Bauni is a language spoken in Barupu (Warapu) village () of

West Aitape Rural LLG Aitape West Rural LLG is a local-level government (LLG) of Aitape in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. Sissano Lagoon is located in the LLG. This region made international news on July 17, 1998 when an earthquake with magnitude 7.0 triggered ...

Sandaun Province Sandaun Province (formerly West Sepik Province) is the northwesternmost mainland Provinces of Papua New Guinea, province of Papua New Guinea (also known as home of the sunset). It covers an area of 35,920 km2 (13868 m2) and has a population ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. The alternative name Barupu or Warapu, from the name of the Bauni village, has been applied to related languages as well, and 'Warapu' may be retained as a cover term.

Phonology

Bauni has 9 consonants and 6 vowels. Consonants may undergo

lenition In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language ...

fortition In articulatory phonetics, fortition, also known as strengthening, is a consonantal change that increases the degree of stricture. It is the opposite of the more common lenition. For example, a fricative or an approximant may become a stop (i ...

palatalization Palatalization may refer to: *Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation *Palatalization (sound change) Palatalization ( ) is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulati ...

, or assimilation to produce a larger number of surface phonemes. Words belong to one of five tone classes: H, L, LH, HL, HLH. Syllables have the following form: (C)(G)V(G)(N), where (G) represents a glide and (N) represents a nasal. There are no syllables that have the maximum possible form of CGVGN.

Morphology

Verbs belong to one of four classes that differ in terms of what morphology may be applied and how. Verbs are obligatorily marked for mood - either realis (/k-/) or irrealis (/n-/) - and for subject. Certain classes of verbs require objects to be marked as well.

Lexicon

Bauni free pronouns are distinguished on the basis of person, gender, and number.

Syntax

Clauses in Bauni employ Agent-Patient-Verb word order. Recipients, instruments, and other oblique noun phrases typically follow the verb.

References

External links

Languages of Sandaun Province Piore River languages {{papuan-lang-stub