Yimas language
| Yimas | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Papua New Guinea |
| Region | East Sepik Province |
Native speakers | 300 (2000)[1] |
|
Ramu–Lower Sepik
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | yee |
The Yimas language is spoken by the Yimas people of Papua New Guinea. It is a polysynthetic language with (somewhat) free word order. It is an ergative-absolutive language morphologically but not syntactically, although it has several other case-like relations encoded on its verbs. It has 10 or 11 noun classes (genders), and a unique number system. Four of the noun classes are semantically determined (male humans, female humans, higher animals, plants and plantmaterial) whereas the rest are assigned on phonological bases.
It is an endangered language, being widely replaced by Tok Pisin, and to a lesser extent, English, and it is unclear if any children are native Yimas speakers.
Phonology
| Labial | Dental | Palatal | Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | p | t | c [c~s] | k |
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ |
| Liquid | r | ʎ | ||
| Semivowel | w | j |
Intervocally /c/ has age based allophony older speakers preferring the stop realisation and younger ones the dental sibilant [s]. After another consonant /c/ is always realised as a palatal stop.[2]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | ɨ | u |
| Low | a |
The high central vowel /ɨ/ is used as an epenthetic vowel to break illegal consonant clusters. Its appearance is often predictable from the surrounding consonant environment and as a result it can typically be treated as an epenthetic vowel even within lexical roots. Adopting this analysis results in whole words with no underlying vowels.
References
- ↑ Yimas reference at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
- ↑ Foley, William. 1991. The Yimas Language of New Guinea. Stanford University Press.