Kambera language explained

Kambera language should not be confused with Canberra.

Kambera
Also Known As:East Sumbanese
Region:Lesser Sunda Islands
States:Indonesia
Speakers:240,000
Date:2009
Ref:e18
Familycolor:Austronesian
Fam3:Central–Eastern
Fam4:Sumba–Flores ?
Fam5:Sumba–Hawu
Fam6:Sumba
Fam7:East Sumbanese
Iso3:xbr
Glotto:kamb1299
Glottorefname:Kambera
Notice:IPA

Kambera, also known as East Sumbanese, is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken in the eastern half of Sumba Island in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia. Kambera is a member of Bima-Sumba subgrouping within Central Malayo-Polynesian inside Malayo-Polynesian. The island of Sumba, located in Eastern Indonesia, has an area of 11,243.78 km2. The name Kambera comes from a traditional region which is close to a town in Waingapu. Because of export trades which concentrated in Waingapu in the 19th century, the language of the Kambera region has become the bridging language in eastern Sumba.

Phonology

Vowels

FrontBack
Highpronounced as /i iː/pronounced as /u uː/
Midpronounced as /e ai/pronounced as /o au/
Lowpronounced as /a/, pronounced as /aː/
The diphthongs pronounced as //ai// and pronounced as //au// function phonologically as the long counterparts to pronounced as //e// and pronounced as //o//, respectively.

Consonants

BilabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
Nasalpronounced as /ink/pronounced as /ink/pronounced as /ink/
Plosive/
Affricate
pronounced as /ink/pronounced as /ink/pronounced as /ink/pronounced as /ink/
pronounced as /ᵐb/pronounced as /ⁿd/pronounced as /ᶮdʒ/pronounced as /ᵑɡ/
pronounced as /ink/pronounced as /ink/
Fricativepronounced as /ink/
Lateralpronounced as /ink/
Rhoticpronounced as /ink/
Semivowelpronounced as /ink/pronounced as /ink/
pronounced as /ᶮj/

Kambera formerly had pronounced as //s//, but a sound change occurring around the turn of the 20th century replaced all occurrences of former pronounced as //s// with pronounced as //h//.

Morpho-syntax

Negation

Negators are used in Kambera, and other languages, to make a clause or sentence negative in meaning. Kambera has several types of negators. There are six main types of negators listed below.

NegatorsEnglish translation
ndanegation
ndiaemphatic negation
ndedi'not yet'
àmbu'won't, don't' (irrealis negation)
àmbu...ndoku'won't/don't...at all'
nda...ndoku'not...at all'

Ndia 'no' is used for general negation, and nda 'negative' or ndedi 'not yet' are predicate negators. Ndoku is used to emphasise the negation by being placed with the negator àmbu or nda.

Àmbu is used to express future negation, as well as negation in imperatives.

Negators are elements in a clause that are deictic. They can be used to refer to time, space and discourse. Shown below, the negator, ndia, is used to refer to discourse.

Two of these negators, nda and àmbu – with nda being a general negator, are used for nominal and verbal predicates.

Negators into verbs

The word pa in Kambera is derivational and can be added to few prepositional nouns, numerals and negators to create verbs. The emphatic negator ndia 'no' can become a verb through pa derivation. The translation of this verb then becomes 'to deny'.

Example below of how ndia is constructed into a verb in a given phrase:

Noun phrases

A nuclear clause has the predicate as the head in Kambera, and modifiers are positioned at the beginning of the clause. As nda is a modifier it is placed at the beginning of a clause, as a clause-initial negator, before the verb and the rest of the elements of a nuclear clause.

You can distinguish nominal clauses from NPs is through the irrealis negator àmbu and the negator nda, which both never occur inside a possessed NP.

Clitics

The Kambera word nda is also considered to be a pro-clitic as well, as they do not conform to the minimal word requirement and must occur with a syntactic/phonological host. A clitic is a type of bound morpheme which is syntactically free, but are phonologically bound morphemes. They can attach themselves to a stem, for example the negator nda. Nda appears before its host and is used to mark negation. It has a very simple phonotactic properties and cannot carry stress. Nda as a clitic can only ever occur with a host.

In the example above, the negator nda becomes nda u- pronounced as /[ndaw]/, with nda attaching itself to the allomorph u-. Nda is a proclitic that marks an embedded clause in Kambera.

Relative clauses

Negators are also included in relative clauses, but are not a part of the noun phrase.

Pronouns and person markers

Personal pronouns are used in Kambera for emphasis/disambiguation; the syntactic relation between full pronouns and clitics is similar to that between NPs and clitics. NPs and pronouns have morphological case.

Personal Pronouns
SingularPlural
1st personnyungga nyuma
nyuta
2nd personnyumu nyimi
3rd personnyuna nyuda

Kambera, as a head-marking language, has rich morpho-syntactic marking on its predicators. The pronominal, aspectual, and/or mood clitics together with the predicate constitute the nuclear clause. Definite verbal arguments are crossreferenced on the predicate for person, number, and case (Nominative (N), Genitive (G), Dative (D), Accusative (A)). The four main pronominal clitic paradigms are given below.

Nominative Genitive Accusative Dative
1SGku- -nggu -ka -ngga
2SG(m)u- -mu -kau -nggau
3SGna- -na -ya -nya
1PL.INCta- -nda ta- -nda
1PL.EXCma- -ma -kama -nggama
2PL(m)i- -mi -ka(m)i -ngga(m)i
3PLda- -da -ha -nja

Examples:

The items in the table below mark person and number of the subject when the clause has continuative aspect.

SingularPlural
1st person-nggunya -manya
-ndanya
2nd person-munya -minya
3rd person-nanya -danya

Examples:

Possession

Kambera has a possessive or reflexive noun wiki 'self/own', which can be used to mark possession (1).

Wiki has the structural properties of a noun and can be used as a nominal modifier (compare 2 and 3), unlike pronouns which must be cross-referenced on the noun with a genitive clitic (3).

As (3) is a possessed noun phrase, the enclitic attaches to the noun. In possessed and modified noun phrases, the genitive enclitic attaches to the noun modifier (4).

In Kambera, where cross-referencing is used, the noun phrase is optional. A verb along with its pronominal markers constitutes a complete sentence. Pronominal clitics are a morphological way of expressing relationships between syntactic constituents such as a noun and its possessor.

Possessor relativisation

Possessors can be relativised with a ma- relative clause. There are three types of clauses used in the relativisation of possessors.

The first is when the embedded verb is derived from a relational noun such as mother or child. These derived transitive verbs express relations between the subject and the object (5).

The second clause type is where the possessor is the head of the ma- relative clause and the possessee is the subject of the embedded verb (6).

The final type is where the relative clause contains the verb ningu 'be' and the incorporated argument of this verb. The head of the relative construction is the possessor (7).

Normally, the possessor pronoun nyuna 'he/she' follows the possessed noun (8), though it can also be the head of a relativised clause (9).

Possessors can also be relativised in the same way as subjects. For example, in the following headless relative clause (no possessor NP is present), a definite article is present (10).

Abbreviations

GlossMeaning
NEG.irrirrealis negator
NEG.empemphatic negator
EMPemphasis marker
2s2nd person singular
ACCaccusative
DEIdeictic element (space/time)
3sN3rd person singular nominative
3sA3rd person accusative singular emphatic pronoun
CNJconjunction
2pN2nd person singular pronoun
1sA1st person accusative singular emphatic pronoun
RmOobject relative clause marker

Bibliography