Kelabit language
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| Kelabit | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | Borneo |
| Native speakers | 1,750 (2000) |
| Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | kzi |
Kelabit is one of the remotest languages of Borneo, on the Sarawak–Kalimantan border, and spoken by one of the smallest ethnicities in Borneo, the Kelabit people.
Kelabit is notable for having "a typologically rare series of true voice aspirates" along with modally voiced and tenuis consonants but without an accompanying series of voiceless aspirates.[1] It is the only language known to have this phonation contrast, which has been reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. (See glottalic theory.)
[edit] References
- ^ Robert Blust, 2006, "The Origin of the Kelabit Voiced Aspirates: A Historical Hypothesis Revisited", Oceanic Linguistics 45:311
[edit] External links
- Kelabit language at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
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