Austronesian language of northeast Papua New Guinea
The Mussau-Emira language is spoken on the islands of Mussau and Emirau in the St Matthias Islands in the Bismarck Archipelago.
Phonology
Phonemes
Consonants
Mussau-Emira distinguishes the following consonants.
- Fricative sounds /β, ɣ/ may also be heard as voiced stop sounds [b, ɡ] in word-initial position and when geminated.
Vowels
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', niúna 'its coconut'.
Morphology
Pronouns and person markers
Free pronouns
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'
Sample vocabulary
Numbers
- kateva
- galua
- kotolu
- gaata
- galima
- gaonomo
- gaitu
- gaoalu
- kasio
- kasaŋaulu
References
- ^ Mussau-Emira at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Further reading
- 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. doi:10.15144/PL-A69 hdl:1885/145028
- Ross, Malcolm (1988). Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. doi:10.15144/PL-C98 hdl:1885/145428
- Mussau Grammar Essentials by John and Marjo Brownie (Data Papers on Papua New Guinea Languages, volume 52). 2007. Ukarumpa: SIL.[1]
External links
- Kaipuleohone has archived a word list of Mussau language
- Materials on Mussau-Emira are included in the open access Arthur Capell (AC1) and Malcolm Ross (MR1) collections held by Paradisec.
