Mussau-Emira language

Mussau-Emira
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Islands of Mussau and Emira (New Ireland Province)
Native speakers	5,000 (2003)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic St. Matthias Mussau-Emira
Language codes
ISO 639-3	emi
Glottolog	muss1246

The Mussau-Emira language is spoken on the islands of Mussau and Emirau in the St. Matthias Islands in the Bismarck Archipelago.

Phonology

Phonemes

Consonants

Mussau-Emira distinguishes the following consonants.

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar
Nasal	m	n	ŋ
Plosive	p b	t	k ɡ
Fricative		s
Liquid		l r

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Stress

In most words the primary stress falls on the penultimate vowel and secondary stresses fall on every second syllable preceding that. This is true of suffixed forms as well, as in níma 'hand', nimá-gi 'my hand'; níu 'coconut', niyúna 'its coconut'.

Morphology

Pronouns and person markers

Free pronouns

Person	Singular	Plural	Dual	Trial
1st person inclusive		ita	ita lua
1st person exclusive	agi	ami	ami lua
2nd person	io	aŋa	aŋa lua	aŋa tolu
3rd person	ia	ila	ila lua

Subject prefixes

Prefixes mark the subjects of each verb:

• (agi) a-namanama 'I'm eating'
• (io) u-namanama 'you're (sing.) eating'
• (ia) e-namanama 'he's/she's eating'

Sample vocabulary

Numbers

1. kateba
2. qalua
3. kotolu
4. qaata
5. qalima
6. qaonomo
7. qaitu
8. qaoalu
9. qasio
10. kasagaula

References

• Blust, Robert (1984). "A Mussau vocabulary, with phonological notes." In Malcolm Ross, Jeff Siegel, Robert Blust, Michael A. Colburn, W. Seiler, Papers in New Guinea Linguistics, No. 23, 159-208. Series A-69. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
• Ross, Malcolm (1988). Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
• Mussau Grammar Essentials by John and Marjo Brownie (Data Papers on Papua New Guinea Languages, volume 52). 2007. Ukarumpa: SIL.[1]