Nen (or Nen Zi, Nenium, Wekamara) is a Yam language spoken in the Bimadbn village in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea, with 250 speakers as of a 2002 SIL survey. It is situated between the speech communities of Nambu and Idi.
Nen | |
---|---|
Region | Western Province (Papua New Guinea) |
Native speakers | 250 (2002)[1] |
Language family | Yam
|
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | nqn |
Glottolog | nenn1238 |
ELP | Nen |
Nen has unusual lexicalization patterns in its verbs. It has very few intransitive verbs, and where some verbs would be intransitive in most other languages, Nen has a class of morphologically "middle" verbs in their place. Many of the few intransitive verbs that Nen does have are positional verbs, which refer to spatial positions and postures.[2]
The Nen phonemic inventory includes 22 consonants:[3]
labial | alveolar | palatal | velar | labiovelar | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Stop | voiced | p | t | k | k͡p | |
voiceless | b | d | ɡ | g͡b | ||
prenasalized | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᵑɡ | |||
Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ͡m | ||
Fricative | voiceless | s | ||||
voiced | z | |||||
prenasalized | ⁿz | |||||
Approximant | liquid | r, l | ||||
semivowel | j | w |
The realization of different grammatical meanings of Number in the noun depends on the syntactic function and case marking. The noun in the dative overtly differentiates 4 grammatical meaning of number: singular, dual, paucal and plural; the noun in the oblique shows singular ~ dual ~ paucal/plural opposition, while the ergative − singular ~ dual/paucal ~ plural, and the noun in absolutive cannot be distinguished according to number.[4]
The verb expresses three grammatical meaning of motion: neutral − /Ø-/, towards speaker /n-/, and away from speaker /ng-/: n-Ø-armbte '(s)he is ascending' ~ n-n-armbte '(s)he is coming up (towards speaker) ~ n-ng-armbte '(s)he is going up (away from speaker).[4]: 1056
The constituent order in clause is SOV. Case marking shows ergative/absolutive alignment.[4]
According to indexing, the verbs can be either prefixing (an undergoer argument is cross-referenced by a prefix) or ambifixing (arguments are cross-referenced by both prefix and suffix in the verb). In the transitive predicate, a verbal prefix expresses patient and a verbal suffix − actor. There are several types of valency pattern in Nen:[4]: 1058–68
1. Basically monovalent pattern
2. Basically divalent pattern
3. Trivalent pattern
The arguments get the following case marking: the subject − ergative, the direct object − absolutive, and the indirect object − dative. In a trivalent predicate, the indirect object argument (semantically, recipient) is cross-referenced in the verb by the undergoer prefix.[4]: 1067–68
The causative is got by the adding of the meaning 'cause (motion/trajectory) through sustained contact (carrying, leading etc.)' to the middle verbs. Prefix /wa-/ in the verb expresses the meaning and the causer and causee are reflected by the ergative and absolutive cases, respectively.[4]
Beneficiary is expressed by the undergoer prefix.[4]: 1058–68
Yam languages | |
---|---|
Tonda | |
Nambu | |
Other |
Languages of Papua New Guinea | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Official languages | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Major Indigenous languages |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other Papuan languages |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sign languages |