Wogamusin language

Wogamusin
Region	Ambunti District, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea
Native speakers	(700 cited 1998)
Language family	Sepik Upper Sepik Wogamusin Wogamusin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wog
Glottolog	woga1249
ELP	Wogamusin

Wogamusin is a Papuan language found in four villages in the Ambunti District of East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. It was spoken by about 700 people in 1998.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Open		a

In non-final positions, /u/ /o/, /i/, and /e/ are [ʊ] [ɔ], [ɪ], and [ɛ], respectively. [ə] appears only in unstressed syllables; when it is followed by /w/ it is rounded: [ɵu̯].

Consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Plosive	Voiceless	p	t		k
	Voiced	b	d		ɡ
	Voiced prenasalized	ᵐb	ⁿd		ᵑɡ
Fricative			s		h
Flap			ɺ
Approximant				j	w

Between vowels, /b/ and /ɡ/ lenite to the fricatives [β] and [ɣ], respectively. /s/ is realized as an affricate, [ts], word-initially. /h/ is velar, [x], after /a/ and /o/. Word-finally, voiceless stops are usually unreleased.

Phonotactics

The consonant /ŋ/ only occurs finally. Bilabial and velar consonants may be followed by /w/ when initial, but otherwise consonant clusters only occur over syllable boundaries, with the exception of the unusual word /məmt/ ('snake').

External links

• Paradisec has an open access collection from Theodore Schwartz that includes Wogamusin language materials

References

• Laycock, D.C. (1965), "Three Upper Sepik phonologies", Oceanic Linguistics, 4 (1/2): 113–118, doi:10.2307/3622917