The Nature and Underlying Representations of Long Vowels and Diphthongs in Fataluku

Abstract

Fataluku is an underdocumented Papuan language spoken by approximately 37,000 individuals in East Ti-mor, a nation in island Southeast Asia. This paper focuses on the variety of Fataluku spoken in Lospalos, one of the main towns in the Fataluku-speaking region. After providing some background information on the phonology of Fataluku, this paper discusses the presence and phonological representations of surface long vowels and diphthongs. The evidence shows that vowel length is indeed contrastive, but both long vowels and diphthongs are represented underlyingly as sequences of vowels, rather than as true unit pho-nemes.