Biak is an Austronesian

Austronesian languages

The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...

 language which has been classified as one of 41 languages of the South Halmahera-West New Guinea subgroup of Eastern Malayo-Polynesian Languages. It is spoken in Biak

Biak

Biak features a tropical rainforest climate with nearly identical temperatures throughout the course of the year. The average annual temperature in the city is 27 degrees celsius, which is also generally the average temperature of each day in Biak...

 and Numfor and numerous small islands in this archipelago

Archipelago

An archipelago , sometimes called an island group, is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- and πέλαγος – pélagos through the Italian arcipelago...

 in the province of Papua

Papua (Indonesian province)

Papua comprises most of the western half of the island of New Guinea and nearby islands. Its capital is Jayapura. It's the largest and easternmost province of Indonesia. The province originally covered the entire western half of New Guinea...

, Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

 by about 30,000 people.

Sociolinguistic Situation

There are a number of different dialects of Biak spoken on various different Islands the most well-known being Biak-Numfoor, spoken on the Island of Numfoor, these dialect differences are small and mostly slight regular sound changes. Almost all Biak speakers are also fluent in Malay, but very few have a comprehensive knowledge of formal Indonesian.

Despite the comparatively high number of speakers compared to some other Austronesian languages, Biak is still in danger of extinction. Within the main towns the generation of speakers aged between 20 and 50 have only passive knowledge of the language and rarely use the language actively, instead preferring to use Malay. Younger generations do not even generally have passive knowledge of the language. Biak is only actively used as a spoken language by members of the community over 50 years of age or so and even they regularly code switch into Malay . However, within the villages further from town there were still children who were fluent in Biak. Songs in Biak are also very popular throughout the Islands.

There is a strong initiative to promote the use of Biak Language, with translations of various books and teaching manuals as well as a radio station and a number of church services throughout the year being conducted solely in Biak. Since 2002 there has also been an initiative to introduce Biak being taught formerly in schools on the Islands .

Phonology

Biak has a phoneme inventory consisting of 13 consonants and 5 vowels, in which vowel length is phonemic. In the orthography long vowels are written with an acute accent. The phoneme /t/ is very infrequent in its use and some older speakers still realise it as [s] in loanwords..

Consonants

	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Labiodental Labiodental consonant In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	b  p		d  t		k
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m		n
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...	β	f	s
Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....			l
Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....			r
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...		w		j

Vowels

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...	i  i:		u  u:
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...	e  e:		o  o:
Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...		a  a:

All vowels in Biak are unrounded with the exception of /u/, which is rounded.

Person and Pronoun Markers

In Biak pronouns

Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...

 and articles

Article (grammar)

An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...

 are morphologically related, with both situating a given participant by indicating their relative discourse or spatial (e.g directional or motional) status. This is not uncommon for Austronesian Languages. Pronouns in Biak are marked for number

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....

 and clusivity

Clusivity

In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...

.

Free Pronouns

Person Grammatical person Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...	| Number
	Singular	Dual	Paucal	Plural
1INC		ku		ko
1EXCL	aya	nu		inko
2	aw	mu		mko
3	i	su	sko	si (alienable) na (inalienable)

Free personal pronouns in Biak share their main distributional properties with nouns; however, they are somewhat more restricted. They can be used as a complement of a predicate or preposition but they cannot be used as subjects. In the example below we can see the use of the 1st person personal pronoun aya to complement a verb while the second example shows how a free personal pronoun, in this clause 3rd person i cannot be used as a subject:

(1)	Badir	i	ve	aya
	2SG.announce	3SG	to	1SG
	"Make it known to me."

(2)	*	i	d-ores
		3SG	3SG-stand
		"He stood."

Pronominal Affixes

In Biak pronominal Affixes can combine with verbs in three possible inflection patterns (given in the table below), which are partly phonologically conditioned.

	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3
1SG	ya-	y-	ya-
2SG	wa-	w-
3SG	i-	d-
1DU.I	ku-	ku-	ku-
1DU.E	nu-	nu-	nu-
2DU	mu-	mu-	mu-
3DU	su-	su-	su-
3PC	sko-	sk-	sko-
1PL.I	ko-	k-	ko-
1PL.E	(i)nko-	(i)nk-	(i)nko-
2PL	mko-	mk-	mko-
3PL.AN	si-	s-	s-
3PL.INAN	na-	n-	n-

Due to the person marking nature of these affixes, the need for the presence of a core noun phrase in the same clause is negated. Thus the following sentence is still grammatical without NP Rusa nanine, as the verb has a pronominal affix that gives the same information.

(1)	(Rusa	nan-i-ne)	d-ores
	deer	GIV-3SG.SPC-this	3SG-stand
	"This deer stood."

These pronominal makers are person markers and are found in the final position of the noun phrase they determine. They attach to verbs along with a specifier that attaches after the pronominal affix; due to their distribution properties these markers should be considered clitics.
There are two specificity markers, -ya and –i, where –ya can be used in all positions and -i is restricted to positions before pauses. In the example below the article attaches to the verb vebaya, rather than the verb ifrúr because it is the final verb in the noun phrase headed by for.

(2)	i-frúr	for	ve-ba=ya
	3SG-make	fire	REL.big=3SG.SPC
	"He made a big fire."

Nonspecificity, which refers to entities that do not yet exist in this world, or is used to question or deny the existence of an entity, is marked with the articles –o for singular and –no for plural noun phrases. This is shown in the examples below:


Non-specific

(3)	I-fúr	yuk=o	fa	y-ún	i	ve	Waranda.
	3SG-make	ukulele=nonSP.SG	CONS	1SG-take	3SG	to	The.Netherlands
	"He is making/will make a ukulele so that I can take it to the Netherlands"

Specific

(4)	I-fúr	yuk=ya	fa	y-ún	i	ve	Waranda.
	3SG-make	ukulele=nonSP.SG	CONS	1SG-take	3SG	to	The.Netherlands
	"He has made a ukulele so that I can take it to the Netherlands"

External links

• Ethnologue entry
• van den Heuvel's dissertation
• University of Oxford On-line language Documentation
• Open Language Archive Resources
• website on Biak language with texts and recordings

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.