Abau language


Abau is a Papuan language spoken in southern Sandaun Province of Papua New Guinea, primarily along the border with Indonesia.
In 2002, there were estimated to be between 4,500 and 5,000 speakers, and this number does not appear to have declined since the first accurate count in the 1970s.
Abau is reported to have whistled speech.

Phonology

Abau has the simplest phonemic inventory in the Sepik language family.
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BilabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
Nasal
Plosive
Fricative
Flap
Semivowel

Pronouns

Pronouns are:
The dual and plural numbers only distinguish between first person and non-first person. Also, the third-person gender distinction exists only for the singular, but not the dual or plural forms.

Noun classes

Abau noun classes are:
Nouns can take on different class affixes depending on the physical characteristics being emphasized. Examples:
;su ‘coconut’
  • su pi-ron /coconut class.5-one/ ‘a coconut palm’
  • su ka-mon /coconut class.2-one/ ‘a coconut’
;pey ‘sugarcane’
  • pey pi-ron /sugarcane class.5-one/ ‘one stalk of uncut sugarcane’
  • pey houk-mon /sugarcane class.12-one/ ‘one piece of sugarcane’
  • pey eind-mon /sugarcane class.9-one/ ‘bundle of stored stalks of sugarcane’
  • pey hnaw-mon /sugarcane class.11-one/ ‘one bundle of sugarcane ready for transport’
Like most other Sepik languages, Abau overtly marks grammatical gender. The same object can be classified as either masculine or feminine, depending on the physical characteristics intended for emphasis. Example:
;youk ‘paddle’
Abau had three periodic tense suffixes: diurnal -kok, postmeridial -ropay and nocturnal -nayr

Vocabulary

The following basic vocabulary words are from Foley and Laycock, as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database: