Yabem language

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Yabem
Spoken in:	Papua New Guinea
Region:	Huon Gulf, Morobe Province
Total speakers:	2,084 (1978 McElhanon)
Language family:	Austronesian  Malayo-Polynesian   Central-Eastern    Eastern     Oceanic      Western       North New Guinea        Huon Gulf         North Huon Gulf          Yabem
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:
ISO 639-3:	jae
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Yabem or Jabêm is an Austronesian language spoken natively (in 1978) by about 2000 people at the southern tip of the Huon Peninsula in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. However, Yabem was adopted as local lingua franca for evangelical and educational purposes by the German Lutheran missionaries who first arrived at Simbang, a Yabem-speaking village, in 1886.

By 1939, it was spoken by as many as 15,000 people, and understood by as many as 100,000 (Zahn 1940). In the decade after World War II, the mission's network of schools managed to educate 30,000 students using Yabem as the medium of instruction (Streicher 1982). Although the usage of Yabem as a local lingua franca has now been replaced by Tok Pisin, Yabem remains one of the best documented Austronesian languages, with extensive instructional and liturgical materials (including many original compositions, not just translations from German or English) as well as grammars and dictionaries.

Contents 1 Phonology 1.1 Vowels (orthographic) 1.2 Consonants (orthographic) 2 Morphology 2.1 Pronouns and person markers 2.1.1 Free pronouns 2.1.2 Genitive pronouns 2.2 Numerals 3 External links 4 References

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Vowels (orthographic)

Yabem distinguishes the seven vowel qualities.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Upper mid	ê		ô
Lower mid	e		o
Low		a

[edit] Consonants (orthographic)

Glottal stop, written with a -c, is only distinctive at the end of syllables. The only other consonants that can occur syllable-finally are labials and nasals: p, b, m, ŋ. The liquid /l/ is realized as either a flap [ɾ] or a lateral [l]. Syllable-structure constraints are most easily explained if labialized and prenasalized consonants are considered unit phonemes rather than clusters. However, Otto Dempwolff, who greatly influenced the German missionary orthographies in New Guinea, apparently did not sanction labialized labials, preferring instead to signal rounding on labials by the presence of a round mid vowel (-o- or -ô-) between the labial consonant and the syllable nucleus, as in vs. ômôêŋ 'you'll come' vs. ômêŋ 'he'll come' or ômôa 'you'll dwell' vs. ômac 'you'll be sick' (Dempwolff 1939). (Compare the orthographies of Sio and Kâte.)

	Bilabial	Coronal	Velar	Glottal
Voiceless stop	p / po-/pô-	t	k / kw	-c
Voiced stop	b / bo-/bô-	d	g / gw
Prenasalized	mb / mbo-/mbô-	nd	ŋg / ŋgw
Nasal	m / mo-/mô-	n	ŋ
Fricative		s
Lateral		l
Approximant	w	j

[edit] Morphology

[edit] Pronouns and person markers

[edit] Free pronouns

First person inclusive and exclusive are not distinguished in the free pronouns, but are distinguished in the subject prefixes and the genitives.

Person	Singular	Plural	Dual
1st person inclusive		aêàc	aêàgêc
1st person exclusive	aê	aêàc	aêàgêc
2nd person	aôm	amàc	amàgêc
3rd person	eŋ	êsêàc	êsêàgêc

[edit] Genitive pronouns

The short, underdifferentiated genitive forms are often disambiguated by adding the free pronoun in front.

Person	Singular	Plural
1st person inclusive		(aêàc) nêŋ
1st person exclusive	(aê) ŋoc	(aêàc) ma
2nd person	(aôm) nêm	(amàc) nêm
3rd person	(eŋ) nê	(êsêàc) nêŋ

[edit] Numerals

Traditional counting practices started with the digits of one hand, then continued on the other hand, and then the feet to reach '20', which translates as 'one person'. Higher numbers are multiples of 'one person'. Nowadays, most counting above '5' is done in Tok Pisin. As in other Huon Gulf languages, an alternate form of the numeral '1' (teŋ) functions as an indefinite article. The numeral luagêc '2' can similarly function as an indefinite plural indicating 'a couple, a few, some'. The numeral root ta '1' suffixed with the adverbial marker -geŋ renders 'one, only one', while the numeral '2' similarly suffixed (luàgêc-geŋ) renders 'only a few'. Reduplicated numerals form distributives: tageŋ-tageŋ 'one by one', têlêàc-têlêàc 'in threes', etc. (See Bradshaw & Czobor 2005: 52-54.)

Numeral	Term	Gloss
1	ta(-geŋ) / teŋ	'one-ADV' / 'a(n)'
2	luàgêc	'two'
3	têlêàc	'three'
4	àclê	'four'
5	lemeŋ-teŋ	'hand-one'
6	lemeŋ-teŋ ŋanô ta	'hand-one fruit one'
7	lemeŋ-teŋ ŋanô luàgêc	'hand-one fruit two'
8	lemeŋ-teŋ ŋanô têlêàc	'hand-one fruit three'
9	lemeŋ-teŋ ŋanô àclê	'hand-one fruit four'
10	lemeŋ-lu ~ lemelu	'hands-two'
11	lemeŋ-lu ŋanô ta	'hands-two fruit one'
15	lemeŋ-lu ŋa-lemeŋ-teŋ	'hands-two its-hands-one'
20	ŋac teŋ	'man one'

[edit] External links

• Yabem language at Ethnologue
• Yabem Wordlist at the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database

[edit] References

• Bisang, Walter (1986). "Die Verb-Serialisierung im Jabêm." Lingua 70:131–162.
• Bradshaw, Joel (1979). "Obstruent harmony and tonogenesis in Jabêm." Lingua 49:189–205.
• Bradshaw, Joel (1983). "Dempwolff’s description of verb serialization in Yabem." In Amram Halim, Lois Carrington, and S. A. Wurm, eds., Papers from the Third International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, vol. 4, Thematic variation, 177–198. Series C-77. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
• Bradshaw, Joel (1993). "Subject relationships within serial verb constructions in Numbami and Jabêm." Oceanic Linguistics 32:133–161.
• Bradshaw, Joel (1998). "Squib: Another look at velar lenition and tonogenesis in Jabêm." Oceanic Linguistics 37:178-181.
• Bradshaw, Joel (1999). "Null subjects, switch-reference, and serialization in Jabêm and Numbami." Oceanic Linguistics 38:270–296.
• Bradshaw, Joel (2001). "The elusive shape of the realis/irrealis distinction in Jabêm." In Joel Bradshaw and Kenneth L. Rehg, eds., Issues in Austronesian morphology: A focusschrift for Byron W. Bender, 75–85. Pacific Linguistics 519. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
• Bradshaw, Joel, and Francisc Czobor (2005). Otto Dempwolff's grammar of the Jabêm language in New Guinea. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication No. 32. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
• Dempwolff, Otto (1939). Grammatik der Jabêm-Sprache auf Neuguinea. Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiet der Auslandskunde, vol. 50. Hamburg: Friederichsen de Gruyter.
• Ross, Malcolm (1993). "Tonogenesis in the North Huon Gulf chain." In Jerold A. Edmondson and Kenneth J. Gregerson, eds., Tonality in Austronesian languages, 133–153. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication No. 24. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
• Streicher, J. F. (1982). Jabêm–English dictionary. Series C-68. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. (First compiled by Heinrich Zahn in 1917; later translated and revised by J. F. Streicher.)
• Zahn, Heinrich (1940). Lehrbuch der Jabêmsprache (Deutsch-Neuguinea). Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprache, Beiheft 21. Berlin: Reimer.