I'saka language

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I’saka
Spoken in: Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea
Total speakers: 421
Language family: Macro-Skou
 I’saka
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: paa
ISO 639-3: ksi
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

I’saka is the language spoken by the people of the villages of Krisa and Pasi in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. It has also been referred to as Krisa, after the village, although this name is not actually a possible word in the language itself. The sole published source for the language is Donohue and San Roque (2004) (see references), although the authors of this have also Identified I’saka material in Donald Laycock's unpublished fieldnotes.

Contents

[edit] Phonology

Apart from segmental phonemes, I’saka and also make supersegmental distinctions in tone and nasality.

[edit] Segmental phonemes

There are the following consonants in I’saka:

  Bilabial Dento-Alveolar Palatal Velar
Voiceless (p) t k
Voiced b d
Fricative (ɸ) s
Glide w j

The segments p, ɸ and occasionally f are heard in non-contrastiive free variation, making them reflexes of a single phoneme (transcribed p). Donohue and San Roque (2004) suggest that there was an earlier phonemic or allophonic contrast which is in the process of merging, perhaps under the influence of neighboring languages and Tok Pisin.

There are five vowel phonemes distinguished by most speakers, although older speakers sometimes also distinguish a high central rounded vowel ʉ

  front central back
high i (ʉ) u
mid ɛ   ɔ
low   a

[edit] Supersegmental distinctions

The tone system makes four pitch contrasts on single syllables, High tone, Low tone, Rising tone and Falling tone. On words of more than one syllable, the tonal system is more complex, and adjacent syllables never show the same tone.

Nasality is a feature of the entire syllable. A minimal pair is /bɔw/-R (i.e the segments b, ɔ and w with Rising tone) heart and /bɔw/-RN (the same segments and tone, but with Nasality added to the syllable as well) none. The word heart is realized as [bow]; all segments of the word none are nasalized, so it is realized as [mõŵ][1]

[edit] Grammar

Personal pronouns show morphological variants for number (singular, plural, and a dual in first and second person), gender (masculine or non-masculine, marked on third person singular pronouns only) and case (see below). The semantic basis for the grammatical gender system is as follows. The masculine gender indicates 'animate male entities and items immediately associated with them', and the non-masculine gender indicates anything else, i.e. a generic, default gender.

I’saka has fairly strict Subject-Object-Verb word order for declarative sentences. Personal pronouns have Unmarked, Nominative, Accusative and Possessive case forms. The Nominative case pronouns are used for the subjects of transitive and intransitive verbs, the accusative pronouns for the objects of transitives. Pronouns in oblique roles take the Unmarked case form. The Unmarked case forms can also be used in place of Nominative and Possessive pronouns, but the significance of the choice is not clear. Nouns do not have case marking in core grammatical roles, although there are suffixes for Instrumental, Accompaniment/Location and Predicate possessor.

Verbs have more obligatory morpholological marking than nouns. There are prefixes agreeing with the subject. A subset of transitive verbs mark their objects, either by means of an object suffix, or by suppletion of the verb stem. Most verbs do not have object marking.

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ where ŵ is incorrectly used to indicate a nasalized w (it should be w with a superscript ~, as in the source)
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