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Yaul language

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(Redirected from Ulwa language (Papuan))
Yaul
Ulwa
Native toPapua New Guinea
RegionEast Sepik Province
Native speakers
700 (2018)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3yla
Glottologyaul1241
ELPUlwa

Yaul, also known as Ulwa, is a severely endangered Keram language of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken fluently by fewer than 700 people and semi-fluently by around 1,250 people in four villages of the Angoram District of the East Sepik Province: Manu, Maruat, Dimiri, and Yaul. Currently, no children are being taught Ulwa, which has led to the rapid decline of intergenerational transmission for this language.[2]

According to Barlow (2018), speakers in Maruat, Dimiri, and Yaul villages speak similar versions of Ulwa, while those in Manu speak a considerably different version. Thus, he postulates that there are two different dialects of Ulwa.[2]

Word Order

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The word order in Ulwa is generally fixed and is not to be moved around. There are two categories for word order, and this is based on if the clause is transitive or intransitive. In a transitive clause, the object follows the subject and precedes the verb, leading to a SOV word order. With intransitive clauses, the subject precedes the verb: SV.

Furthermore, these fixed categories should only be regarded for active voice clauses. If the construction is in the passive voice, the word order is simply inverted.[2]

References

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  1. ^ Yaul at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ^ a b c Barlow (2018)

Sources

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  • Barlow, Russell (2018). A Grammar of Ulwa (PDF) (Ph.D. thesis). University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. hdl:10125/62506.
  • Barlow R (2023). A grammar of Ulwa (Papua New Guinea) (pdf). Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.5281/zenodo.8094859. ISBN 9783961104154.
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