Eipo language

Eipo
Lik
Native to Indonesia
Region West Papua, Eipo River
Ethnicity Eipo people
Native speakers
 (3,000 cited 1987)[1]
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3 eip
Glottolog eipo1242[2]

Eipo (Eipomek), or Lik, is a Mek language of the eastern highlands of West Papua. It spoken by the Eipo people who live along the Eipo River. A large percentage of its vocabulary is shared with Una and Tanime, and they form one dialect area.[3]

Classification

Eipo belongs to the Eastern branch of Mek languages, which is a family of closely related languages belonging to the larger grouping of Trans-New Guinea languages.

Geographic distribution

The Eipo language is spoken by about 3,000 people along the Eipo River in the valley of Eipomek, which is situated in the eastern highlands of West Papua.[1]

Phonology

Consonants

Eipo exhibits the following 16 phonemic consonants:[4]

Consonant phonemes
  Bilabial Labio-
dental		 Alveolar Palatal Velar
Plosive pb    td c  kɡ
Fricative  β f  s       
Nasal  m     n     ŋ
Tap or flap        ɾ      
Approximant           j   
  • /p/ indicates a labialized [pwɵ].[5]
  • /c/ indicates a palatalized [tj].[5]

Vowels

Eipo has five phonemic vowels:[4]

Monophthong phonemes
  Front Central Back
Close i   u
Open-mid e   o
Open   a  

Diphthongs are not regarded as separate phonemes.[4]

Grammar

Morphology

Eipo is generally isolating language, but exhibits an elaborate system of agglutination in verb formation.

Syntax

The usual word order of Eipo is subject-object-verb (SOV).

Writing system

Eipo is not historically a written language, but in recent decades a Latin alphabet has been devised for it. The letter values are mostly those of the IPA letters given above, with the exceptions of /β/ ⟨w⟩, /ŋ/ ⟨ng⟩, /ɾ/ ⟨r⟩, and /j/ ⟨y⟩.

References

  1. 1 2 Eipo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Eipomek". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Heeschen 1998, p. 18.
  4. 1 2 3 Heeschen 1998, p. 117.
  5. 1 2 Heeschen 1998, p. 118.

  • Heeschen, Volker (1998). An Ethnographic Grammar of the Eipo Language (spoken in the central mountains of Irian Jaya (West New Guinea), Indonesia). Berlin: Reimer.


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