| Yabem | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | Papua New Guinea | |||
| Region | Huon Gulf, Morobe Province | |||
| Native speakers | unknown (2,080 cited 1978) | |||
| Language family | ||||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | jae | |||
|
||||
Yabem or Jabêm is an Austronesian language spoken natively (in 1978) by about 2000 people at the southern tip of the Huon Peninsula in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. However, Yabem was adopted as local lingua franca for evangelical and educational purposes by the German Lutheran missionaries who first arrived at Simbang, a Yabem-speaking village, in 1886.
By 1939, it was spoken by as many as 15,000 people, and understood by as many as 100,000 (Zahn 1940). In the decade after World War II, the mission's network of schools managed to educate 30,000 students using Yabem as the medium of instruction (Streicher 1982). Although the usage of Yabem as a local lingua franca has now been replaced by Tok Pisin, Yabem remains one of the best documented Austronesian languages, with extensive instructional and liturgical materials (including many original compositions, not just translations from German or English) as well as grammars and dictionaries.
Contents |
Yabem distinguishes seven vowel qualities.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| Upper mid | ê | ô | |
| Lower mid | e | o | |
| Low | a |
Glottal stop, written with a -c, is only distinctive at the end of syllables. The only other consonants that can occur syllable-finally are labials and nasals: p, b, m, ŋ. The liquid /l/ is realized as either a flap [ɾ] or a lateral [l]. Syllable-structure constraints are most easily explained if labialized and prenasalized consonants are considered unit phonemes rather than clusters. However, Otto Dempwolff, who greatly influenced the German missionary orthographies in New Guinea, apparently did not sanction labialized labials, preferring instead to signal rounding on labials by the presence of a round mid vowel (-o- or -ô-) between the labial consonant and the syllable nucleus, as in vs. ômôêŋ 'you'll come' vs. ômêŋ 'he'll come' or ômôa 'you'll dwell' vs. ômac 'you'll be sick' (Dempwolff 1939). (Compare the orthographies of Sio and Kâte.)
| Bilabial | Coronal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless stop | p / po-/pô- | t | k / kw | -c |
| Voiced stop | b / bo-/bô- | d | g / gw | |
| Prenasalized | mb / mbo-/mbô- | nd | ŋg / ŋgw | |
| Nasal | m / mo-/mô- | n | ŋ | |
| Fricative | s | |||
| Lateral | l | |||
| Approximant | w | j |
Yabem has a simple system of register tone that distinguishes high-tone syllables from low-tone ones. In the standard orthography, high-tone syllables are unmarked, while the nuclei of low-tone syllables are marked with a grave accent, as in oc 'sun' vs. òc 'my foot' or uc 'breadfruit' vs. ùc 'hunting net'. Tone distinctions in Yabem appear to be of relatively recent origin (Bradshaw 1979) and still correlate strongly with obstruent voicing contrasts (although not in its closest relative, Bukawa). Only high tones occur in syllables with voiceless obstruents (p, t, k) while only low tone occurs in syllables with voiced obstruents (b, d, g). The fricative /s/ is voiced in low-tone syllables but voiceless in high-tone syllables. Other phonemes are neutral with respect to tone, that is, they can occur in either high-tone or low-tone environments.
First person plural inclusive and exclusive are not distinguished in the free pronouns, but are distinguished in the subject prefixes and the genitives.
| Person | Singular | Plural | Dual |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st person inclusive | aêàc | aêàgêc | |
| 1st person exclusive | aê | aêàc | aêàgêc |
| 2nd person | aôm | amàc | amàgêc |
| 3rd person | eŋ | êsêàc | êsêàgêc |
The short, underdifferentiated genitive forms are often disambiguated by adding the free pronoun in front.
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person inclusive | (aêàc) nêŋ | |
| 1st person exclusive | (aê) ŋoc | (aêàc) ma |
| 2nd person | (aôm) nêm | (amàc) nêm |
| 3rd person | (eŋ) nê | (êsêàc) nêŋ |
Verbs are prefixed to show the person and number of their subjects. (The 1st person plural exclusive and 2nd person plural prefixes are homophonous but can be disambiguated by using the free pronouns in subject position.) The singular prefixes also distinguish Realis and Irrealis mood (which usually translates to Nonfuture vs. Future tense). Each prefix also has a high-tone (H) and a low-tone (L) allomorph to meet the tone requirements of each of five conjugation classes. (See Bradshaw 2001.)
| Person | Singular Realis (H/L) | Singular Irrealis (H/L) | Plural Realis=Irrealis (H/L) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st person inclusive | ta-/da- | ||
| 1st person exclusive | ka-/ga- | ja-/jà- | a-/à- |
| 2nd person | kô-/gô- | ô-/ô`- | a-/à- |
| 3rd person | kê-/gê- | ê-/ê`- | sê-/sê`- |
Preposed genitive pronouns are used to mark alienable possession by humans, as in ŋoc àndu 'my house', nêm i 'your fish', nê jàc 'his brother-in-law (wife's brother)'. Inalienable possession is marked by suffixes directly on the nouns denoting the possessions, which are typically kinship relations and body parts. The underdifferentiated suffixes are often disambiguated by adding the free pronoun in front of the suffixed noun. The final -i on the plurals of kin terms is a distributive marker, indicating some but not all of the class to which the noun refers. (See Bradshaw & Czobor 2005:21-29.)
| 'cross-cousin' | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person inclusive | gwadêŋi | |
| 1st person exclusive | gwadêc | gwadêŋi |
| 2nd person | gwadêm | gwadêmi |
| 3rd person | gwadê | gwadêŋi |
| 'body' | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person inclusive | ôliŋ | |
| 1st person exclusive | ôlic | ôliŋ |
| 2nd person | ôlim | ôlim |
| 3rd person | ôli | ôliŋ |
Genitive relations for other than humans are not marked by either the genitive pronouns (for alienables) or the genitive suffixes (for inalienables). Instead, inherent possession of nouns as progeny or parts of wholes is marked by a prefix ŋa-, as in (ka) ŋalaka '(tree) branch', (lôm) ŋatau '(men's house) owner', and (talec) ŋalatu '(hen's) chick'. The same is true of adjectives (attributes of other entities) when derived from nouns, as in ŋadani 'thick, dense' (< dani 'thicket') or ŋalemoŋ 'muddy, soft' (< lemoŋ 'mud'). (See Bradshaw & Czobor 2005:26-31.)
Traditional counting practices started with the digits of one hand, then continued on the other hand, and then the feet to reach '20', which translates as 'one person'. Higher numbers are multiples of 'one person'. Nowadays, most counting above '5' is done in Tok Pisin. As in other Huon Gulf languages, an alternate form of the numeral '1' (teŋ) functions as an indefinite article. The numeral luagêc '2' can similarly function as an indefinite plural indicating 'a couple, a few, some'. The numeral root ta '1' suffixed with the adverbial marker -geŋ renders 'one, only one', while the numeral '2' similarly suffixed (luàgêc-geŋ) renders 'only a few'. Reduplicated numerals form distributives: tageŋ-tageŋ 'one by one', têlêàc-têlêàc 'in threes', etc. (See Bradshaw & Czobor 2005: 52-54.)
| Numeral | Term | Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ta(-geŋ) / teŋ | 'one-ADV' / 'a(n)' |
| 2 | luàgêc | 'two' |
| 3 | têlêàc | 'three' |
| 4 | àclê | 'four' |
| 5 | lemeŋ-teŋ | 'hand-one' |
| 6 | lemeŋ-teŋ ŋanô ta | 'hand-one fruit one' |
| 7 | lemeŋ-teŋ ŋanô luàgêc | 'hand-one fruit two' |
| 8 | lemeŋ-teŋ ŋanô têlêàc | 'hand-one fruit three' |
| 9 | lemeŋ-teŋ ŋanô àclê | 'hand-one fruit four' |
| 10 | lemeŋ-lu ~ lemelu | 'hands-two' |
| 11 | lemeŋ-lu ŋanô ta | 'hands-two fruit one' |
| 15 | lemeŋ-lu ŋa-lemeŋ-teŋ | 'hands-two its-hands-one' |
| 20 | ŋac teŋ | 'man one' |