Consonants

The consonant phoneme inventory of Yimas is typical for the languages of Papua New Guinea. Like many languages of the region, Yimas has no fricative phonemes, although fricatives do sometimes appear in pronunciation as variants of plosives. The following table contains the 12 consonant phonemes of the language:^[3]: 38

The phonemic status of the palatal consonants /c/, /ɲ/ and /ʎ/ is not entirely clear. In general their appearance is predictable; they arise primarily through palatalization of the alveolar consonants /t/, /n/, and /r/. However, there are a few words in which these consonants must be regarded as underlyingly palatal. Examples include akulɨm 'wrist', ɨɲcɨt 'urine', and other words, though these historically go back to alveolar consonants, as can be seen in their cognates in Karawari (awkurim 'wrist' and sɨndi 'urine').^[3]: 38

Adjacent nasals and plosives are usually homorganic. Other combinations such as mt, mk, np, ŋt, etc., are rare or unattested; an example is pamki 'legs'. The same is true when plosives appear before nasals at the ends of words or syllables. In this case, the nasal is syllabic, for example watn [ˈwatn̩] (a hardwood tree species).^[3]: 39

Plosives are generally voiced after nasals, with /p/ becoming voiced also before u. At word onsets and before stressed vowels, they are aspirated and voiceless. For example: ɲct [ˈɪɲɟɪt] 'urine', pamki [ˈpʰamgi] 'legs', tkay [tʰəˈkʰaɪ̯] 'nose', kput [kʰɞˈbut] 'rain'. /p/ and /w/ weaken to a voiceless fricative: ipwa [iˈβa]. When /k/ appears before two vowels, if the second vowel is unstressed, then the /k/ is realized as a voiced fricative: amanakn [ʌmʌˈnaɣɨn] 'mine'. Intervocally /c/ has age-based allophony, with older speakers preferring the stop realization and younger ones the dental sibilant [s], as in acak [ˈasʌk] 'to send'. After another consonant, /c/ is always realized as a palatal stop.^[3]: 39

/ʎ/ is in free variation between [ʎ] and [lʲ]. r varies in pronunciation between [l] and [ɾ].^[3]: 40

Vowels

The Yimas vowel inventory contains six phonemes in total, consisting of four monophthongs and two diphthongs:^{[3]: 44–46}

The two diphthongs in Yimas are /aj/ and /aw/.^[3]: 44

The most frequent vowels by far are /a/ and /ɨ/. ɨ also appears as an epenthetic vowel to break up otherwise illicit consonant clusters. In the vicinity of u and also occasionally in other contexts, an u is sometimes inserted instead: mml [məmɪʎ] 'a kind of snake', ŋmkŋn [ŋəmgəŋɨn] 'underneath', maŋkuml [maŋgɯmuʎ] 'two veins'. The appearance of /ɨ/ is often predictable from the surrounding consonant environment and as a result it can typically be treated as an epenthetic vowel even within lexical roots. Adopting this analysis results in whole words with no underlying vowels.

The vowel phonemes are involved in numerous phonological changes.^[3]: 45

Syllable structure

The basic structure of the Yimas word (in terms of consonants C and vowels V) is the following:

#(C₁)(C₂)V₁([(C₃)C₄(C₅)]ⁿ)V₂(C₆)(C₇)#^[3]: 44

Consonants are organized into three basic clusters in Yimas: the initial cluster [(C₁)(C₂)], the medial cluster [(C₃)C₄(C₅)] and the final cluster [(C₆)(C₇)]. Parentheses indicate that the consonant is optional. There are specific phonological constraints placed on the cluster depending on where it is located in the word. In other words, only certain consonant phonemes can begin a word, end a word, or appear in the middle of a word. The iterative variable n allows the medial consonant cluster to be repeated many times.^[3]: 44

A Yimas word can consist of only a single vowel. An example is the verb stem /i-/, which means 'say.' Some of the longest roots are five or six syllables, like /mamantakarman/, which means 'land crab.'^[3]: 44

Yimas has predictable rules with regard to syllabification. In the middle of a word, if a consonant is between two vowels, the syllable boundary precedes the consonant: (V.CV).

If two consonants are between two vowels, the syllable boundary falls between the consonants: (VC₁.C₂V).

However, if C₁ is a stop and C₂ is /r/, the syllable boundary precedes C₁: (V.C₁C₂V).

Whenever three consonants are between two vowels, the syllable boundary comes after the first consonant: (VC₁.C₂C₃V).^[3]: 44

Stress

In Yimas, the primary accent lies in general on the first syllable of a word. In words with more than three syllables, the third syllable carries secondary stress. Below are some examples (where ´ represents primary stress, and ` represents secondary stress):^[3]: 75

If the first syllable contains an epenthetic vowel but the second does not, then the second syllable is stressed. When the first as well as the second syllable contain epenthetic vowels, then the stress lies on the first syllable.^{[3]: 76–77}

Below are more examples, including words with stress on epenthetic vowels:^{[3]: 76–77}

The genitive suffix -na, which is used on personal pronouns, takes primary stress: ama-na-kn [ʌmʌˈnaɣɨn] 'mine'.

Stress is never the distinguishing factor between two words; i.e., two words cannot differ in meaning if they only differ in which syllable carries stress (as opposed to English, which distinguishes between the noun 'désert' and the verb 'desért').^{[3]: 75–76}

Noun classes

There are ten basic noun classes in Yimas, and about six additional minor classes with only a few nouns in each one. Noun classes are either categorized by their semantic similarity or their phonological similarity. Of the ten major noun classes, four are identified based on semantic properties, and six are identified based on phonological properties.^[3]: 119

The ten major noun classes are distinguished by the following properties:

Although some classes are similar in category, no two classes overlap; i.e., no noun is associated with more than one noun class. So there may be words that fall into the semantic categories specified by class I-IV that have the same phonetic properties as words in one of the later classes, but will only be placed in one class. By far, class V is the largest noun class, with nearly half of all Yimas words assigned to this class.^[3]: 136 Many of the nouns formerly in class VIII have become members of class V as the language has evolved.^[3]: 147 Additionally, the rounded vowel that terminates nouns in class X have a distinctive autosegmental rounding feature.^[3]: 158

Nouns within a class share sets of agreement affixes with adjectives, pronouns, and verbs. The adjectival, pronominal, and verbal agreement affixes are appended to adjectives, pronouns, and verbs respectively, depending on the number and noun class of the noun they are associated with. The adjective must have an affix that agrees with the noun the adjective describes, and pronouns are made possessive by appending affixes that agree with the noun of the possessor as well. Agreement affixes for verbs are used to indicate that a noun is its subject if the verb is intransitive, or that a noun is its object if the verb is transitive. As an example, the following table contains the set of agreement affixes for class I nouns: ^{[3]: 123–125}

Below is an example of the class I singular adjectival agreement suffix /-n/ applied to the adjective meaning 'good.' Here, the suffix is used to show that the adjective is describing a class I, singular noun:^[3]: 123

In general, appending the possessive marker /-na/ to a pronoun, along with the appropriate possessive agreement affix, creates a possessive pronoun in Yimas. The following is an example of how a class I singular possessive pronoun is formed; /ama/ is the bound first person singular pronoun, and /-kn/ is the class I possessive agreement suffix:^[3]: 124

Affixation on verbs for noun agreement are discussed in detail in the verbal morphology section.

Pronouns

Yimas independent pronouns are:^[4]

	sg	du	pc	pl
1	ama	kapa	paŋkət	ipa
2	mi	kapwa	paŋkət	ipwa
3	mən	mərəm	məŋgət	mum

Oblique suffix

The oblique suffix (/-n/ or /-nan/) is the only case marker present in Yimas, and "indicates locations, times, or instruments."^[3]: 165 Generally, the suffix /-n/ is used with singular nouns, and the suffix /-nan/ is used with plural and dual nouns, although there are some irregularities. Below are a few inflectional uses of the suffix, which serve to provide a semantic meaning similar to prepositions in English:

Noun compounding

Nouns may compound with a verb or another noun phrase. The head is always a noun, and this head noun determines the number and noun class of the final compounded noun. Compounds consisting of two root nouns are the most frequently used type of compounded noun.

The most common way of forming a compound with two root nouns is by appending the oblique suffix /-n/ to the non-head noun, which precedes the head noun:^{[3]: 171–172}

Suppletion

Instead of using affixation to distinguish number for a noun, Yimas uses suppletion for many common nouns; in other words, the singular and plural forms have different roots for these common nouns.^{[3]: 91–92}

The dual form in Yimas is derived from the singular form, and does not follow the same morphological process of suppletion.^{[3]: 91–92}

Pronominal prefixes

Pronominal affixes on verbs take the place of case markings and word order in other languages.^[3]: 193 The list of all pronominal prefixes in Yimas, arranged by person, number, and A/O/S function, are below. The first and second person pronouns are included to show the similarity with the S forms. There are no true pronouns for third person since the function is filled by deictics, so these spaces appear empty below. "A" indicates the subject of a transitive verb, "O" indicates the object of a transitive verb, and "S" indicates the subject of an intransitive verb:^[3]: 200

Noun class distinctions

Nouns' agreement affixes with verbs are often useful for disambiguating the subject and object of a sentence. Consider the following example, where class distinctions specify the prefixes that are appended to the verb:^[3]: 193

Here, the prefix /k-/ indicates that the object of the verb is a class VI singular noun, and the prefix /n-/ indicates that the subject of the verb is a third-person singular noun. Since 'woman' in Yimas is a class II noun, while 'frog' is a class VI noun, it must be the frog that is the object of the verb 'see,' while 'woman' must be the subject.^[3]: 194

Dative suffixes and ditransitive verbs

Yimas has four ditransitive verbs: /ŋa-/ ('give'), /i-/ ('tell someone'), /tkam-/ ('show'), and /pul-/ ('rub on'). Unlike other verbs, ditransitive verbs allow three pronominal affixes to be appended to them, in order to identify the indirect object or dative case. The dative affixes for first and second person are the same as the first and second person O affixes, but for third person, there is a unique set of dative suffixes.

Consider the example below:

Notice that the first person singular dative prefix /ŋa-/ is identical to the first person singular O prefix, whereas the third person dual dative suffix /-mpn/ is unique.^[3]: 208

Tense, aspect, and mood

The only verbal affix that is required in Yimas is that which indicates tense. Yimas has an elaborate tense-marking system, as illustrated below for the verb wa- ‘go’.^[4]

wa-ntut	go-RM.PST	‘went more than a few days ago’
wa-kiantut	go-FR.PST	‘went a few days ago’
wa-nan	go-NR.PST	‘went yesterday’
wa-t	go-IMM.PST	‘went today’
wa-n	go-PRS	‘going now’
wa-wat	go-HAB	‘usually go’
wa-kiak	go-NR.FUT	‘will go tomorrow’
wa-kt	go-RM.FUT	‘will go after tomorrow’

The tense suffix follows the verb root and precedes the dative suffix (if the dative suffix is applied to the verb). In the following example, the suffix /-ntuk/ indicates that the action takes place in the remote past, and is followed by the dative suffix /-mpun/:^[3]: 236

Reduplication

Yimas uses partial or full reduplication to convey the repetition of an action. In the following example, the root morpheme /ark-/ is the verb meaning ‘break,’ and it is fully reduplicated in order to signify repetition:

Below is an example of partial reduplication of the root morpheme /api-/, which means 'put in':

^{[3]: 72, 318–319}

Serialization

The extensive use of serial verb constructions is another factor that contributes to the verbal morphology of Yimas. There are two types of serial verbs in Yimas. The first type of serial verb is constructed by simple compounding, and conveys the meaning that the two events indicated by the verbs occur concurrently or are causally related. The second type of serial verbs are those that are connected by an intermediary morpheme, and convey the meaning that the two verbs may occur sequentially, but are not strongly causally related. This intermediary morpheme is usually the suffix /-mpi/, which attaches to the first verb, and links sequences of events.^{[3]: 321–322}

Below is an example of the first serial verb type, where the morphemes /kulanaŋ/ 'walk' and /kanta/ 'follow' are juxtaposed to convey that the actions are occurring simultaneously:

Below is an example of the second type of serial verb, which utilizes the sequential suffix /-mpi/ to show that the verbs /ak/ 'push' and /wul/ 'put down' occur in succession:

Word order

Yimas has very free word order. Since the majority of Yimas clauses consists of just a verb, there are no established word order patterns at all.^[3]: 4 Consider the following intransitive sentence, which consists of just a verb:^[3]: 278

Noun phrases do not need to form a constituent on the surface, so nouns can be separated from their modifiers (though the modifiers must then have affixes that identify the noun class of the noun they modify).^[3]: 4

Below are some different word orders present in Yimas:

SOV:

OSV:

Note that the above sentences only differ in the pronominal prefixes appended to the verb /-tay/ 'see'. These pronominal prefixes identify which noun is the subject of the sentence and which noun is the object. So, using different prefixes on a verb can alter which words are the subject and object, without actually changing the placement of nouns in the sentence. Generally, it is the pronominal affix system for verbs that allows Yimas to have free word order, as expressed in the above examples.^{[3]: 193–194}

Yimas also allows SVO word order:

Fixed word orders

Although word order in Yimas is extremely free, a few constituents have more rigid word order in many cases: