Tifal is an Ok language spoken in

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. Dialects are Tifal (Tifalmin), Urap (Urapmin) and Atbal (Atbalmin).

Geography

The Tifal language is bounded by Papuan and Irian Jaya speakers to the south and west, the Telefomin valley in the east, and the

Sepik river The Sepik () is the longest river on the island of New Guinea, and the third largest in Oceania by discharge volume after the Fly River, Fly and Mamberamo River, Mamberamo. The majority of the river flows through the Papua New Guinea (PNG) provi ...

to the north.

Orthography

Phonology

Consonants

: is realized as word finally, as in syllable-coda position before a consonant, and elsewhere. : is realized as in syllable coda before a consonant and elsewhere. : is realized as intervocalically, e.g. : 'water container'. : is intervocalically, in syllable coda before consonants, and elsewhere. : is realized as before . : is alveolar adjacent to back vowels and alveodental elsewhere. One dialect realizes as intervocalically.

Vowels

and rarely contrast.

Phonotactics

Syllable structure is (C)V()(C). The expression 'oh my!' may be an exception. only occurs word-initially. only occurs syllable-initially. is always syllable-final. Initial only occurs in some dialects. Initial occurs in two dialects, and may usually be interpreted as C+V. and occur syllable-initially. Only one dialect allows syllable-coda .

Stress

In inflected words stress lies on the last syllable of the verb stem. If there are long vowels stress falls on the first syllable in the word. If all vowels are short, stress falls on the last syllable. If it is closed stress falls on the first syllable.

Grammar

Nouns

Nouns are not inflected but may mark possession. Body parts and kinship terms are obligatorily possessed, and some kinship terms require affixing. On other nouns possession is optional, except for proper names which are never possessed.

Pronouns

Verbs

Tifal has a rich aspectual system. Verbs may be separated into four groups based on how they transform from continuative to punctiliar aspect. Some only have vowel and/or simple stem changes, some have

suppletive In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflection, inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irre ...

stems, some change compound-final stems, and some which have

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

s which add (or rarely ) to the stem. Verbs also can be divided based on transitivity. Some require direct objects, some with optional objects, some with optional locational objects, and a few

intransitive In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additi ...

verbs.

Tense and aspect

Most final verbs mark tense, mood, and person, but most verbs can mark aspect and not tense and still be a final verb. # "initial consonant of the customary or class changing marker is retained" Tifal sentences are contain inflected verb-root-chains, often with a final fully conjugated verb. One must inflect for the amount of time between one verb in the chain and the next.

Deixis

Marking spatial relation between verbs and their objects is obligatory. "up" must be clarified as either "upslope" or "upstream", "down" as "downslope" or "downstream", and "across" as "across land" or "across a river".

Kinship

Tifal has dyadic kinship terms (terms referring to the relationship two or more people have to each other), which are present in less than 10 languages and not prevalent in Papua New Guinea. However, they are a salient feature of the Ok languages. Related terms are found in Oksapmin, Mian, and Telefol.

References

Bibliography

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External links

PNG Language Resources: TifalWALS - TifalTifal on globalrecordings.netMissionary video in TifalTifal Grammar Essentials
{{Central and South New Guinea languages Languages of Sandaun Province Languages of Western Province (Papua New Guinea) Ok languages