Karkar language

Not to be confused with Yuri language (Amazon).

Karkar
Yuri
Karkar-Yuri
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Sandaun Province, Amanab District, along the Papua, Indonesia border.
Native speakers	(1,100 cited 1994)
Language family	Pauwasi Eastern Emem–Karkar Karkar
Language codes
ISO 639-3	yuj
Glottolog	kark1258
ELP	Karkar-Yuri
Coordinates: 3°44′S 141°5′E

The Karkar language, also known as Yuri, is the sole Pauwasi language in Papua New Guinea. There are about a thousand speakers in along the Indonesian border.

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 (1983), Foley (1986), and Ross (2005). 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' (Emem)–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.

Pronouns are:

	sg	pl
1ex	on-o	yin-o
1in		nám-o
2	am-o	yum-o
3	ma-o

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(s)'.

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.

Karkar vowels

i	ɨ	u
e	ə	o
ɛ		ɔ
	ɐ
		ɑ

There is also one diphthong, ao /ɒɔ/. Vowels are written á /ɐ/, é /ə/, ae /ɛ/, o /ɔ/, ou /o/, ɨ /ɨ/.

Karkar consonants

		Labial		Alveolar	Retroflex/ palatal	Velar		Glottal
		plain	labialized			plain	labialized
Nasal	plain	m	mʷ	n
	glottalized	ˀm		ˀn
Stop	prenasalized	ᵐp	ᵐpʷ	ⁿt		ᵑk	ᵑkʷ
	plain	p	pʷ	t		k	kʷ	ʔ
Fricative		f	fʷ	s
Flap				ˀɾ	ɽ
Approximant					j		w

The rhotics and glottal(ized) consonants do not appear initially in a word, and plain /t/, the approximants, and the labialized consonants do not occur finally. Glottal stop only occurs finally. Final k spirantizes to [x]. Plosives are voiced intervocalically. Intervocalic f and p neutralize to [β] (apart from a few names, where [f] is retained), and intervocalic k is voiced to [ɣ]. 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 [pɔɣʷeɑ] 'going up'. In some words, the plosive of a final NC is silent unless suffixed: onomp [ɔnɔm̚] 'my', onompono [ɔnɔmbɔnɔ] 'it's mine'.