Mussau-Emira language

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Mussau-Emira
Spoken in:	Papua New Guinea
Region:	Islands of Mussau and Emira (New Ireland Province)
Total speakers:	4,200 to 5,000
Language family:	Austronesian  Malayo-Polynesian   Central-Eastern    Eastern     Oceanic      St. Matthias       Mussau-Emira
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	map
ISO 639-3:	emi
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

The Mussau-Emira language is spoken on the islands of Mussau and Emirau in the St. Matthias Islands in the Bismarck Archipelago.

Contents 1 Phonology 1.1 Phonemes 1.1.1 Consonants 1.1.2 Vowels 1.2 Stress 2 Morphology 2.1 Pronouns and person markers 2.1.1 Free pronouns 2.1.2 Subject prefixes 3 Sample vocabulary 3.1 Numbers 4 References

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Phonemes

[edit] Consonants

Mussau-Emira distinguishes the following consonants.

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar
Nasal	m	n	ŋ
Plosive	p b	t	k g
Fricative		s
Liquid		l r

[edit] Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

[edit] Stress

In most words the primary stress falls on the penultimate vowel and secondary stresses fall on every second syllable preceding that. This is true of suffixed forms as well, as in níma 'hand', nimá-gi 'my hand'; níu 'coconut', niyúna 'its coconut'.

[edit] Morphology

[edit] Pronouns and person markers

[edit] Free pronouns

Person	Singular	Plural	Dual	Trial
1st person inclusive		ita	ita lua
1st person exclusive	agi	ami	ami lua
2nd person	io	aŋa	aŋa lua	aŋa tolu
3rd person	ia	ila	ila lua

[edit] Subject prefixes

Prefixes mark the subjects of each verb:

• (agi) a-namanama 'I'm eating'
• (io) u-namanama 'you're (sing.) eating'
• (ia) e-namanama 'he's/she's eating'

[edit] Sample vocabulary

[edit] Numbers

1. kateba
2. qalua
3. kotolu
4. qaata
5. qalima
6. qaonomo
7. qaitu
8. qaoalu
9. qasio
10. kasagaula

[edit] References

• Blust, Robert (1984). "A Mussau vocabulary, with phonological notes." In Malcolm Ross, Jeff Siegel, Robert Blust, Michael A. Colburn, W. Seiler, Papers in New Guinea Linguistics, No. 23, 159-208. Series A-69. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
• Ross, Malcolm (1988). Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.