Kómnzo language

Komnzo (also Kómnzo, Kómnjo, Kamundjo) is a Yam language of Papua New Guinea spoken by 150–250 people in the village of Rouku (8.701793°S 141.598485°E / -8.701793; 141.598485 (Rouku)) and the town of Morehead.

Komnzo
Rouku
Region	Papua New Guinea
Native speakers	150–250 (2018)
Language family	Yam Tonda Upper Morehead Komnzo
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	komn1238
ELP	Komnzo
Komnzo Komnzo
Coordinates: 8.701793°S 141.598485°E / -8.701793; 141.598485 (Rouku)

Phonology

Consonants

The consonant inventory comprises 18 phonemes (ᵐb, t, ⁿd, k, ᵑɡ, kʷ, ᵑɡʷ, m, n, ŋ, ɸ, ʦ, ⁿʣ, ð, s, r, w, j). The system consists of a series of obstruents (oral and prenasalized plosives and affricates), fricatives, nasals and semivowels. Consonants occurring only in loanwords are: b, g, d, l.

		Bilabial	Coronal			Palatal	Velar
			Dental	Alveolar	Affricate		Plain	Labialized
Nasal		m ⟨m⟩		n ⟨n⟩			ŋ ⟨ŋ⟩
Plosive	Voiceless		t̪~t ⟨t⟩		ts ⟨z⟩		k ⟨k⟩	kʷ ⟨kw⟩
	Prenasal	ᵐb ⟨b⟩		ⁿd ⟨d⟩	ⁿdz ⟨nz⟩		ᵑɡ ⟨g⟩	ᵑɡʷ ⟨gw⟩
Fricative		ɸ ⟨f⟩	ð ⟨th⟩	s ⟨s⟩
Rhotic				r~ɾ ⟨r⟩
Semivowels						j ⟨y⟩		w ⟨w⟩

Vowels

The vowel inventory consists of eight phonemes (i, e, æ, a, ʏ, ø, u, o) and one epenthetic vowel (ə̆).

	Front		Central	Back
	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i ⟨i⟩	y ⟨ü⟩		u ⟨u⟩
Mid	e ⟨e⟩	œ ⟨ö⟩	ə̆ ⟨é⟩	o ⟨o⟩
Near-open	æ ⟨ä⟩
Open			a ⟨a⟩

Epenthesis

Komnzo phonology exhibits widespread vowel epenthesis. The epenthetic vowel is usually a short schwa (ə̆), sometimes a short high front or high back vowel. Many syllables and many words in Komnzo lack a specified vowel, e.g. mnz 'house' [mə̆nts] or gwth 'nest' [ᵑɡʷə̆θ].

Orthography

In the tables above, graphemes are indicated by <angle brackets>. The current orthography of Komnzo does not represent the epenthetic vowel because it can be predicted by the rules of syllabification. This leads to orthographic representations which untrained users might find hard to pronounce, for example: zfth 'reason' is pronounced [tsə̆ɸə̆θ] or fta '36' is pronounced [ɸə̆ta].

Numeral system

Komnzo number words use a senary numeral system, with the following powers: nibo (6¹), fta (6²), taruba (6³), damno (6⁴), wärämäkä (6⁵) and wi (6⁶). Counting in larger quantities is restricted to a ritualized counting procedure, whereby yam tubers are counted publicly for exchange feasts. Traditionally, damno is the number of yams one should store to feed a family for a year. For everyday counting above six, English numerals are borrowed.

Komnzo	English	value
näbi	‘one’	1
eda ~ yda	‘two’	2
etha ~ ytho	‘three’	3
asar	‘four’	4
tabuthui	‘five’	5
nibo	‘six’	6
nibo a näbi	'seven'	6 and 1
nibo a eda	'eight'	6 and 2
fta	‘36’	62
taruba	‘216’	63
damno	‘1296’	64
wärämäkä	‘7776’	65
wi	'46656'	66

References

• Döhler, Christian (2013) "Don't talk to him! His family speaks a bit mixed." Multilingualism from the perspective of the documenter. presentation at the 3rd International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC). Accessed on 2019-11-12.
• Döhler, Christian (2016). Komnzo: A language of Southern New Guinea (PhD thesis). The Australian National University. doi:10.25911/5D778A5C79763. hdl:1885/107178.
• Döhler, Christian (2018). A Grammar of Komnzo. Studies in Diversity Linguistics 22. Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1477799. ISBN 978-3-96110-125-2.
• Evans, Nicholas, I Wayan Arka, Matthew Carroll, Christian Döhler, Eri Kashima, Emil Mittag, Kyla Quinn, Jeff Siegel, Philip Tama & Charlotte van Tongeren. (2017) The languages of Southern New Guinea. In Bill Palmer (ed.), The languages and linguistics of the New Guinea area, 641–774. Berlin; Boston: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-029525-2. Accessed on 2019-11-12.
• Döhler, Christian (2024). Speaking the map: Komnzo texts. Open Text Collections 1. Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.5281/zenodo.14214653. ISBN 978-3-96110-494-9.

External links

• Nen and Kómnzo: Two languages of Southern New Guinea (2017) DOBES language documentation project. Accessed on 2019-11-12.
• Komnzo language (2018) Zenodo data repository. Accessed on 2019-11-12.
• Komnzo DoReCo corpus compiled by Christian Döhler. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and time-aligned morphological annotations.