Bilua (also known as Mbilua or Vella Lavella) is the most populous

Papuan language The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non- Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly ge ...

spoken in the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...

. It is a Central Solomon language spoken by about 9,000 people on the island of

Vella Lavella Vella Lavella is an island in the Western Province of the Solomon Islands. It lies to the west of New Georgia, but is considered one of the New Georgia Group. To its west are the Treasury Islands. Environment The island of Vella Lavella is lo ...

. It is one of the four non- Austronesian languages spoken in the

Classification

"Bilua is sometimes grouped with the other Central Solomons languages and beyond (Wurm 1975b) but closer inspection shows that a genealogical relation is not demonstrable (Dunn and Terrill 2012, Terrill 2011)" (Hammarström, forthcoming).

Phonology

The consonant and vowels sounds of Bilua.

Consonants

The voiced stops and affricate sounds /b d ɡ dʒ/ can occur as prenasalized allophones, when occurring intervocalically ��b ⁿd ᵑɡ ⁿdʒ Other consonant allophones include tʃfor /β dʒ/.

Vowels

Four vowel sounds /i u e o/ have allophones but only in diphthongs as � ɛ ɔ ʊ

Verb construction

Sample Verbs

Noun classification

Bilua has a masculine-feminine

gender system Gender systems are the social structures that establish the number of genders and their associated gender roles in every society. A ''gender role'' is "everything that a person says and does to indicate to others or to the self the degree that ...

with no neuter nouns. Truly males are always male and truly female are always female.

Classification

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Verb construction

Sample Verbs

Noun classification

Numerals

References

Further reading

External links