Yelmek, also rendered Jelmek or Jelmik, is a language of the proposed
Trans-Fly – Bulaka River family in
West Papua.
Yelmek is spoken west of
Merauke
Merauke is a large town (''kelurahan'') and an administrative district (''distrik'') in Merauke Regency of South Papua Province, Indonesia. It is also the administrative centre of Merauke Regency, and is considered to be the easternmost city in I ...
Regency, between the
Digul River
The Digul River () is a major river in South Papua province, Indonesia, on the island of New Guinea. It is the fourth longest river in New Guinea after Sepik, Mamberamo, and Fly. With a total length of and a drainage basin of .
Course
The rive ...
and
Mbian River. Notable villages are (from north to south) Wanam Village on the
Wanam River and Bibikem in Ilwayab District; Woboyo and Dodalim (Dudaling) Village in Tubang District. In the same district, related
Maklew is spoken in Welbuti Village.
The Wanam variety might be a distinct language.
Petabahasa by Indonesian
Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (, abbreviated Kemendikbudristek) was a government ministry of the Indonesian government responsible for education, cultural, research, and technology affairs. Its formation resulted ...
used the name ''Yelmek'' for the variety of
Mek languages
The Mek languages are a well established language family, family of Papuan languages spoken by the Mek people and Yali people. They form a branch of the Trans–New Guinea languages (TNG) in the classifications of Stephen Wurm (1975) and of Malc ...
used by the
Yalimek people in Wanam Village in Abenaho District,
Yalimo Regency,
while this language is called Yabega.
Phonology
The fricative phonemes are both marginal. appears in only a small number of words, most of which are known to be loans. Speakers are not consistent either between each other or themselves in which words contain , with many words claimed to have it being pronounced without it, and words that lack it surfacing with it, in an apparent case of
hypercorrection
In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a ...
. While Gregor includes in her 2020 thesis, she does not in her 2021 book chapter.
Grammar
Nouns in Yelmek are not morphologically complex. They have gender and number, but these are not marked on the noun itself, but on other parts of the sentence; number and gender are marked on the verb, and number is also marked on attributive modifiers of the noun. Modifiers in Yelmek occur in their underived root form when functioning as the predicate of a clause, but to serve as an attributive modifier within a noun phrase, must take an attributive suffix, which agrees in number with the head noun. Case marking occurs at the level of the noun phrase, not the noun, with the final element of the noun phrase being followed by a case assigning clitic or postposition.
Notes
References
*
*
Further reading
* Donohue, Mark. n.d. ''Disagreement in the Yelmek NP''. Unpublished MS.
External links
* Paradisec ha
a collection of Yelmek materials
Bulaka River languages
Languages of Western New Guinea
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