Karkar language

The Karkar language, also known as Yuri, is the sole Eastern Pauwasi language of Papua New Guinea. There are about a thousand speakers along the Indonesian border spoken in Green River Rural LLG, Sandaun Province.

Classification

Karkar-Yuri is not related to any other language in Papua New Guinea, and was therefore long thought to be a language isolate. This is the position of Wurm, Foley, and Ross. However, Timothy Usher noticed that it is transparently related to the Pauwasi languages across the border in Indonesia. Indeed, it may even form a dialect continuum with the Eastern Pauwasi language Emem. This was foreshadowed in non-linguistic literature: a 1940 map shows the 'Enam' –speaking area as including the Karkar territory in PNG, and the anthropologist Hanns Peter knew that the Karkar dialect continuum continued across the border into Emem territory.

Pauwasi cognates

Cognates between Karkar-Yuri and the Pauwasi family listed by Foley :

Dialects

Dialects are:

North Central Yuri dialect, spoken in Yuri village, Abaru ward, Green River Rural LLG
Auia-Tarauwi dialect, spoken in Auia village, Auiya 1 ward, Green River Rural LLG; and in Tarauwi village, Kambriap ward, Green River Rural LLG
Usari dialect, spoken in Usari village, Auiya 1 ward, Green River Rural LLG
Phonology

The Karkar inventory is as follows.
Stress assignment is complex, but not phonemic within morphemes. Syllable structure is CVC, assuming nasal–plosive sequences are analyzed as prenasalized consonants.

Vowels

Karkar has a vowel inventory consisting of 11 vowels, which is considered very high for a Papuan language.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Close-mid	e	ə	o
Mid	ɛ	ə	ɔ
Open-mid	ɛ	ɐ	ɔ
Open		ɐ	ɑ

There is also one diphthong, ao. Vowels are written á, é, ae, o, ou, ɨ.
Foley lists the 11 Karkar-Yuri vowels as:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e	ə	o
Near-open	æ	ʌ	ɔ
Open	a	ɒ

Some vowel height contrasts in Karkar-Yuri :

ki ‘yam’
kɨ ‘loosen’
ku ‘cut crosswise in half’
ke ‘edible nut’
kər ‘put in netbag’
ko ‘pig’
kæ ‘egg’
kʌʔr ‘swamp’
kɔ ‘again’
kar ‘speech’
kɒ ‘bird species’

There are four contrasting central vowel heights:

kɨr ‘red bird of paradise’
kər ‘put in net bag’
kʌʔr ‘swamp’
kar ‘speech’
Consonants

The rhotics and glottal consonants do not appear initially in a word, and plain, the approximants, and the labialized consonants do not occur finally. Glottal stop only occurs finally. Final k spirantizes to. Plosives are voiced intervocalically. Intervocalic f and p neutralize to , and intervocalic k is voiced to. Phonemic labialized stops only occur in two words, apwar 'weeds, to weed' and ankwap 'another'. Otherwise consonants are labialized between a rounded and a front vowel, as in pok-ea 'going up'. In some words, the plosive of a final NC is silent unless suffixed: onomp 'my', onompono 'it's mine'.
Prenasalized and labialized consonant contrasts:

pi ‘bird tail’, pwi ‘enough’, mporan ‘tomorrow’
kar ‘voice’, ŋkɔte ‘over there’, kwar ‘ground’, ŋkwakwo ‘many kinds’

Plain and preglottalized sonorants contrasts, which only occur in word finals:

ərər ‘sore’, ərəʔr ‘dig a hole’
pan ‘sago flour’, pəʔn ‘blunt’
Writing system

Pronouns

Pronouns listed by Ross :
Object forms take -an, sometimes replacing the -o: onan, amoan, man, yinan, námoan, yumoan. ''Mao is a demonstrative 'that one, those'; it contrasts with nko, nkoan'' 'the other one'.
Pronouns listed by Foley are:

Vocabulary

Below are some basic vocabulary words in Karkar-Yuri.

Works cited

Category:East Pauwasi languages
Category:Languages of Sandaun Province