Ipili language

Ipili
Native toPapua New Guinea
RegionEnga Province
Native speakers
26,000 (2002)[1]
Engan
  • North Engan
    • Ipili
Language codes
ISO 639-3ipi
Glottologipil1240

Ipili is an Engan language of the East New Guinea Highlands in Enga Province, Papua New Guinea. The name of the language means 'salt-people' in Huli language.[2] There are 26,000 Ipili speakers.[2]

There are two dialects, Porgera-Paiela and Tipinini. The latter is similar to Enga. Missionary Terrance Borchard guided translation of the New Testament in the Paiela dialect. Working with the Ipili tribe they developed an alphabet and written language, previously spoken. He began the work in 1969 until his death in Aug. 2014. Literacy work resulted.

Phonology

Vowels[3]
Front Central Back
High i u
Mid e o
Low a

Ipili has five vowels (/a, e, i, o, u/) and thirteen consonants (/p, t, k, mb, nd, nj, ŋg, m, n, s, l, y, w/).[4] It is reported that Ipili may have tonal contrasts.[3][4]

In Ipili consonant clusters do not occur.[5]

Morphophonology

Progressive assimilation and regressive assimilation can be found in Ipili.[5]

Ipili has vowel height harmony, where high and mid vowels are rarely adjacent to each other. By contrast, the low vowel 'a' can be adjacent to any vowel, and thus the word mugalo 'a variety of bamboo', which contains either high and mid vowel, is found.[3]

Grammar

Verbs

Ipili verbs are inflected for tense, mood, aspect, person and number by suffixation.[6] These suffixes are classified into two groups, tense suffixes and person suffixes. A person suffix is preceded by a tense suffix.[5]

There are three grammatical numbers: singular, dual and plural. Verbs are also inflected by three persons, but second and third person are not distinguished in the dual and plural.[5]

There are a number of tenses and aspects, like a present tense, three past tenses[7] and two future tenses.[5]

Syntax

The basic word order is subject-object-verb.[2] Ipili clauses thus place the finite verb in the final position.[6]

Literature

Ipili people have traditional sung tales called tindi. The content may contain something magical.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ Ipili at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ a b c d Borchard, Terrance; Gibbs, Philip (2011), "Parallelism and Poetics in Tindi Narratives Sung in the Ipili Language", Sung Tales from the Papua New Guinea Highlands (PDF), ANU-Press, p. 165-195, retrieved 2024-09-13
  3. ^ a b c Ingemann, Frances (1980), VOWEL HARMONY AND VOWEL RAISING IN IPILI, Mid-America Linguistics Conference, retrieved 2024-09-13
  4. ^ a b Franklin, Karl J. (1997), "Engan pronouns and their old endings", Australian Journal of Linguistics, 17: 185–216, retrieved 2024-09-13
  5. ^ a b c d e Ingemann, Frances (1996), Ipili Finite Verb Forms, Mid-America Linguistics Conference, retrieved 2024-09-13
  6. ^ a b Ingemann, Frances (1999), Uneventful -ne in Ipili, Mid-America Linguistics Conference, retrieved 2024-09-13
  7. ^ Ingemann, Frances (1996), Ipili Finite Verb Forms, Mid-America Linguistics Conference, p. 209, retrieved 2024-09-13 "Verbs are also inflected for Present tense and for three past tenses, which can be roughly characterized as referring to events that occurred today, yesterday, and before that."


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