Kilmeri, or bo apulyo 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 ...

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near the border with Indonesian Papua. It is not being learned by children. Kilmeri is spoken around Ossima ward () in Bewani/Wutung Onei Rural LLG,

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. Speakers of Kilmeri refer to their own language as ''bo apulyo'', meaning ''sound in the middle''.

Dialects

Dialects are:Brown, Robert. 1981
A sociolinguistic survey of Pagi and Kilmeri
Workpapers in Papua New Guinea Languages 29. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Survey archive on Summer Institute of Linguistics International
/ref> * Western Kilmeri dialect (spoken in western villages) **Elau ** Osol **Kilipau **Kiliwes **Isi **I **Isi II **Sosi **Ilup *Eastern Kilmeri dialect (spoken in eastern villages and hamlets) **''Ossima'' ** ''Isi Daru'' **''Akos'' **''Awol'' **''Airu'' **Asue **Omoi **Omula The two major dialect groupings have an estimated cognate percentage of 82% based on lexicostatistics.

Phonology

Kilmeri distinguishes 18 consonants, 12 of which are phonemic. The sounds in parenthesis are possible allophones of the bilabial trill. �can be intervocalical, �can be the final sound, and ʷ̜can be syllable-initial. The sounds in half brackets occur extremely rarely and can likely be attributed to loan words. The exceedingly rare

bilabial trill The voiced bilabial trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B\. Features Features of the voiced ...

/ʙ/ is found in the areal-related Kwomtari and Sko languages, but not in other

Border Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political borders c ...

languages. It likely developed from a prenasalized bilabial stop followed by a high back rounded vowel, hence why buoccurs only in ten words. Kilmeri has eight vowels, all of which are always short. The near-high and near-low vowels are especially rare. Thus, Kilmeri was believed to have seven vowels until a small selection of words, such as /bi/ (pig) and /bI/ (hole) show a clear distinction between /i/ and /I/. The main syllable structure is CV with two preferred syllables.

Orthography

The phonetic inventory easily translates into Latin letters. The near-low vowel uses ae and the near-high vowels use diacritics. Literate Kilmeri speakers much preferred the symbol ''p'' for the bilabial trill, but ''pp'' was selected to indicate two different phonemes.

Pronouns

Kilmeri has eleven personal pronouns without gender distinction. The dual forms end with the locative suffix -yo and is derived from the singular. The inclusive dual is often substituted with the inclusive plural, especially in narrative stories.

Verbs

Kilmeri verb forms can express complex

modality Modality may refer to: Humanities * Modality (theology), the organization and structure of the church, as distinct from sodality or parachurch organizations * Modality (music), in music, the subject concerning certain diatonic scales * Modaliti ...

. Examples: : Circumfixes can also be applied to verbs in Kilmeri. Number agreement in Kilmeri is absolutive rather than accusative. In Kilmeri, intransitive verbs, as well as the two transitive verbs ‘eat’ and ‘throw down to’, agree with subjects in number. This pattern is also present in Amanab. These verbs are: : However, number marking for transitive verbs, except for ‘eat’ and ‘throw down to’, refers to the number of the object, rather than the subject. :

References

{{Border languages (New Guinea) Border languages (New Guinea) Languages of Sandaun Province