Kembra is a
South Pauwasi language spoken in
Western New Guinea
Western New Guinea, also known as Papua, Indonesian New Guinea, or Indonesian Papua, is the western half of the Melanesian island of New Guinea which is administered by Indonesia. Since the island is alternatively named as Papua, the region ...
by some twenty persons in Kiambra village, Kaisenar District,
Keerom Regency
Keerom Regency is one of the regencies (''kabupaten'') in the Papua Province of Indonesia. It was formed from the eastern districts then within Jayapura Regency with effect from 12 November 2002. It covers an area of 9,365 km2, and had a pop ...
. It is used by between 20% and 60% of the ethnic population and is no longer passed down to children.
Classification
Initial documentation was carried out by Barnabas Konel and Roger Doriot. Kembra data remains unpublished in Konel's and Doriot's field notes.
[Doriot, Roger E. 1991. 6-2-3-4 Trek, April-May, 1991. Ms.]
Foley (2018) notes that Kembra has some lexical forms resembling Lepki, but not Murkim, hinting at lexical borrowing between Kembra and Lepki, but not Murkim. He allows the possibility of Kembra being related to
Lepki–Murkim, pending further evidence.
With more data, Usher (2020) was able to verify the connection.
Phonology
Kembra is a
tonal language, as shown by the following
minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate th ...
.
*''yá'' ‘pig’
*''yà'' ‘fire, tree’
Basic vocabulary
Basic vocabulary of Kembra listed in
Foley (2018):
:
Sentences
Kembra has SOV word order, and also appears to have bipartite negation as in
Abun and French. Only several sentences have been elicited by Konel (n.d.), which are quoted below from Foley (2018).
References
{{Papuan languages
Critically endangered languages
Lepki–Murkim languages
Tonal languages