Yalë language
Language spoken in Papua New Guinea
The Yalë language, also known as Yadë, Nagatman, or Nagatiman, is spoken in northwestern Papua New Guinea. It may be related to the Kwomtari languages, but Palmer (2018) classifies it as a language isolate.
There were 600 speakers in 1991 and 30 monolinguals at an unrecorded date. Yalë is spoken in Nagatiman (3°44′42″S 141°28′18″E / 3.744917°S 141.471593°E / -3.744917; 141.471593 (Nagatiman)) and several other villages of Green River Rural LLG in Sandaun Province. Foley (2018) reports a total of six villages.
Yalë is in extensive trade and contact with Busa, a likely language isolate spoken just to the south. Yalë has complex verbal inflection and SOV word order.
01Phonology
The linguist Aidan Aannested, in a work from 2020, gives the following phonology for Yadë (Yalë):
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m ⟨m⟩ | n ⟨n⟩ | ||||
| Plosive | Voiceless | p ⟨p⟩ | t ⟨t⟩ | k ⟨k⟩ | ||
| Voiced | b ~ β ⟨b⟩ | d ~ ɺ ⟨d/l⟩ | ɡ ~ ɣ ⟨g⟩ | |||
| Fricative | ɸ ⟨f⟩ | s ⟨s⟩ | h ⟨h⟩ | |||
| Affricate | d͡ʑ ~ ʑ ⟨j⟩ | |||||
| Approximant | w ⟨w⟩ | j ⟨y⟩ | ||||
- "dd" is pronounced as a trilled [r(ː)]
- See the source for more information regarding allophones- the ones listed are just the common occurrences.
- Each vowel has a wide range of possible realizations, most notably /u/, which has:
- /y/, /ʉ/, /ʊ/, and /u̟/
02Grammar
Verbs
Verbal conjugation affixes are:
- -d: generic marker
- -t: transitive marker
- -b: intransitive marker
Nouns
Most nouns are not pluralized, and only nouns with human or animate reference or with high local salience may be pluralized using the suffix -rɛ ~ -re:
- nɛba 'child' → nɛba-re /child-PL/ ‘children’
- ama 'dog' → ama-re /dog-PL/ ‘dogs’
- dife 'village' → dife-rɛ /village-PL/ ‘villages’
Other plural nouns are irregular:
- aya 'father' → aya-nino /father-PL/ ‘fathers’
- mise ‘woman’ → one ‘women’
Personal pronouns
The personal pronouns are:
Person Singular Plural 1st bo se ~ sebo 2nd ju so ~ sobo 3rd bu
03Basic vocabulary
The following basic vocabulary words are from Conrad and Dye (1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:
gloss Yalë head ʌsu hair ʌsʌǏahuᵽa ear ąhuǏuʔ eye na:ba nose yɛlu tongue aǏižiʔ louse mibaʔ dog kaliʔ pig gǏɛǏiʔ bird pʋlɛʔ egg kah blood wi:nuʔ bone ɛlɛ:b̶u skin žib̶uʔ breast ma:ba tree ti: woman mɩsɛʔ water tuʔ fire ahuʐiʔ stone anɩziʔ road, path ařʌgɛʔ eat hiɛǏɛ one žuwaʔ two teǏɛʔ
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Yalë language”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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