Arammba language explained

Arammba
Region:New Guinea
Speakers:970
Date:2003
Ref:e18
Familycolor:Papuan
Fam1:Trans-Fly – Bulaka River?
Fam2:Yam
Fam3:Tonda
Iso3:stk
Glotto:aram1253
Glottorefname:Arammba
Glottofoot:no

Aramba (Arammba), also known as Serki or Serkisetavi, is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken to the south of Western Province in the Trans Fly region. Aramba belongs to the Tonda Sub-Family, which is next to the Nambu Sub-Family region and the Suki language. Alternative names for the language include Upper Morehead (a name shared with the Upper Morehead language), Rouku, Kamindjo and Tjokwasi.

Background

The Aramba language is spoken in five villages by approximately 1000 people (Boevé & Boevé, 1999). Children learn how to read and write the Aramba language in preschool, before entering primary school which is conducted in English.

The Aramba people are semi nomadic, and live off the animals and plants in the surrounding rainforest and savannah. They also have gardens in which primarily yams are grown, but this depends on the season (Boevé & Boevé, 1999). There is no cash economy and few basic services. Aid posts for healthcare services are usually understaffed and have no supplies. While elementary school in the vernacular language is available, most do not have reading and writing materials. It is rare for students to go to secondary school as there are no secondary schools around. The Aramba region could be accessed by airplane, or by boat from the provincial capital, Daru island, though this could take up to a week.

Phonology and Orthography

The following tables lists the phonemes of Aramba. Graphemes are included in (brackets) where different from phonemic representation.

BilabialDentalAlveolarPalatelVelarUvular
Plosive/
Affricate
(pronounced as /link/)pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/
pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/ (dj)pronounced as /link/
pronounced as /link/ (mb)pronounced as /link/ (nd)pronounced as /link/ (ndj)pronounced as /link/ (ñg)
Nasalpronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/ (ng)
Fricativepronounced as /link/ (f)pronounced as /link/ (th)pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/ (x)
Trillpronounced as /link/
Approximantpronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/ (y)
Vowels
FrontCentralBack
Highpronounced as /ink/pronounced as /ink/ (ú)pronounced as /ink/
Mid pronounced as /ink/ (e)pronounced as /ink/ (ó)pronounced as /ink/ (è)pronounced as /ink/ (a)pronounced as /ink/ (o)
Lowpronounced as /ink/ (é)
pronounced as /ink/ (á)
pronounced as /ink/ (à)

Major word classes

Verbs

Alongside with nouns, verbs constitute the only open word class in Aramba. Syntactically, they fall into three subtypes: transitive verbs, (inherently) intransitive verbs and derived intransitive verbs. Transitive verbs like -dren- 'pound' are inflected with a so-called absolutive prefix (which denotes the Undergoer of an action) and an appropriate nominative suffix (denoting the Actor of an action). (For more details on absolutive and nominative affixes) Intransitive verbs like -om- 'live' are also inflected with an absolutive prefix and nominative suffix; however, here it is the prefix that denotes the Actor of the action (S), whereas the nominative suffix remains invariant (i.e. it invariantly marks for third person singular). Derived intransitive verbs like ngadenóg- 'learn' are derived from transitive roots (here: < denóg- 'teach'); they carry a detransitiviser prefix (e.g. nga-) and are suffixed by the same set of nominative suffixes as their transitive counterparts (the only difference being of course that these suffixes now mark for S and not A function). Examples (1)-(3) below illustrate each verbal subtype as outlined above.

In addition to subject/object marking, Aramba verb affixes also mark for a complex set of tense/aspect categories as will be outlined in . Furthermore, all verbs occur in two forms referred to as "common root" (C) and "limited action root" (L) (Boevé and Boevé, 1999: 49). For instance, the verb meaning 'pound' has a common root form -dren- 'pound' as well as a limited action root form -dreñg- 'pound'. (The possible differences in meaning will be discussed .) The common root form of most verbs can be used to derive nouns by adding to it the nominal suffix -djó/-dó; e.g. -dren- 'pound' can be nominalized to drendjó meaning 'the act of pounding'.

Nouns

Just like verbs, Aramba nouns present an open word class. With regard to morphology, nouns may optionally inflect for number, taking the plural suffix -a (e.g. yám-a 'thing-s', táy-a 'ancestor-s'). However, there are a few suppletive plural forms (ewesbe 'women' < ewesba 'woman'; nañgabe 'children/boys' < nañgba 'child/boy'; yemenbe 'girls' < yàmànba 'girl'), and the plural suffix can also not be used on verbal nouns like drendjó (< -dren- 'pound').

Reduplication is used on some (underived) nouns to indicate smallness or definiteness; e.g. the reduplicated form of meñg 'house' is meñg-meñg and means 'small house', reduplication of tày 'cassowary nail' yields tày tày 'finger nail', and the reduplicated form of dúme 'yam house' is dúme-dúme or dúdúme '(this/that) yam house'. Compare this with the reduplication effect on derived (verbal) nouns: fàrdjór 'making noise' > fàfàrdjór 'making much noise'; màryadjór 'walking, going' > màmàryadjór 'strolling around'.

Syntactically, nouns can make up an entire NP and they can be marked by a long list of 'postpositional clitics' (Boevé & Boevé, 1999: 53). Some of these clitics have derivational function (e.g. adjectiviser -dje/-sa 'with the quality of'; genitive -ni 'of') while most others carry case-marking functions (e.g. ergative -o; instrumental -m 'with'; comitative -s 'together with'; human comitative -ro 'together with' benefactive -n 'to, for'; locative -ye 'in'; non-human allative -fo 'towards, to, at the place of, into'; human allative -nmbo 'towards, to'; non-human ablative -fá 'from, away from, from the side of'; human ablative -mba 'from, away from'; purposive -r 'for, (in order) to' etc.).

For examples of adjectivising -dje/-sa . For a discussion of alienable and inalienable possession in Aramba .

Adjectives

Aramba is one of those languages with a very limited set of underived adjectives. Boevé & Boevé (1999: 61) give the following list of 13 adjectival forms: xanda 'big', ndamba 'small', tefye 'old', dóbne 'young, new', dermber 'long', negwe 'short', denxa 'far', xexa 'close by', gafu 'good', tútéf 'straight', tofo 'first', górye 'after' and wàrfo 'up'.

Compare: In his famous article 'Where have all the adjectives gone?' (Dixon, 1977), Bob Dixon presented the results of a survey carried out on 20 different languages (among them were African, Australian, Mesoamerican and Papuan languages). 17 languages had only small adjective classes and three had morphologically determined subsets within the larger class of adjectives. The size of the classes/subsets in the 20 languages ranged from 7 to 24, with an average of 13. The following adjectival meanings turned out to be (among) the most frequent: 'large' (found in all 20 languages), 'small' (19), 'long' (14), 'short' (15), 'new' (15), 'old' (14), 'good' (13), 'bad' (14), 'black' (13), 'white' (14), 'red' (8), 'raw, green, unripe' (7) (cf. Dixon, 1982: 7).

Based on Boevé & Boevé (1999)'s list of adjectives, Aramba shares 7 out of the 12 cross-linguistically most frequent adjectival meanings, though it lacks 5 of the other most frequent meanings. At the same time, it has 6 adjectives which have different meanings from the ones (by Dixon) listed above, predominantly in the domain of locational and temporal qualification ('far', 'close by', 'up', 'after', 'first').

The Aramba adjectives can generally be distinguished from other word classes in that they do not exhibit any nominal or verbal morphology. Unlike nouns, they cannot make up an entire NP on their own and they cannot be used with the adjectiviser suffix -dje/-sa. It seems that adjectivised nouns often make up for the limited repertoire of underived adjectives:

Personal Pronouns

In Aramba, free personal pronouns exhibit the ergative-absolutive case marking pattern, i.e. the unmarked (absolutive) forms are used in intransitive subject (S) and transitive object (O) function (cf. third column in Table 3), while the marked (ergative) form is used in transitive subject (A) function (cf. second column in Table 3). (cf. Boevé & Boevé, 1999: 54)

ErgativeAbsolutive
1sg.gènegye
2bènebe
3binó/nafobi
1pl.nineni
2bènebe
3bine/nafabi

Table 3: Personal pronouns in Aramba.

Pronouns can also take the postpositional clitic -we which either functions as intensifier (emphasis) or as reflexive (Actor acting upon himself), e.g. benewe 'you (A) yourselves' or bewe 'you (S) yourselves'. Note that this use of pronouns in context with intensification and reflexivity is analogous to English and its set of pronominal self-forms: He himself had baked the cake (intesifying self-form) vs. He hit himself on the head (reflexive self-form).

3.5 Demonstratives

Aramba has three demonstrative forms: proximal ne 'this', medial fàn 'that' and distal mbe 'that over there'. They can function as demonstrative pronoun (example (9); in example (10), fàn is used with the 'locative' postpositional clitic -ye) or as demonstrative determiner (see example (11)):

Quantifiers

This class includes numeral and non-numeral expressions. The numeral system takes the base 6 and involves the following forms:

ngámbi'one'
yànbaru'two'
yenówe'three'
asàr'four'
tambnoy'five'
nimbo'six'
feté'36'
tarumba'6x36'
ndamno'6x tarumba'
wermeke
}|'6x ndamno'|}

There is also (a more English-oriented way of) counting with the base of five, involving the composite form ngámbi mbày brú 'five (lit. one hand part)'. Thus, for 'ten' you get yànbaru mbày brú '(lit.) two hands parts', for 'fifteen' you get yenówe mbày brú '(lit.) three hands parts', or for '24' you get asàr mbày brú asàr '(lit.) four hands parts (and) four'. Non-numeral quantifiers include nga 'one, some, another', xàyo xusi / bedjidjó meme 'uncountable', yeyenówe 'not much', brámwe 'all', ñgówe 'many', dof-dof 'many' and tús 'plenty'. (cf. Boevé and Boevé, 1999: 63)

Adverbs

Adverbs are uninflected forms which are never governed by a postposition, and do not function as arguments or predicates in single clauses. In addition to degree adverbs like xanda 'very', ndamba 'somewhat' and fefe}} 'really, very', there are also a number of adverbs indicating tense, aspect or mood: 'past tense', ya 'future tense', wàrye 'still', xut 'again', añgu 'no matter', mo 'irrealis', wamo 'as if', yamo 'would, should', manamo 'counterfactual', {{lang|stk|xaxe