Namia
Native toPapua New Guinea
RegionNamea Rural LLG in Sandaun Province; East Sepik Province
Native speakers
6,000 (2007)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3nnm
Glottolognami1256
ELPNamia

Namia (Namie, Nemia) is a Sepik language spoken in Namea Rural LLG, Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. It goes by various names, such as Edawapi, Lujere, Yellow River. Language use is "vigorous" (Ethnologue).

In Sandaun Province, it is spoken in Ameni (3°58′54″S 141°45′58″E / 3.981559°S 141.766186°E / -3.981559; 141.766186 (Ameni (Tipas))), Edwaki, Iwane (3°54′24″S 141°45′20″E / 3.906643°S 141.755439°E / -3.906643; 141.755439 (Iwani)), Lawo, Pabei (3°55′37″S 141°46′35″E / 3.927006°S 141.776325°E / -3.927006; 141.776325 (Pabei)), and Panewai villages in Namea Rural LLG, and in the Wiyari area. It is also spoken in 19 villages of Yellow River District in East Sepik Province.[2][3]

Dialects

Namie dialect groups are:[4]

Phonology

Namia has only 10 phonemic consonants:[5]

LabialAlveolarPalatalVelar
Nasal mn
Plosive ptʧk
Nasal lateral l
rhotic r
Semivowel wj

/t/ and /r/ are in nearly perfect complementary distribution with each other.

There are 6 vowels in Namia:[5]

FrontCentralBack
Close iu
Mid eəo
Open a

Grammar

Unlike other Sepik languages, Namia has an inclusive-exclusive distinction for the first-person pronoun, which could possibly be due to diffusion from Torricelli languages.[5] Inclusive-exclusive first-person pronominal distinctions are also found in the Yuat languages and Grass languages.

Vocabulary

The following basic vocabulary words are from Foley (2005)[6] and Laycock (1968),[7] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:[8]

glossNamia
head magu
ear mak
eye eno
nose nəmala; nɨmala
tooth pinarɨ; pinarə
tongue lar
leg liː; lipala
louse nanpeu
dog ar; ara
pig lwae
bird eyu
egg puna
blood norə
bone lak
skin urarə
breast mu
tree mi
man lu
woman ere
sun wuluwa
moon yem
water ijo; ito
fire ipi
stone lijei
name ilei
eat (t)
one tipia
two pəli

References

  1. ↑ Namia at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ↑ 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.
  3. ↑ United Nations in Papua New Guinea (2018). "Papua New Guinea Village Coordinates Lookup". Humanitarian Data Exchange. 1.31.9.
  4. ↑ Steer, Martin (2005). Languages of the Upper Sepik and Central New Guinea (PDF). Canberra: Australian National University.
  5. 1 2 3 Foley, William A. (2018). "The Languages of the Sepik-Ramu Basin and Environs". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 197–432. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
  6. ↑ Foley, W.A. "Linguistic prehistory in the Sepik-Ramu basin". In Pawley, A., Attenborough, R., Golson, J. and Hide, R. editors, Papuan Pasts: Cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. PL-572:109-144. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 2005.
  7. ↑ Laycock, Donald C. 1968. Languages of the Lumi Subdistrict (West Sepik District), New Guinea. Oceanic Linguistics, 7 (1): 36-66.
  8. ↑ Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.