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The Yele language, or ''Yélî Dnye'', is the language of Rossel island, the easternmost island in the Louisiade Archipelago off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. There were some 4,000 speakers in 1998, comprising the entire ethnic population.〔 For now it is best considered a language isolate, but it may turn out to be related to the Anêm and Ata language isolates of New Britain in a tentative Yele – West New Britain family. Typologically, however, it is more similar to the languages of southern New Guinea than to those of New Britain. Yele is one of the better-known East Papuan languages. It has been studied extensively by cognitive linguists. It has an extensive set of spatial postpositions. Yele has eleven postpositions equivalent to English ''on''; using different ones depending factors such as whether the object is on a table (horizontal), a wall (vertical), or atop a peak; whether or not it is attached to the surface; and whether it is solid or granular (distributed). ==Phonology== Yele has a uniquely rich set of doubly articulated consonants. In nearly all the languages of the world which have them, these are labial–velar consonants—that is, they are pronounced simultaneously with the lips and the back of the tongue, such as a simultaneous ''p'' and ''k''. Only Yele is known to contrast other doubly articulated positions: besides labial–velar, it has two distinct ''labial–alveolar'' positions (laminal/dental and apical/postalveolar), as illustrated below. The two coronal articulations are (1) laminal/dental and slightly pre-alveolar, sometimes transcribed (unicode:tʸ), (unicode:nʸ), etc. (see denti-alveolar consonant), and (2) apical and slightly post-alveolar, sometimes transcribed (unicode:ṭ), (unicode:ṇ) etc., (unicode:ʈ), (unicode:ɳ), etc., or simply t, n, etc. There are two other doubly articulated consonants, as in ''lvámê'' (a type of cane) and . The Yele ''w'' is labial–dental . These doubly articulated consonants contrast with labialization (SIL 1992/2004). Many articulations may also be palatalized. Stops may be either pre- or (except perhaps for ) post-nasalized. The consonant inventory includes the following, It is not clear how many of the labial–velar and labial–alveolar consonants such as may also be labialized or palatalized. Nor is it clear how many of these articulations occur prenasalized or with nasal release, but besides those noted above, the following are noted in SIL 1992/2004: . The oral stops (that is, apart from dental ) are voiced between vowels and when prenasalized. The (post-)alveolar is further reduced to an (apparently dental) flap between vowels. Some of the palatalized alveolar stops are pronounced as fricatives or affricates, such as (or perhaps ) and (or perhaps ), but SIL (1992/2004) contradicts itself as to which these are. Yele also has many vowels, an unusually large number of which occur nasalized: (The distinction between open-mid and close-mid nasal vowels is rather unusual, and SIL (1992/2004) provides no examples of the close-mid vowels. They also fail to provide an example of .) Vowels may occur long or short. SIL (1992/2004) interprets other vowel sequences as being separated by rather than as diphthongs. Given that vowels may be long or short, Yele syllables may only be of the form ''vowel'' or ''consonant-vowel,'' and in the former case, apparently only or . 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Yele language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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