Phonological Variation in the Miyah and Maybrat Languages in the Vogelkop Area, Southwest Papua

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-613-0_22How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Miyah–Maybrat; synchronic dialectology; phonological variation; retention; innovation; dialect continuum

Abstract

This study is preliminary in the study of synchronic dialectology that analyzes phonological variation, retention, innovation, and divergence between Miyah and Maybrat to explain the pattern of phonological relationships between the two. The research data were sourced from 200 basic Swadesh vocabulary items collected through interviews and recordings of 20 informants from five speaking regions, namely Miyah, Aifat, Ayamaru, Aitinyo, and Mare. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach with an intralingual matching method to compare phonological realization in vowels, diphthongs, single consonants, and consonant clusters. The results showed that Miyah and Aifat tended to maintain a more retentive form, Ayamaru and Aitinyo showed a transitional position with a number of innovations, while Mare showed stronger innovations, especially in the vowel system and some consonants. Patterns of vowels, diphthongs, consonants, and consonant clusters indicate systematic innovation, limited innovation, and gradual divergence that are unevenly distributed between dialects. These findings show that the Miyah–Maybrat difference does not form a completely definite phonological boundary, but rather shows a gradual chain of phonological variation. Thus, this study supports the interpretation that Miyah and Maybrat are more accurately understood as varieties in a dialectal continuum synchronously.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Baru Yosefina
AU  - Muhammad Darwis
AU  - S. Nurhayati
AU  - Ikhwan M. Said
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/04
TI  - Phonological Variation in the Miyah and Maybrat Languages in the Vogelkop Area, Southwest Papua
BT  - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Linguistics and Cultural Studies (ICLC-6 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 257
EP  - 277
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-613-0_22
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-613-0_22
ID  - Yosefina2026
ER  -