| Oksapmin | |
|---|---|
| Oksap | |
| nuxule meŋ 'our language' | |
| Native to | Papua New Guinea |
| Region | Oksapmin Rural LLG, Telefomin District, Sandaun |
Native speakers | (8,000 cited 1991)[1] |
Trans–New Guinea
| |
| Dialects |
|
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | opm |
| Glottolog | oksa1245 |
| ELP | Oksapmin[2] |
) Map: The Oksapmin language of New Guinea The Oksapmin language Other Trans–New Guinea languages Other Papuan languages Austronesian languages Uninhabited | |
Oksapmin is a Trans–New Guinea language spoken in Oksapmin Rural LLG, Telefomin District, Sandaun, Papua New Guinea. The two principal dialects are distinct enough to cause some problems with mutually intelligibility.
Oksapmin has dyadic kinship terms[3] and a body-part counting system that goes up to 27.[4]
Classification
Oksapmin has been influenced by the Mountain Ok languages (the name "Oksapmin" is from Telefol), and the similarities with those languages were attributed to borrowing in the classifications of both Stephen Wurm (1975) and Malcolm Ross (2005), where Oksapmin was placed as an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea. Loughnane (2009)[5] and Loughnane and Fedden (2011)[6] conclude that it is related to the Ok languages, though those languages share innovative features not found in Oksapmin. Usher finds Oksapmin is not related to the Ok languages specifically, though it is related at some level to the southwestern branches of Trans–New Guinea.
Phonology
Vowels
There are seven monophthongs, /i e ə a o u/, and one diphthong, /ai/.
Consonants
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | |||||
| Stop | Voiceless | t | k | kʷ | ||
| Prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᵑɡ | ᵑɡʷ | ||
| Fricative | ɸ | s | x | xʷ | ||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||
| Lateral | l | |||||
| Approximant | j | w | ||||
| Phoneme | Allophone |
| /t/ | [t], [tʰ] |
| /k/ | [k], [kʰ] |
| /ᵐb/ | [ᵐb], [m] |
| /ⁿd/ | [ⁿd], [n] |
| /ᵑɡ/ | [ᵑɡ], [ŋ] |
| /ɸ/ | [ɸ], [β], [p], [pɸ~pʰ] |
| /s/ | [s], [z] |
| /x/ | [x], [ɣ], [ç], [ʝ] |
Tone
Oksapmin contrasts two tones: high and low.
References
- ^ Oksapmin at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ^ Endangered Languages Project data for Oksapmin.
- ^ The Oksapmin Kinship System Archived 2009-09-20 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved May 21, 2009.
- ^ Saxe, Geoffrey B.; Moylan, Thomas (1982). "The development of measurement operations among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea". Child Development. 53 (5): 1242–1248. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1982.tb04161.x. JSTOR 1129012..
- ^ Loughnane (2009)
- ^ Loughnane, Robyn; Fedden, Sebastian (2011). "Is Oksapmin Ok?—A Study of the Genetic Relationship between Oksapmin and the Ok Languages" (PDF). Australian Journal of Linguistics. 31 (1): 1–42. doi:10.1080/07268602.2011.533635.
- Loughnane, Robyn (2009). A grammar of Oksapmin (PhD thesis). The University of Melbourne. hdl:11343/35153.
External links
- Timothy Usher, New Guinea World, Oksap