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Yil is a Torricelli language of Papua New Guinea spoken in twelve villages in Sundaun province.

Phonology

This section follows Martens and Tuominen (1977). Yil has a small inventory of ten consonants:

And seven vowels:

In addition there are the diphthongs /ai̯ au̯ ay̯ ei̯/. /i u/ have non-syllabic allophones in onset or coda position. /ɣ/ is devoiced to word-finally, e.g. /uəmaɣ/ 'hawk'.

Phonotactics

Maximum syllable structure is (C) (C) V (C) (C). Syllables with two-consonant codas only occur word-finally. Distribution of phonemes in different syllable types is shown in the table below.

Stress usually falls on the first syllable, although it is contrastive in some verb forms, e.g. /əˈŋati/ "I bury a man" vs. /ˈəŋati/ "I hurry"

External links

• Paradisec has a collection of Don Laycock's (DL2) that includes Yil language materials.

References

1. Yil at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Martens, Mary; Tuominen, Salme (1977). "A tentative phonemic statement in Yil in West Sepik province". Workpapers in Papua New Guinea Languages. 19: 29–48.

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