Kewa is an Engan language complex of the

Southern Highlands province Southern Highlands is a province in Papua New Guinea. Its provincial capital is the town of Mendi. According to Papua New Guinea's national 2011 census, the total population of Southern Highlands (after the separation of Hela Province) is 515,511 ...

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 ...

. A dictionary of the western dialect of Kewa has been compiled by .

Kewa pandanus register

Kewa's elaborate pandanus avoidance register, which is used only in the forest during the

karuka The karuka (''Pandanus julianettii'', also called karuka nut and ''Pandanus'' nut) is a species of tree in the family Pandanaceae and an important regional food crop in New Guinea. The nuts are more nutritious than coconuts, and are so popular ...

harvest, has been extensively documented. The grammar is regularized and the vocabulary is restricted, with about a thousand words that differ from normal language. This was first described by Karl J. Franklin in 1972. Pandanus-register words have a broader semantic scope. For example, ''yoyo'', a reduplication of ''yo'' 'leaf', refers to hair, ear, breast, and scrotum, all things which hang from the body as pandanus leaves hang from the tree. ''Palaa,'' 'limb,' (either thigh or branch) is used for any reference to trees, including root, firewood, and fire. (Even in normal Kewa, ''repena'' means both 'tree' and 'fire'.) ''Maeye'' or 'crazy' refers to any non-human animal except dogs. It contrasts with the rational world of humans. Many words are coined from Kewa morphology but have idiosyncratic meanings in the forest. ''Aayagopa'', from ''aa'' 'man', ''yago'' 'fellow', and ''pa'' 'to do, to make', refers to man, knee, skin, and neck. Many idiosyncratic phrases are then built on this word. For example, ''ni madi aayagopa-si'' (I carry man- ) means "my father". The grammar has also been simplified. Clause-linking morphology is lost and replaced by simple juxtaposition of the clauses. In standard Kewa, there are two sets of verbal endings, one indicating actions done for the speaker's benefit. That set is missing from the pandanus language. The other inflection differs somewhat. For example, the forms of 'to be' are: (The ''-nu'' in ''aayagopanu'' is a collective suffix.)

Notes

References

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External links

* Materials on East Kewa are included in the open access

Arthur Capell Arthur Capell (28 March 1902 – 10 August 1986) was an Australian linguist, who made major contributions to the study of Australian languages, Austronesian languages and Papuan languages. Early life Capell was born in Newtown, New South Wales ...

collections
AC1
an
AC2
held by

Paradisec The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is a cross-institutional project that supports work on endangered languages and cultures of the Pacific and the region around Australia. They digitise reel-to ...

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Kewa – English Dictionary
{{Languages of Papua New Guinea Engan languages Languages of Southern Highlands Province Taboo Pandanus avoidance registers