Kamano (Kamano-Kafe) is a

Papuan language The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...

spoken in Eastern Highlands Province,

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

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 (Papua New Guinea), Eastern Highlands Province in Papua New Guinea. It has four local levels of government(LLGs) headed by a president who is normally elected by the LLG's wards or villages ...

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

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 In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...

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 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