Kobon Triangles

Kobon (pronounced , or ) is a language of Papua New Guinea. It has somewhere around 90–120 verbs.

Kobon has a pandanus language, spoken when harvesting karuka.

Geographic distribution

Kobon is spoken in Madang Province and Western Highlands Province, north of Mount Hagen.

Phonology

Vowels

Monophthongal vowels are , diphthongs are . and may be and word-initially. () is written and () is written .

Only and the diphthongs occur word-initially, apart from the quotative particle, which is variably /a~e~o~ö/. occur syllable-initially within a word. All vowels (including the diphthongs) occur syllable-medially (in CVC syllables), syllable-finally and at the ends of words. Many vowel sequences occur, including some with identical vowels.

Consonants

Kobon distinguishes an alveolar lateral , a palatal lateral , a subapical retroflex lateral flap ( ), and a fricative trill , though the frication on the latter is variable.

Voiced obstruents may be prenasalized after vowels, depending on the preceding consonant, and are voiceless word-initially. Liquids other than tend toward final devoicing. For example, final is and final tends to . ( and do not occur in final position, while nasals and retain voicing.) Voiceless consonants other than and are optionally voiced between vowels.

is sublaminal retroflex. It has been described as a lateral flap, .

All consonants occur syllable initially, though only occurs word-initially in a single mimetic word. All consonants but occur syllable- and word-finally. Clusters occur in many (C)VC.CV(C) words, as well as initially in a handful of mostly monosyllabic CCV(C) words. Attested initial clusters are .

Intervocalically, the lenis obstruents are oral when a nasal or another lenis obstruent occurs in the preceding syllable, and are prenasalized otherwise, with some variability after . They are often oral in a medial cluster after another consonant. Otherwise the allophones in the table above are largely in free variation.

Grammar

Kobon is a subject–object–verb language.

Singular, dual, and plural are distinguished in personal pronouns and kinship terminology.

Like the other Kalam languages, Kobon is famous for having a very small number of verbs—perhaps less than 120 for the entire language. These verbs are combined with nouns into phrases with specific meanings, much as one says "have dinner" rather than "dine" in English.

This makes for an interesting window into semantics. One might expect that with a very limited set of verbs, their meanings would be quite general as ''have, do, be'' and ''go'' are in English. To a certain extent this is really the case, as there is for example only one verb of perception. That is, the same verb is used for ''see, hear, taste, smell, feel'' (both physically and emotionally), ''think,'' and ''understand'' (compare with "I see" for "I understand" in English). Another verb is used for making sound, whether it's speaking, singing, praying, crying, twigs breaking, rocks clattering, or water gurgling. However, some Kobon verbs are quite specific. There is one exception for ''sound,'' for example: there's a specific verb for calling a pig. There are also three verbs of ''pouring,'' depending on whether the thing being poured is solid, liquid, or food; and there is even a verb that means ''to quarter a cassowary.''

Writing system

Kobon has been written in the Latin alphabet for over 30 years. The special letters ƚ and ɫ are used for the subapical retroflex lateral flap and palatal lateral, respectively.

:''a b c d e g h i j k l ƚ ɫ m n ñ ŋ o ö p r s u ü w y''

5–15% of Kobon speakers are literate.

References

*John Davies, 1981. ''Kobon''. ''Lingua'' Descriptive Series 3.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kobon Language
Languages of Madang Province
Languages of Western Highlands Province
Kalam languages
Subject–object–verb languages
Pandanus avoidance registers