Abau is a
Papuan language
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non- Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly ge ...
spoken in southern
Sandaun Province
Sandaun Province (formerly West Sepik Province) is the northwesternmost mainland Provinces of Papua New Guinea, province of Papua New Guinea. It covers an area of 35,920 km2 (13868 m2) and has a population of 248,411 (2011 census). The capita ...
of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
, primarily along the border with Indonesia.
In 2002, there were estimated to be between 4,500 and 5,000 speakers, and this number does not appear to have declined since the first accurate count in the 1970s.
Abau is reported to have
whistled speech.
Phonology
Abau has the simplest phonemic inventory in the Sepik language family.
Pronouns
Pronouns are:
:
The dual and plural numbers only distinguish between first person and non-first person. Also, the third-person gender distinction exists only for the singular, but not the dual or plural forms.
Noun classes
Abau
noun classes are:
:
Nouns can take on different class affixes depending on the physical characteristics being emphasized. Examples:
;''su'' ‘coconut’
*''su pi-ron'' /coconut class.5-one/ ‘a coconut palm’
*''su ka-mon'' /coconut class.2-one/ ‘a coconut’
;''pey'' ‘sugarcane’
*''pey pi-ron'' /sugarcane class.5-one/ ‘one stalk of uncut sugarcane’
*''pey houk-mon'' /sugarcane class.12-one/ ‘one piece of sugarcane’
*''pey eind-mon'' /sugarcane class.9-one/ ‘bundle of stored stalks of sugarcane’
*''pey hnaw-mon'' /sugarcane class.11-one/ ‘one bundle of sugarcane ready for transport’
Like most other
Sepik languages
The Sepik or Sepik River languages are a family of some 50 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik river basin of northern Papua New Guinea, proposed by Donald Laycock in 1965 in a somewhat more limited form than presented here. They tend to ha ...
, Abau overtly marks
grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...
(see ''
Sepik languages#Gender''). The same object can be classified as either masculine or feminine, depending on the physical characteristics intended for emphasis. Example:
;''youk'' ‘paddle’
*''youk se'' ‘paddle ’ (focuses on the ''length'' of the paddle)
*''youk ke'' ‘paddle ’ (focuses on the ''flat nature'' of the two-dimensional paddle blade)
Vocabulary
The following basic vocabulary words are from Foley (2005) and Laycock (1968), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:
:
References
*
External links
Papuaweb- a collection of source materials on Abau (PDF format)
Abau Grammar- paper by
Arjen Lock on grammar of the language (PDF format)
Phonology Essentials - Abau Language- paper by
Arjen Lock on phonology of the language (PDF format)
Abau basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical DatabaseOLAC resources in and about the Abau languageListen to a sample of Abau from Global Recordings Network*
World Atlas of Language Structures
The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural ( phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-R ...
information o
Abau
{{Languages of Papua New Guinea
Upper Sepik languages
Languages of Sandaun Province