Labu (called Hapa by its speakers) is an Austronesian language of

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 ...

Locations

Labu is spoken by 1,600 people (1989) in three older villages and one new one across the

Markham River The Markham River is a river in eastern Papua New Guinea. It originates in the Finisterre Range and flows for to empty into the Huon Gulf at Lae. The river was named in 1873 by Captain John Moresby, R.N., in honour of Sir Clements Markham, then ...

from

Lae Lae () is the capital of Morobe Province and is the second-largest city in Papua New Guinea. It is located near the delta of the Markham River and at the start of the Highlands Highway, which is the main land transport corridor between the Highl ...

Morobe Province Morobe Province is a province on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. The provincial capital and largest city is Lae. The province covers 33,705 km2, with a population of 674,810 (2011 census), and since the division of Southern Highlands P ...

. The three older villages are Labubutu (locally known as Dusuku) (), Labumeti (Ehalo) (), and Labutali (Kakala) () in Wampar Rural LLG.

Contact

Although it belongs to the Lower Markham languages, Labu appears to have been strongly influenced by the coastal languages of the

Huon Gulf Huon Gulf is a large gulf in eastern Papua New Guinea. It is bordered by Huon Peninsula in the north. Both are named after French explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec. Huon Gulf is a part of the Solomon Sea. Its northern boundary is marked by ...

, Bukawa in particular. For instance, Labu shows tonal contrasts, like Bukawa but unlike any of the Markham languages; and Labu numerals show separate forms for '3', '4', and '5', like Bukawa, even though ''salu'' '2', ''sidi'' '3', and ''sôha'' '4' contain the Lower Markham numeral classifier *sV-. (The pattern for numerals in the other Markham languages is '1', '2', '2+1', '2+2', then 'hand' or '2+2+1', and so on.)

Phonology

Labu distinguishes 7

vowels A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

and 17

consonants In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

. The vowels also exhibit contrasts between high and low pitch (or " tone"), just as in Yabêm, the Lutheran mission

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

for the coastal languages of Morobe Province during much of the 20th century. The

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...

of Labu is based on that of Yabêm (= Jabêm), except that ''y'' replaces Yabêm ''j''.

Vowels (orthographic)

Consonants (orthographic)

Tone contrasts

The vowels of some words in Labu are distinguished by lowered pitch, which is marked orthographically by a grave accent. Labu distinctions in tone are thus based on register tone, not contour tone as in

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...

. Register tone contrasts are a relatively recent innovation of the

North Huon Gulf languages The family of North Huon Gulf languages is a subgroup of the Huon Gulf languages of Papua New Guinea. It consists of three languages, all of which are distinguished by severe truncation of many inherited roots and the compensatory development of ...

, which many Labu speakers include in their linguistic repertoires, so one should not look back to voice contrasts in Proto-Oceanic (POc) or some other ancestral language to explain the origins of tone contrasts in Labu. Instead, one should look to areal influences, primarily from neighboring Bukawa.

Morpho The morpho butterflies comprise many species of Neotropical butterfly under the genus ''Morpho''. This genus includes more than 29 accepted species and 147 accepted subspecies, found mostly in South America, Mexico, and Central America. ''Morph ...
-
syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

Pronouns and person markers

Free pronouns

Possession Possession may refer to: Law * Dependent territory, an area of land over which another country exercises sovereignty, but which does not have the full right of participation in that country's governance * Drug possession, a crime * Ownership * ...

In Labu, there are two types of possessive noun phrases: the

genitive In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...

and the

nominal Nominal may refer to: Linguistics and grammar * Nominal (linguistics), one of the parts of speech * Nominal, the adjectival form of "noun", as in "nominal agreement" (= "noun agreement") * Nominal sentence, a sentence without a finite verb * Nou ...

(Siegel, 1984, p.95).

Genitive possession

The genitive possessive

noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...

(PNP) conforms to the following structure: PNP → NP1 (=possessor) POS (=possessive marker) NP2 (=possessed) (Siegel, 1984, p.95) If the possessor has already been established earlier in the

discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...

and it is clear to both the speaker and listener, then the NP1 can be omitted from the possessive phrase (Siegel, 1984, p.95). If the omitted NP1 is an inanimate object then the possessive marker ''êna'' is used (Siegel, 1984, p.96). Some examples of the genitive possessive noun phrase (taken from Siegel's ''Introduction of the Labu Language'', p.95-96) are as follows: (a) ai yu-dumala kô yê na ana ''I'' 1S.PT-''look at'' ''you'' 2S.POS ''mother'' ''I saw your mother.'' (b) amêna ŋatô salu le sê hanô nda mêna ''man old two this'' 3P.POS ''house stay village'' ''These two old men's house was in the village.'' (c) êmôha mô-kôna êna taiya mê-nda nôsôlô ''we''.XD 1X-''look.at'' POS ''tyre'' 1P-''stay rubbish'' ''We looked at its tyre in the rubbish dump.'' Nominal possession The nominal possessive phrase (PNP) conforms to the following structure: PNP → NP1 (possessor) POSN (nominal possessive marker) (Siegel, 1984, p.96) When the thing being possessed is not explicitly stated within the phrase then the nominal possessive phrase is used (Siegel, 1984, p.96). If the possessor has already been established earlier in the discourse then the NP1 can be omitted from a possessive phrase (Siegel, 1984, p.97). Some examples of the nominal possessive phrase (taken from Jeff Siegel's ''Introduction to the Labu Language'', p.96-97) are as follows: (a) ini gwê yê nôôna ''he'' (3S.PT-)''take you'' 2S.POSN ''He took yours.'' (b) tawala lene hanô lênê nêêna ''door this house that'' 3S.POSN ''This door is that house's.'' (c) ai ya-gwê ndêêna ''I'' 1S.PT-''take'' 1S.POSN ''I took mine.''

Deictics

Labu

deictic In linguistics, deixis (, ) is the use of general words and phrases to refer to a specific time, place, or person in context, e.g., the words ''tomorrow'', ''there'', and ''they''. Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their de ...

s correlate with first, second, and third person, the first two of which have long and short forms. The third person singular free pronoun can also take deictic

suffixes In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the Stem (linguistics), stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the Grammatical conjugation ...

: ''ini-ne'' 'this/these one(s)', ''ini-lê'' 'that/those one(s)'. Deictics may occur either in place of nouns or postposed to nouns, as in ''hanô lene'' 'that house'. * ''le(ne)'' 'near speaker' * ''lê(nê)'' 'near addressee' * ''laê'' 'away from speaker or addressee'

Numerals

Traditional Labu counting practices started with the digits of one hand, then continued on the other hand, and then the feet to reach '20', which translates as 'one person'. Higher numbers are multiples of 'one person'. Nowadays, most counting above '5' is done in Tok Pisin.

Names

Like most of the coastal languages around the Huon Gulf, Labu has a system of birth-order names.

Negation In logic, negation, also called the logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P or \overline. It is interpreted intuitively as being true when P is false, and false ...

In order to express negation within simple sentences in Labu, either a dubitative (DUB) or a potential (POT) modal must be used in order to begin the

predicate Predicate or predication may refer to: * Predicate (grammar), in linguistics * Predication (philosophy) * several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic: **Predicate (mathematical logic) **Propositional function **Finitary relation, o ...

, with the negative marker ''-ki'' used to end the sentence. Labu has three different forms of this negative marker, which are: * naki * ŋaki * ki The negative marker of -''ki'' is derived from a verb stem, which explains why it uses the third person prefixes ''na-'' and ''ŋa-,'' which only otherwise attach to verbs. Despite deriving from a verb stem, because ''ki'' cannot stand alone within a verb phrase (VP), it cannot be classified as a verb. The three forms of the negative marker, depending on the prefixes attached, are used in varying circumstances, dependent on the tense and mood of the utterance.

Naki

Naki is the negative marker used with the

irrealis mood In linguistics, irrealis moods (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened at the moment the speaker is talking. This contras ...

, specifically

dubitative Dubitative mood (abbreviated ) is an epistemic grammatical mood found in some languages, that indicates that the statement is dubious, doubtful, or uncertain. It may subsist as a separate morphological category, as in Bulgarian, or else as a categ ...

and imperative sentences. Examples of each are as follows (Siegel, 1984, p. 111-112):

ŋaki

The negative marker ŋaki is used in the

realis mood A realis mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Most ...

, when declaring a statement of fact, as long as it is not past tense. This means that it is used for present and habitual events. An example of this marker in use can be seen in the following sentence (Siegel, 1984, p. 111):

Ki

Ki is used to mark negation in sentences that utilise the past tense, meaning that it is used for events that have already occurred. An example is (Siegel, 1984, p. 111-112):

Negative verbs

As well as the use of the negative marker -ki in its various forms, Labu also has verbs which are inherently negative. These are the verbs -''le'' to not want, or -''ya pale'' to not know. As with other verbs within Labu, prefixes are added to the verb to signal number and tense. Examples are as follows (Siegel, 1984, p. 122):

References

* Anon. (2004). Labu organized phonology data. Summer Institute of Linguistics

* Siegel, Jeff (1984). "Introduction to the Labu language." In Malcolm Ross, Jeff Siegel,

Robert Blust Robert A. Blust (; ; May 9, 1940 – January 5, 2022) was an American linguist who worked in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. He was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Blus ...

, Michael A. Colburn, W. Seiler, ''Papers in New Guinea Linguistics, No. 23,'' 83-159. Series A-69. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. * Ross, Malcolm (1988). ''Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia.'' Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. {{Austronesian languages Markham languages Languages of Morobe Province