Kamano (Kamano-Kafe) is a

Papuan language The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a ...

spoken in

Eastern Highlands Province Eastern Highlands is a highlands province of Papua New Guinea. The provincial capital is Goroka. The province covers an area of 11,157 km2, and has a population of 579,825 (2011 census). The province shares a common administrative boundary w ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

Nomenclature

The terms 'Kamano' and 'Kamano-Kafe' are both used to refer to the language primarily spoken in

Henganofi District Henganofi District is a district of the Eastern Highlands Province in Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of Ne ...

, although within the linguistics literature Kamano refers to some varieties within the Kamano-Yagaria group, a dialect chain of

Phonology

Consonants

* Consonant sounds /p t k m n z/ can have preglottalized sounds �p ˀt ˀk ˀm ˀn ˀzoccurring word-medially. * The phoneme /f/ can be in free fluctuation with a voiceless bilabial fricative �

Vowels

* /e/ can occur as �word-initially or word-medially. * /a/ can occur word initially as �

Clause chaining

Kamano Kafe exhibits a unique form of the clause chaining system often described in Papuan languages. Clause chaining in Papuan languages typically involves one or more medial verbs with limited morphological possibilities being under the scope of a more fully inflected final verb. The medial verbs in these clause chains typically use a

switch reference In linguistics, switch-reference (SR) describes any clause-level morpheme that signals whether certain prominent arguments in 'adjacent' clauses are coreferential. In most cases, it marks whether the subject of the verb in one clause is corefer ...

system and various degrees of agreement with final verbs. The Kamano system, unlike other clause chaining systems in New Guinea, has requisite person and number agreement with the subjects of higher clauses.Elliott, John (2017).
Understanding preview-subject clause chains in Kamano Kafe
. ''University of Hawai'i at Manoa Working Papers''. A typical example is given below.

References

{{Kainantu–Goroka languages Kainantu–Goroka languages Languages of Eastern Highlands Province