Oksapmin is a Trans–New Guinea language spoken in Oksapmin Rural LLG,

Telefomin District Telefomin District is a Districts and LLGs of Papua New Guinea, district of Sandaun Province of Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Telefomin. Its inhabitants include the Mountain Ok people, a cultural group with numerous sub-groups including the Te ...

, Sandaun,

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 ...

. The two principal dialects are distinct enough to cause some problems with mutual intelligibility. Oksapmin has dyadic kinship termsThe Oksapmin Kinship System
, retrieved May 21, 2009. and a body-part counting system that goes up to 27..

Classification

Oksapmin has been influenced by the Mountain Ok languages (the name "Oksapmin" is from Telefol), and the similarities with those languages were attributed to borrowing in the classifications of both

Stephen Wurm Stephen Adolphe Wurm ( hu, Wurm István Adolf, ; 19 August 1922 – 24 October 2001) was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist. Early life Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and the Hungarian- ...

(1975) and Malcolm Ross (2005), where Oksapmin was placed as an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea. Loughnane (2009) and Loughnane and Fedden (2011) conclude that it is related to the Ok languages, though those languages share innovative features not found in Oksapmin. Usher finds Oksapmin is not related to the Ok languages specifically, though it is related at some level to the southwestern branches of Trans–New Guinea.

Phonology

Vowels

There are six

monophthong A monophthong ( ; , ) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation. The monophthongs can be contrasted with diphthongs, w ...

s, , and one

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...

, .

Consonants

Tone

Oksapmin contrasts two tones: high and low.

References

External links

* Timothy Usher, New Guinea World
Oksap
{{Languages of Papua New Guinea Languages of Sandaun Province Languages of Southern Highlands Province Languages of Western Province (Papua New Guinea) Ok languages Trans–New Guinea languages