HUA
(Eastern Highlands of New Guinea; Trans-New Guinea, Kamano-Yagaria)		 For more information about metathesis in this language, click on the following links:
Summary:
Synchronic
Two adjacent consonants optionally metathesize.
Examples
Conditions
Motivation
Related processes
Comments
References
Examples:
aigmeroga                     ~         aimgeroga  'dung heap'
ormi-                           ~         omri- 'come down'
pkai-                            ~         kpai-  'grow, nurture, develop'
The form on the left is more common.
Conditions:
Editor's notes: 
All of the examples provided in Haiman (1980) involve a labial consonant, i.e. [v, m, b, p], next to a non-homorganic consonant.
All consonants involved are immediately adjacent to one another.
Motivation:
Editor's notes: It is interesting to note that when one of two metathesizing consonants is a sonorant and the other is an obstruent, the order obstruent + sonorant is more common. In all of the examples provided by Haiman, of which a subset appear above, the obstruent/sonorant sequence occurs between vowels. Sequences of two sonorants or two obstruents can appear intervocalically or at the beginning of a word. In cases in which both consonants share the same manner of articulation, the order in which the consonants appear doesn't, at this point, seem predictable.
Related information:
No information currently available.
Comments:
Last updated: 3/18/2002
References:
  • Haiman, John. 1980. HUA: A Papuan Language of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. Studies in Language Companion Series. Vol. 5. Amsterdam/John Benjamins B.V.
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