On the Orthography of Saliba-Logea
John Hajek
The spelling representation of Saliba-Logea (S-L) is relatively straightforward. Letters used in S-L spelling are given in bold below – alongside their phonetic interpretation.
Consonants:
Plain stops p b t d k g Labialized stops pw bw d kw gw Plain nasals m n Labialised nasal mw Fricatives s h Lateral l Approximants Central y w Approximants
Plain and labialized phonemes are distinguished by the use of ‘w’ to indicate labializaion. Plain voiced stops may be subject to optional intervocalic lenition in fast speech but this is never marked in spelling. p /p/ voiceless unaspirated plain bilabial stop posi ‘white’ b /b/ voiced plain bilabial stop baela ‘banana’ t /t/ voiceless unaspirated plain alveodental stop tata ‘slide’ d /d/ voiced plain alveodental stop dala ‘crawl’ k /k/ voiceless unaspirated plain velar stop kaba ‘place’ g /g/ voiced plain velar stop gege ‘to get lost’
’ // voiced unaspirated plain glottal stop. ao’ao ‘crow’
The glottal stop is only marked intervocalically within words where it occurs rarely but is easily identifiable. Glottal stop insertion – as a predictable phonetic process of varying intensity – also occurs before underlyingly word-initial vowels but is not marked in the spelling. However, productive morphological processes of prefixation allow the initial glottal to surface between vowels, e.g. a’a ‘clean’ > he’a’a ‘to clean’.
pw /pw/ voiceless unaspirated labialized bilabial stop pwago ‘flying fish’ bw /bw/ voiced labialized bilabial stop bwala ‘lie’ kw /gw/ voiceless unaspirated labialized velar stop kwaba ‘coneshell’ gw /gw/ voiced labialized velar stop gwau ‘heap’ m /m/ voiced plain bilabial nasal mata ‘eye’
1 n /n/ voiced plain alveolar nasal nanae ‘type of turtle’ mw /mw/ voiced labialized bilabial nasal mwata ‘snake’ s /s/ voiceless alveolar fricative sese ‘swollen’ h /h/ voiceless glottal fricative hasu ‘hair’
l /l/ voiced alveolar lateral approximant. lohe ‘to look in/after’
This phoneme also has rhotic variants. The first is a lateralized tap that is in free variation with [l]. The 2 nd is a rhotic approximant [ ] that can occur only in fast speech reduction.
y /j/ voiced palatal central approximant. yaga ‘scrape’ w /w/ voiced labial-velar central approximant. wabu ‘widow’
One area of variability in spelling is the use of y and w to mark predictable glide insertion that frequently occurs between underlying vowel sequences, e.g. gonoa v. gonowa . Such glide insertion is usually noted in our spelling – in texts and in the lexicon – but not always, given some variability in pronunciation. It also accounts for variable spellings in general, e.g. Logea also as Rogeia , Logeya . In other cases, the appearance of central glides is not predictable, is clearly audible and needs to be marked, e.g. yeliyeli ‘fire worm’, wuwu ‘lower tree trunk’.
Vowels:
Saliba-Logea has a simple five vowel system: a /a/ low unrounded central vowel bada ‘old’ e /e/ mid unrounded front vowel beda ‘betelnut’ i /i/ high unrounded front vowel biki ‘dirty’ o /o/ mid rounded back vowel bosa ‘basket’ u /u/ high rounded back vowel busu ‘pierce’
Identical vowel sequences occur very rarely in spelling, and only in stressed word- final position, e.g. tii ‘tea’, ee ‘long time’, aa ‘yes’, ye tapitapii ‘she slapped it’. This spelling convention reflects the audible lengthening of word-final stressed vowels.
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