Naueti language

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Naueti
RegionSoutheast
Austronesian
 ?
  • Kawaimina
    • Naueti
Language codes
ISO 639-3nxa
Glottolognaue1237
ELPNauete

Naueti (also written as Nauoti, Nauete and Nauweti but ultimately from Naueti nau eti 'now') is an Austronesian language spoken by 15,045 (census 2010) in the subdistricts of

Baguia
.

It is closely related to

Kawaimina
to refer to them as a dialect continuum but it is preferable to understand them as separate languages. The Dutch linguist Aone Van Engelenhoven applies the label Eastern Extra-Ramelaic languages.

Structurally, it is a highly isolating Malayo-Polynesian language. However, its vocabulary is to some extent Papuan, due to contact with Makasae, which surrounds and cohabits with Naueti. There exist at least two dialects of Naueti, the Uatolari and the Uatocarbau-Baguia Naueti, the latter being distinguishable through some vocabulary but also through the [g] allophone of /w/ before rounded vowels (e.g. /wono/ 'war' is pronounced [wono] in Uatolari but [gono] in Uatocarbau and Baguia).

Just like its low-level related languages, Naueti has aspirated stops and voiceless sonorants but shows preglottalized phonemes instead of ejectives and has no preglottalized counterpart of Waima'a and Midiki /s'/. In contrast, Naueti has a voiceless rhotic that is missing in the other inventories.

The vowel system is straightforward with vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/. There is no distinctive vowel length, as vowel sequences are heterosyllabic. Stress generally falls on the penultimate syllable, with very few native exceptions. Loanwords preserve their original stress.

References

  1. ^ Naueti at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon