PAICĩ LANGUAGE

The 'Paicĩ language' is the most populous of the two dozen languages on the main island of New Caledonia. It is spoken in a band across the center of the island.

Contents

Phonemic inventory

Consonants

Tones

Vowels

External links

Phonemic inventory

Paicĩ has a rather simple inventory of consonants, compared to other languages of New Caledonia, but it has an unusually large number of nasal vowels.
Paicĩ syllables are restricted to CV.

Consonants

The palatal stops could be considered affricates since they occur with a heavily fricated release. The lateral and tap do not occur word initially except in a few loan words, and the prefix ''they''.
Because nasal stops are always followed by nasal vowels, while prenasalized stops are always followed by oral vowels, it might be argued that nasal and prenasalized stops are allophonic. This would reduce the Paicĩ consonant inventory to 13.

	Bilabial	Labialized bilabial	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar
Plosive
Prenasalized plosive
Nasal
Tap
Approximant

Tones

Paicĩ has three tones: high, mid, low. Additionally, there are vowels with no inherent tone. (That is, their tone is determined by their environment.) Words commonly have the same tone on all vowels, so tone may belong to the word rather than the syllable.

Vowels

Paicĩ has a symmetrical system of 10 oral vowels, all found both long and short without significant difference in quality, and seven nasal vowels, some of which may also be long and short. Because sequences of two short vowels may carry two tones, but long vowels are restricted to carrying a single tone, these do appear to be phonemically long vowels rather than sequences.

	Front		Central		Back
	Oral	Nasal	Oral	Nasal	Oral	Nasal
Close
Near-close
Near-open
Open

External links

★ Ethnologue on Paicî

★ Rosetta Project on Paicî