Kamula language

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Kamula
Wawoi
Region
Western Province, Papua New Guinea
Native speakers
1,100 (2000)[1]
or unclassified
Language codes
ISO 639-3xla
Glottologkamu1260
ELPKamula
Coordinates: 6°57′07″S 142°39′17″E / 6.951833°S 142.654804°E / -6.951833; 142.654804 (Kasigi)
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Kamula (Kamira, Wawoi) is a Trans–New Guinea language that is unclassified within that family in the classification of Malcolm Ross (2005). Noting insufficient evidence, Pawley and Hammarström (2018) leave it as unclassified.[2]

Demographics

Kamula is spoken in two widely separated areas,

Western Province, Papua New Guinea.[3]

Routamaa (1994: 7) estimates that there are about 800 speakers of Kamula located in 3 villages in Western Province, with no dialectal differences reported.[4] This is because the Kamula had originally lived in camps near Samokopa in the northern area, but a group had split off and moved to Wasapea in the south only around 50 years ago.[5]: 14 

In the northern villages of Kesiki and Samokopa, Kamula children were reported as preferring to speak Doso over Kamula. A minority of Kamula people in the northern area also live in Dibiyaso-speaking villages, where they are multilingual in Kamula, Doso, and Dibiyaso. Kamula people in the southern village of Wasapea are also fluent in Gogodala.[6]

Classification

The little data that exists for Kamula pronouns does not fit in with the neighboring East Strickland or Bosavi languages (though 1sg nê likely reflects proto-TNG *na), so Kamula is best left as an unclassified language an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea pending further study.

Attested pronouns are 1sg nɛ̃, 2sg wɛ̃, and ̩pl diɛ.

Phonology

Kamula phonology:[8]

Consonants

Kamula has 12 consonants.

Bilabial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
plosive p t̪ d k ɡ
nasal m n
fricative s h
approximant w j
lateral approximant l

Vowels

Kamula has 7 vowels.

Front Central Back
close i u
close-mid e o
open-mid ɛ ⟨a꞉⟩ ɔ ⟨o꞉⟩
open a

Vocabulary

The following basic vocabulary words are from Dutton (2010),[9] Reesink (1976),[10] and Shaw (1986),[11] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:[12]

gloss Kamula
head dokupala; tɔkɔnʌlʌ
hair kokosasi; kɔkɔsʌse
ear molo; mɔlɔ
eye inʌma; inoma
nose mu; mũ
tooth ɛpe
tongue te; tɛ
leg ɛtɛ; hetei
louse iyʌ; iya
dog ɛsemala; esemʌlʌ
pig ʌľiʌ
bird tea
egg temoko; temɔkɔ
blood umali; umʌ:li
bone ɛľu; ɛro
skin kapala; kʌpʌlʌ
breast mɛmɛ
tree dali; tʌli
man ɔpɔlʌimi; opřami
woman eya; ɛ̃yã
sun sali; sʌľi
moon mama; mʌmʌ
water yu
fire deľʌpʌ; dřaƀa
stone ewʌľʌ; yawařa
road, path api
name hi
eat dampřoma; tʌɛdɔma
one hatropɛ; hʌtɔlɔp
two dapiamɛtɛ; depiʌmɛtɛ

References

  1. ^ Kamula at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7
    .
  3. ^ Eberhard, David M.; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2019). "Papua New Guinea languages". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (22nd ed.). Dallas: SIL International.
  4. ^ Routamaa, Judy. 1994. Kamula grammar essentials.
  5. ^ Routamaa, Judy. 1997. Orthography paper Kamula, Western province.
  6. ^ a b Routamaa, Iska and Judy Routamaa. 1996. Dialect survey report of the Kamula language, Western province.
  7. ^ United Nations in Papua New Guinea (2018). "Papua New Guinea Village Coordinates Lookup". Humanitarian Data Exchange. 1.31.9.
  8. ^ Routamaa, Judy. 1995. Kamula phonology essentials.
  9. ^ Dutton, Tom E. 2010. Reconstructing Proto Koiarian: The history of a Papuan language family. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  10. ^ Reesink, Ger. 1976. Languages of the Aramia River Area. Papers in New Guinea Linguistics No. 19. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  11. doi:10.15144/PL-A70.45
  12. ^ Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.

External links
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