Ma'ya is an Austronesian language of the Raja Ampat islands in West Papua, Indonesia. It is spoken by about 6,000 people in coastal villages on the islands Misool, Salawati, and Waigeo.[2] It is spoken on the boundary between Austronesian and Papuan languages.[3]

Ma'ya
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Raja Ampat Islands
Native speakers	5,000 (2000–2001)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian Eastern Malayo-Polynesian South Halmahera–West New Guinea Halmahera Sea Maya–Matbat Ma'ya
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Variously: slz – Salawati kgb – Kawe lcc – Legenyem wuy – Wauyai
Glottolog	raja1258
ELP	Legenyem
Ma'ya
Coordinates: 0.86°S 130.65°E / -0.86; 130.65

Dialects

Ma'ya has five dialects: three on the island of Waigeo (Laganyan, Wauyai, and Kawe), one on Salawati, and one (extinct or nearly extinct) on Batanta. The prestige dialect is the one on Salawati. The Waigeo dialects have /s/ and /ʃ/, where the varieties spoken on Salawati and Misool have /t/ and /c/ respectively. Batanta, now extinct, was evidently unintelligible with its neighbours.[2]

On Waigeo Island, the three dialects are[4]^: 6

• The Kawe dialect in Selpele and Salyo villages in the northwest part of the island.
• The Laganyan dialect is spoken in Araway, Beo, and Luptintol villages on the Mayalibit Bay coast.
• The Wauyai dialect is spoken in Wauyai village on the Kabui Bay coast.

Phonology

Consonants

• Twelve consonants may also be heard as palatalized /pʲ, bʲ, tʲ, dʲ, kʲ, ɡʲ/; /fʲ, sʲ/; /mʲ, nʲ, lʲ, wʲ/.
• When in word-final position, six plosives can occur as unreleased [p̚, b̚, t̚, d̚, k̚, ɡ̚], as well as nasals [m̚, n̚, ŋ̚].
• /l/ can be heard as retroflex [ɭ] in word-final positions, and when preceded by a back vowel.
• /s/ can be pronounced as [ʃ] when between two /i/ vowel sounds.
• /ɾ/ can also be heard as a trill [r], when in word-final positions.
• /n/ can be heard as a velar [ŋ], when preceding velar stops. [ŋ] may also be a loan phoneme.
• The glottal stop [ʔ] is heard mostly phonetically, in word-initial position before initial vowels.
• Other sounds /ɦ, x, z/ may also occur as a result of Arabic and Indonesian loanwords.

Vowels

• Other sounds /ɪ, ʊ/ are considered archiphonemes, and can also phonetically occur as a result of /i, u/ within vowel clusters.[5]

Tone

In Ma'ya both tone and stress are lexically distinctive.[2][6] This means both the stress and the pitch of a word may affect its meaning. The stress and tone are quite independent from one another, in contrast to their occurrence in Swedish and Serbo-Croatian. The language has three tonemes (high, rising and falling). Out of over a thousand Austronesian languages, there are only a dozen with lexical tone; in this case it appears to be a remnant of shift from Papuan languages.

Lexical tone is found only in final syllables.[7]

See also

• Matbat language, a neighboring language with more extreme Papuan influence and five tones.

References

Further reading

• van der Leeden, Alex (1993). Ma'ya: Phonology. Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia. p. 97. ISBN 9789798258015.

На других языках

[fr] Ma'ya