Biritai language

Biritai
Aliki
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Biri village in East Central Mambermano District, Mamberamo Raya Regency, Papua
Native speakers	(250 cited 1988)[1]
Language family	Lakes Plain Central Biritai
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bqq
Glottolog	biri1259
ELP	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.^[2]

Phonology

The following inventory is taken from Donohue (2017),^[3] with a very small consonant inventory typical of the Lakes Plain languages.

Consonants

		Labial	Coronal
Stop	voiceless		t
	voiced	b	d
Fricative		ɸ	s

In an earlier paper co-authored by Donohue,^[4] 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	i	ɯ	u
Close-mid	e
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open	a

Tone

Biritai is tonal.^{[citation needed]}

References

1. Biritai at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2019). "Indonesia languages". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (22nd ed.). Dallas: SIL International.
3. Donohue, Mark. (2017) "Introduction to Typology 4: investigating phonological typology" (archived link). Living Tongues Institute, LSA Institute Kentucky, 2017 July 19.
4. Ross, Bill; Donohue, Mark (2011). "The many origins of diversity and complexity in phonology" (PDF). Linguistic Typology (15): 251–266.