Sobei is one of the

Sarmi languages Sarmi may refer to: Places * Sarmi, Nepal, a village in Nepal * Sarmi, Indonesia, a town in Papua, Indonesia * Sarmi Regency, an administrative unit in Papua, Indonesia People *Massimo Sarmi (born 1948), Italian businessman *Count Ferdinando Sarmi ...

spoken in three villages (Sarmi, Sawar, and Bagaiserwar) near the district center of Sarmi in Papua province of

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. Ethnologue (2005) cites two third-party population estimates of 1,000 and 1,850, while Sterner estimates the population at 1,500 (1975) and 2,000 (1987), based on actual residence in the area.

Phonology

Sobei reflexes of some common Austronesian etyma include 'hand', 'star', 'two', 'paddle', 'four', 'father', 'mother', '(his/her) child', 'coconut', 'food', 'betelnut', 'water', 'leaf', 'up', 'down', 'breast', 'sugarcane', 'rain', 'man', 'one', 'three', 'sand', 'fire' (all gleaned from J. Sterner 1975).

Vowels

Consonants

Morphology

Nouns

Sobei distinguishes alienable possession from

inalienable possession In linguistics, inalienable possession (abbreviated ) is a type of possession in which a noun is obligatorily possessed by its possessor. Nouns or nominal affixes in an inalienable possession relationship cannot exist independently or be "alie ...

by directly suffixing nouns in the latter type of relationship, principally body parts and kin terms. The

morphophonemics Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (mi ...

are often complex: 'my child', 'his/her child', 'our child(ren)', 'their child(ren)'; 'my head', 'his/her head', 'our heads', 'their heads' (Sterner 1987). The following paradigm of the inalienably possessed noun 'father' is from Sterner (1976). The intermediate before the possessive suffix serves as a plural marker. As an independent pronoun, is 3rd person plural ('they'). Some kin terms that do not take the possessive suffixes nevertheless have plural forms ending in : 'uncle-PL', 'mother-PL', 'cousin-PL' (Sterner 1976).

Independent pronouns

Verbs

Sobei verb stems can include a number of aspectual, reciprocal, modificational, or directional affixes, but every verb is minimally prefixed to show the

grammatical person In linguistics, grammatical person is the grammatical distinction between deictic references to participant(s) in an event; typically the distinction is between the speaker ( first person), the addressee ( second person), and others (third pers ...

and

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...

of its

subject Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...

and

grammatical mood In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used for signaling modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying (for example, a statement of ...

(

realis 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. Mos ...

irrealis In linguistics, irrealis moods (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 contrasts with the realis moods. Every ...

). Mood markers differ according to whether the stem is simple or complex, and some classes of verbs show stem

allomorphy In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variations for a specif ...

in their

conjugation Conjugation or conjugate may refer to: Linguistics * Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form * Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language Mathematics * Complex conjugation, the chang ...

al paradigms. (See Sterner 1987.)

External links

* Paradisec has two collections of Arthur Cappell's materials
AC1AC2
that include Sobei language materials.

References

* Sterner, Joyce K. 1987. Sobei verb morphology reanalyzed to reflect POC studies. ''Oceanic Linguistics'' 14:146-167. * Sterner, Joyce K. 1976. A comprehensive look at Sobei phrases and words. In ''From Baudi to Indonesian: Studies in linguistics,'' ed. by Ignatius Suharno and Kenneth L. Pike, pp. 153–176. Jayapura, Cenderawasih University and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. * Sterner, Joyce K. 1975. Sobei phonology. ''Oceanic Linguistics'' 14:146-167. * Sterner, Robert H. 1975. Sobei verb inflection. ''Oceanic Linguistics'' 14:128-145. {{Languages of Indonesia Languages of western New Guinea Sarmi–Jayapura languages