A Phonology of the Domung [dev] Language of Papua New Guinea With Acoustic Analysis

This synchronic phonological analysis of the underdescribed language of Domung (ISO 693-3 [dev]) identifies 16 consonant phonemes and six vowel phonemes based on a corpus of 1600+ recorded words collected during original fieldwork. Domung is a Trans New Guinea language spoken in the Finisterre mountains of Papua New Guinea. A brief comparison is made to the phonemic inventories of other related and documented Finisterre family languages. The phonology description includes acoustic measurement and analysis of vowel quality (via vowel formants) and vowel length (via vowel duration). Acoustic analysis confirms the presence of phonemic vowel length in a subset of vowels. Vowel sequences and diphthongs are also identified and characterized using relevant acoustic correlates. Syllable and word structure analysis is provided as well as description of several phonological processes occurring at morpheme boundaries. The accent system is also analyzed via both native speaker intuition assessments and acoustic measurement data.