Wandamen language

Wandamen
Native to Indonesia
Region Cenderawasih Bay
Native speakers
 5,000 (1993)[1]
Dialects
Windesi, Bintuni, Wamesa, Wasior, Ambumi, Dasener, Aibondeni, Steenkool, Waruritinao
Language codes
ISO 639-3 wad
Glottolog wand1267[2]

Wandamen is an Austronesian language of Indonesian New Guinea, spoken across the neck of the Doberai Peninsula.

Phonology

Vowels

There are five contrastive vowels in Wandamen, as is typical of Austronesian languages.[3] These vowels are shown in the tables below.

Wandamen Vowel Phonemes[3]
Front Central Back
High i u
Mid e o
Low a
(Near) Minimal Pairs for Wandamen Vowel Phonemes[3]
Wandamen

Word

 English

Gloss

ra go
re eye
ri type of traditional dance
ron ironwood tree
ru head

Five diphthongs appear in Wandamen. They are /au/, /ai/, /ei/, /oi/, and /ui/. 2-vowel and 3-vowel clusters are also common in Wandamen. Almost all VV-clusters contain at least one high vowel, and at least every other vowel in a larger cluster must be a high vowel.

3-Vowel

Cluster

 Wandamen

Word(s)

 English

Gloss

iau niau cat
ioi nioi knife
iai ai kiai dire toenail
iou ariou flower
iui βiui 3sg-write

Consonants

There are 14 consonants in Wandamen, three of which are marginal (shown in parentheses in the table below).

Wandamen Consonants[3]
Bilabial Coronal Velar
Nasal m n ŋ
Plosive p b t d k (g)
Fricative β s
Affricate (d͡ʒ)
Tap/Trill r
Lateral (l)

In literature on Wandamen, orthography (which is based on the orthographic system of Indonesian) diverges from IPA in the following cases:

/β/ is notated ⟨v⟩

/d͡ʒ/ is notated ⟨j⟩

/j/ is notated ⟨y⟩

/ŋ/ is notated ⟨ng⟩ – clusters of /ŋg/ therefore appear as ⟨ngg⟩

Labial, coronal and velar places of articulation are contrastive in Wandamen. Coronal plosives sound relatively dental and may therefore be referred to as alveolar or alveo-dental until palatography can be executed to corroborate this.[3][4] Lateral /l/ and affricate /d͡ʒ/ appear only in loanwords, while all other sounds occur in native Wandamen words. The voiced velar fricative /g/ is a marginal phoneme because it only appears following /ŋ/.

Place and manner contrasts as described above are supported by the minimal and near-minimal pairs found in the following table. Where possible, Wandamen words have been selected to show native (non-loan) phonemes in the environment /C[labial]a_a/.

(Near) Minimal Pairs for Wandamen Consonant Phonemes[3]
Phoneme Wandamen (IPA) English Gloss
p mapar valley
b baba big
t βata good, true
d padamara lamp
k makarabat eel
g maŋgar yell
m mamara clear
n manau already
ŋ waŋgar rat
β βaβa under
s masabu broken, cracked
r marapa rau paddy oat leaf

References

  1. ↑ Wandamen at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Wandamen". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Gasser, Emily A., "Windesi Wamesa Morphophonology" (2014). Linguistics Graduate Dissertations. Paper 1. http://elischolar.library.yale.edu/ling_graduate/1
  4. ↑ Gasser, Emily. 2015. Wamesa Talking Dictionary, pilot version. Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. http://www.talkingdictionary.org/wamesa


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