Abun, also known as Yimbun, Anden, Manif, or Karon Pantai, 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 geogra ...

spoken by the

Abun people The Abun, previously also known as Wen and Karon, are an ethnic group of New Guinea, residing in the Sausapor district of the Tambrauw Regency in the province of Southwest Papua. They speak the Abun language. They live in the Sausapor, Jokte, ...

along the northern coast of the

Bird's Head Peninsula The Bird's Head Peninsula ( Indonesian: ''Kepala Burung'', nl, Vogelkop) or Doberai Peninsula (''Semenanjung Doberai''), is a large peninsula that makes up the northwest portion of the island of New Guinea, comprising the Indonesian provinces o ...

in Sausapor District, Tambrauw Regency. It is not closely related to any other language, and though Ross (2005) assigned it to the West Papuan family, based on similarities in pronouns, Palmer (2018), ''Ethnologue'', and ''Glottolog'' list it as a

language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The nu ...

. Abun used to have three lexical tones, but only two are distinguished now as

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 ...

s and even these are found in limited vocabulary. Therefore, Abun is said to be losing its tonality due to

linguistic change Language change is variation over time in a language's features. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify ...

. Being spoken along the coast of northwestern New Guinea, Abun is in contact with Austronesian languages; maritime vocabulary in Abun has been borrowed from

Biak Biak is an island located in Cenderawasih Bay near the northern coast of Papua, an Indonesian province, and is just northwest of New Guinea. Biak is the largest island in its small archipelago, and has many atolls, reefs, and corals. The large ...

Setting and dialects

The speakers number about 3,000 spread across 18 villages and several isolated hamlets. The Abun area occupies a stretch of the northern coast of the Bird's Head Peninsula. The neighbouring languages are Moi to the southwest along the coast, Moraid and Karon Dori to the south (the latter is a dialect of

Maybrat Maybrat may refer to the following topics from Southwest Papua, Indonesia: * Maybrat language * Maybrat people * Maybrat Regency Maybrat Regency is a regency of Southwest Papua Province of Indonesia. It has an area of , and had a population of 33, ...

), and Mpur to the east. The Abun speakers refer to their language as either ''Abun'' or ''Anden''. Several other names are in use by neighbouring groups: the Moi call it ''Madik'', the Mpur refer to it as ''Yimbun'' or ''Yembun'', while among the it is known as ''Karon Pantai'', a term with derogatory connotations. Abun has four distinct dialects: Abun Tat, Abun Ye, and the two dialects of Abun Ji. The two Abun Ji dialects are differentiated by their use of /r/ or /l/. Abun exists on a dialect continuum from Abun Tat to Abun Ji /l/: speakers of Abun Tat are less able to understand Abun Ji than Abun Ye.

Phonology

Abun has 5 vowels: /i, e, ɑ, o, u/.

Tones

Abun has three lexical tones, which are high, mid, and low. A minimal set showing all three tones: High/rising tones can also be used to mark plurals (Berry & Berry 1999:21). *''ndam'' ‘bird’, ''ndám'' ‘birds’ *''nu'' ‘house’, ''nú'' ‘houses’ *''gwa'' ‘taro tuber’, ''gwá'' ‘taro tubers’

Grammar

Abun has bipartite negation like French, using the pre-predicate negator ''yo'' and post-predicate negator ''nde''. Both are obligatory. Example: Like the other language isolates of the northern

, Abun is a heavily isolating language, with many one-to-one word-morpheme correspondences, as shown in the example sentence below.

Vocabulary comparison

The following basic vocabulary words are from Miedema & Welling (1985) and Voorhoeve (1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database: :

References

Sources

External links

A sample of Abun from Global Recordings Network

Abun languages on TransNewGuinea.org
{{Languages of Indonesia West and Central Bird's Head languages Languages of western New Guinea Tonal languages