May River Iwam, often simply referred to as Iwam, is a language of East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea.
It is spoken in Iyomempwi (), Mowi (), and Premai villages of Tunap/Hunstein Rural LLG in East Sepik Province, and other villages on the May River.
Phonology Vowels +Vowels Front Central Back Close Mid Open
In non-final positions, , , and are , , and , respectively. appears only in nonfinal syllables. When adjacent to nasal consonants, vowels are nasalized; nasalization may also occur when adjacent to word boundaries.
Consonants +Consonants Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal Plosive Fricative Flap Semivowel
and are voiced fricatives ( and ) respectively) when intervocalic and unreleased when final ( is also unreleased when final). is a nasal flap () word-initially and between vowels. is initially and may otherwise be palatalized . Sequences of any consonant and are neutralized before where an offglide is always heard.
Phonotactics Bilabial and velar consonants and may be followed by when initial. Other initial clusters include , , , , and and final clusters are or followed by any consonant except for or .
Pronouns May River Iwam pronouns:
! !! sg !! du !! pl |- ! 1 | ka/ani || kərər || kərəm |- ! 2 | ki || kor || kom |- ! 3m | si | rowspan="2" | sor | rowspan="2" | səm |- ! 3f | sa
Noun classes Like the Wogamus languages, May River Iwam has five noun classes:
! class !! semantic category !! prefix !! example |- ! class 1 | male human referents || nu- (adult males); ru- (uninitiated or immature males) || yenkam nu-tman class.1-one‘one man’ |- ! class 2 | female human, children, or other animate referents || a(o)- || owi a-oisduck class.2-two‘two ducks’ |- ! class 3 | large objects || kwu- || ana kwu-(o)thand class.3-one‘a big hand’ |- ! class 4 | small objects || ha- || ana ha-(o)thand class.4-one‘a small hand’ |- ! class 5 | long objects || hwu- || ana hwu-(o)thand class.5-one‘a long hand’
As shown by the example above for ana ‘hand’, a noun can take on different classes depending on the physical characteristics being emphasized.
Verbal morphology May river Iwam has four periodic tense suffixes: matutinal -yok, diurnal -harok, postmeridial -tep and nocturnal -wae.Foley (2018:286),
Vocabulary The following basic vocabulary words of Iwam are from Foley (2005)Foley, W.A. "Linguistic prehistory in the Sepik-Ramu basin". In Pawley, A., Attenborough, R., Golson, J. and Hide, R. editors, Papuan Pasts: Cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. PL-572:109-144. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 2005. and Laycock (1968),Laycock, Donald C. 1968. Languages of the Lumi Subdistrict (West Sepik District), New Guinea. Oceanic Linguistics, 7 (1): 36-66. as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! gloss !! Iwam |- ! head | mu |- ! ear | wun |- ! eye | nu |- ! nose | nomwos |- ! tooth | piknu |- ! tongue | kwane |- ! leg | wərku; wɨrku |- ! louse | ŋən; nɨn |- ! dog | nwa |- ! pig | hu |- ! bird | owit |- ! egg | yen |- ! blood | ni |- ! bone | keew; kew |- ! skin | pəw |- ! breast | muy |- ! tree | pae(kap); paykap |- ! man | kam; yen-kam |- ! woman | wik |- ! sun | pi |- ! moon | pwan |- ! water | op; o(p) |- ! fire | pay |- ! stone | siya |- ! eat | (n)ai; (nd)ai |- ! one | oe; ruk; su |- ! two | ŋwis
Notes
External links Materials on Sepic Iwam are included in the open access Arthur Capell collections (AC1) held by Paradisec.
References