Sobei is one of the
Sarmi languages spoken in three villages (Sarmi, Sawar, and Bagaiserwar) near the district center of Sarmi in
Papua province of
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
. Ethnologue (2005) cites two third-party population estimates of 1,000 and 1,850, while Sterner estimates the population at 1,500 (1975) and 2,000 (1987), based on actual residence in the area.
Phonology
Sobei reflexes of some common Austronesian etyma include 'hand', 'star', 'two', 'paddle', 'four', 'father', 'mother', '(his/her) child', 'coconut', 'food', 'betelnut', 'water', 'leaf', 'up', 'down', 'breast', 'sugarcane', 'rain', 'man', 'one', 'three', 'sand', 'fire' (all gleaned from J. Sterner 1975).
Vowels
Consonants
Morphology
Nouns
Sobei distinguishes
alienable possession
In linguistics, inalienable possession (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a type of possession (linguistics), possession in which a noun is Obligatory possession, obligatorily possessed by its possessor. Nouns or nominal (linguist ...
from
inalienable possession
In linguistics, inalienable possession (abbreviated ) is a type of possession in which a noun is obligatorily possessed by its possessor. Nouns or nominal affixes in an inalienable possession relationship cannot exist independently or be "ali ...
by directly suffixing nouns in the latter type of relationship, principally body parts and kin terms. The
morphophonemics
Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (m ...
are often complex: 'my child', 'his/her child', 'our child(ren)', 'their child(ren)'; 'my head', 'his/her head', 'our heads', 'their heads' (Sterner 1987). The following paradigm of the inalienably possessed noun 'father' is from Sterner (1976). The intermediate before the possessive suffix serves as a plural marker. As an independent pronoun, is 3rd person plural ('they'). Some kin terms that do not take the possessive suffixes nevertheless have plural forms ending in : 'uncle-PL', 'mother-PL', 'cousin-PL' (Sterner 1976).
Independent pronouns
Verbs
Sobei verb stems can include a number of aspectual, reciprocal, modificational, or directional affixes, but every verb is minimally prefixed to show the
grammatical person
In linguistics, grammatical person is the grammatical distinction between deictic references to participant(s) in an event; typically the distinction is between the speaker ( first person), the addressee ( second person), and others ( third pe ...
and
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
of its
subject and
grammatical mood (
realis or
irrealis). Mood markers differ according to whether the stem is simple or complex, and some classes of verbs show stem
allomorphy in their
conjugational paradigms. (See Sterner 1987.)
External links
* Paradisec has two collections of
Arthur Cappell's materials
AC1AC2
that include Sobei language materials.
References
* Sterner, Joyce K. 1987. Sobei verb morphology reanalyzed to reflect POC studies. ''Oceanic Linguistics'' 14:146-167.
* Sterner, Joyce K. 1976. A comprehensive look at Sobei phrases and words. In ''From Baudi to Indonesian: Studies in linguistics,'' ed. by Ignatius Suharno and Kenneth L. Pike, pp. 153–176. Jayapura, Cenderawasih University and the Summer Institute of Linguistics.
* Sterner, Joyce K. 1975. Sobei phonology. ''Oceanic Linguistics'' 14:146-167.
* Sterner, Robert H. 1975. Sobei verb inflection. ''Oceanic Linguistics'' 14:128-145.
{{Languages of Indonesia
Languages of western New Guinea
Sarmi–Jayapura languages