Usarufa is a

Kainantu language Kainantu is a town in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. It had some historical significance as an airstrip town during WWII. It functions primarily as a market town for local produce growers and cash croppers. It is located on the "High ...

spoken by the people of the same name in

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. It belongs to the Gauwa branch of the Kainantu family of the

Kainantu–Goroka languages The Kainantu–Goroka languages are a family of Papuan languages established by Arthur Capell Arthur Capell (28 March 1902 – 10 August 1986) was an Australian linguist, who made major contributions to the study of Australian languages, ...

. The language area consists of six villages: Moife, Imikori, Irafo, Kagu, Agura 1, and Agura 2. Its

ISO 639 ISO 639 is a international standard, standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) concerned with representation of languages and language groups. It currently consists of four sets (1-3, 5) of code, named after each part w ...

code is ''usa''. As of 2009, the language was reported to have had about 1200 speakers and no fluent speakers below the age of 25, which makes it an

endangered language An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a " dead langua ...

Phonology

This section is derived from the analyses presented in Bee 1965 in which an inventory of eighteen consonants is favoured. The distribution of these consonants is determined by their position within a stress group, a segment which has one primary

stress Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phra ...

, the placement of which is determined by a

pitch contour __NOTOC__ In linguistics, speech synthesis, and music, the pitch contour of a sound is a function or curve that tracks the perceived pitch of the sound over time. Pitch contour may include multiple sounds utilizing many pitches, and can relate t ...

. This stress group may consist of two or more

syllables A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

. Only can occur as the onset of a stress group, and only can occur finally. In stress-medial position all consonant phonemes can occur, and are realised as and , respectively. may be realised as . An alternative analysis treats all glottalised and geminate consonants as secondary, in which case there are only nine consonant phonemes: Usarufa has an unremarkable five-vowel system. , , and have the allophones , and , respectively. may be realised as following coronal or palatal phonemes.

References

External links

*
OLAC Resources in and about the Usarufa Language
* * Paradisec has a collection of Stephen A Wurm's materials
SAW3
that include Usarufa materials. {{Kainantu–Goroka languages Kainantu–Goroka languages Endangered languages of Oceania Languages of Eastern Highlands Province Endangered Papuan languages

Phonology

See also

References

External links