Kambera language

Kambera, also known as (East) Sumbanese, is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia. Kambera is a member of Bima-Sumba subgrouping within Central Malayo-Polynesian inside Malayo-Polynesian.^[3] The island of Sumba, located in the Eastern Indonesia, has an area of 12,297 km².^[4] The name Kambera comes from a traditional region which is close to a town in Waingapu. Because of export trades which concentrated in Waingapu in the 19th century, the language of the Kambera region has become the bridging language in eastern Sumba.

Phonology

Vowels

The diphthongs /ai/ and /au/ function phonologically as the long counterparts to /e/ and /o/, respectively.

Consonants

Kambera formerly had /s/, but a sound change occurring around the turn of the 20th century replaced all occurrences of former /s/ with /h/.

Morphology

Pronouns and Person Markers

Personal pronouns are used in Kambera for emphasis/disambiguation and the syntactic relation between full pronouns and clitics is similar to that between NPs and clitics. NPs and pronouns have morphological case.

Kambera, as a head-marking language, has rich morpho-syntactic marking on its predicators. The pronominal, aspectual and/or mood clitics together with the predicate constitute the nuclear clause. Definite verbal arguments are crossreferenced on the predicate for person, number and case (Nominative (N), Gentive (G), Dative (D), Accusative (A)). The four main pronominal clitic paradigms are given below.

Examples:

(1)	apu-nggu'
	granny-1SG.GEN
	"My granny."

(2)	ana-na'
	child-3SG.GEN
	"His child."

(3)	Kau	pa.ta.lunggur-ya	na	wihi-na
	scratch	CAU.be sore	ART	leg-3SG.GEN
	"He scratched his leg sore." (lit. "He scratched and caused his leg to be sore")

(4)	Na-tari-bia	nahu	angu-na
	3SG.NOM-watch-MOD	now	companion-3SG.GEN
	"He just watches his comapnion."

(5)	Ningu	uma-nggua
	be.here	house-3SG.GEN
	"I have a house." (lit. "Here is a house of mine.")

(6)	Nyuda-ha-ka	nahu	da	ana-nda
	they-3PL.ACC-PRF	now	ART	child-1PL.GEN
	"They are our children now."

The items in the table below mark person and number of the subject when the clause has continuative aspect.

Examples:

(1)	Lunggur-nanya	na	Ihi-na
	scratch-3SG.CONT	ART	body-3SG.GEN
	"He is scratching his body."

(2)	"Laku-nnguya	ina",	wa-na
	go-1SG.CONT	mother	say-3SG
	"'I am going, mother," he said.'"

Footnotes

1. ↑ Kambera at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Kambera". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. 
3. ↑ Klamer, 1998
4. ↑ Klamer 1998

Bibliography

• Klamer, Marian (1998). Kambera. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 

• Klamer, Marian (2005). "Kambera". In Adelaar, Karl Alexander and Himmelmann, Nikolaus. The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar. London: Curzon Press.