacific Linguistics, Series A, No. 74. Australian National University, Canberra. |