Vanimo language

Vanimo (Wanimo, Manimo) is a Skou language of Papua New Guinea which extends from Leitre to Wutung on the Papua New Guinea - Indonesian border.

Vanimo
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Sandaun Province
Ethnicity	Dumo people, Dusur
Native speakers	2,700 (2000 census)[1]
Language family	Skou Western Vanimo
Dialects	Dusur (Duso) Dumo (Vanimo)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	vam
Glottolog	vani1248
ELP	Vanimo[2]

Phonology

The Duso dialect of Vanimo is unusual in not having any phonemic velar consonants, though it does have phonetic [ŋ].[3]

The vowels of Dumo dialect are,

i		u
e~ei	ø ⟨ö⟩	o
ɛ~æ		ɔ
	a

All occur nasalized, varying phonetically between a nasal vowel and a vowel followed by consonantal [ŋ]. Nasal /u/ may be realized as a syllabic [ŋ̍].

In Dumo, there are no velar consonants apart from this [ŋ] (and also as noted below). The other consonants are,

p~ɸ	t
b	d	j~dʲ~d͡ʒ
β~w	s		ɦ
m	n	ɲ
	l

Consonant clusters are /pl, bl, ml, ɲv, hv, hm, hn, hɲ, hj/ (hv and hm may be allophones). /ɲv/ is pronounced [ŋβ]. There are no coda consonants apart from [ŋ].

/k, ɡ, ŋ/ do occur in Dusö dialect. They correspond to /ɦ/ or zero in Dumo.

Dumo syllables may have either a 'high' or a 'long' tone. There is strict syllable timing, a 'long'-toned syllable takes the entire time allotted for a syllable, whereas with a high-tone or atonic syllable, there is a slight gap between it and the following syllable. Ross writes high tone with a grave accent, and long tone with an acute accent. A syllable with a nasal vowel / coda [ŋ] is not necessarily long, it may have any of the three tones.

References

1. Vanimo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Endangered Languages Project data for Vanimo.
3. Malcolm Ross, 1980, "Some elements of Vanimo, a New Guinea tone language"

Further reading

• Clifton, John M. (1995). "Organised Phonology Data" (PDF). Cite journal requires |journal= (help)