Kamula language

Kamula (Kamira, Wawoi) is a Trans–New Guinea language that is unclassified within that family in the classification of Malcolm Ross (2005). Noting insufficient evidence, Pawley and Hammarström (2018) leave it as unclassified.[3]

Kamula
Wawoi
RegionWestern Province, Papua New Guinea
Native speakers
800 (1998)[1]
Trans–New Guinea or unclassified
  • Awin–Pa
    • Kamula
Language codes
ISO 639-3xla
Glottologkamu1260[2]
Map: The Kamula language of New Guinea
  The Kamula language
  Other Trans–New Guinea languages
  Other Papuan languages
  Austronesian languages
  Uninhabited
Coordinates: 6.951833°S 142.654804°E / -6.951833; 142.654804 (Kasigi)

Demographics

Kamula is spoken in two widely separated areas[3]:80, including in Kamiyami village of the Wawoi Falls area in Bamu Rural LLG, Western Province, Papua New Guinea.[4]

Routamaa (1994: 7) estimates that there are about 800 speakers of Kamula located in 3 villages in Western Province, with no dialectal differences reported.[5] This is because the Kamula had originally lived in camps near Samokopa in the northern area, but a group had split off and moved to Wasapea in the south only around 50 years ago.[6]:14

In the northern villages of Kesiki and Samokopa, Kamula children were reported as preferring to speak Doso over Kamula. A minority of Kamula people in the northern area also live in Dibiyaso-speaking villages, where they are multilingual in Kamula, Doso, and Dibiyaso. Kamula people in the southern village of Wasapea are also fluent in Gogodala.[7]

Classification

The little data that exists for Kamula pronouns does not fit in with the neighboring East Strickland or Bosavi languages (though 1sg nê likely reflects proto-TNG *na), so Kamula is best left as an unclassified language an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea pending further study.

Attested pronouns are 1sg nɛ̃, 2sg wɛ̃, and ̩pl diɛ.

Phonology

Kamula phonology:[9]

Consonants

Kamula has 12 consonants.

BilabialDentalAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
plosive pt̪dk ɡ
nasal mn
fricative sh
approximant wj
lateral approximant l

Vowels

Kamula has 7 vowels.

FrontCentralBack
close iu
close-mid eo
open-mid ɛɔ
open a
gollark: 🍉
gollark: 🍈
gollark: Instead of having humans teach lessons, just have a melon sit there in the class silently judging you.
gollark: I say we replace teachers with melons.
gollark: What would you suggest doing, then? Just leaving it?

References
  1. Kamula at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Kamula". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. Pawley, Andrew; Hammarström, Harald (2018). "The Trans New Guinea family". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 21–196. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
  4. Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2019). "Papua New Guinea languages". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (22nd ed.). Dallas: SIL International.
  5. Routamaa, Judy. 1994. Kamula grammar essentials.
  6. Routamaa, Judy. 1997. Orthography paper Kamula, Western province.
  7. Routamaa, Iska and Judy Routamaa. 1996. Dialect survey report of the Kamula language, Western province.
  8. United Nations in Papua New Guinea (2018). "Papua New Guinea Village Coordinates Lookup". Humanitarian Data Exchange. 1.31.9.
  9. Routamaa, Judy. 1995. Kamula phonology essentials.
  • Ross, Malcolm (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages". In Andrew Pawley; Robert Attenborough; Robin Hide; Jack Golson (eds.). Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 15–66. ISBN 0858835622. OCLC 67292782.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.