Meyah language

Not to be confused with Miyah language.

Meyah (Meyakh) is a West Papuan language spoken in North Manokwari District, Manokwari Regency, West Papua, Indonesia. The Meyah language is agglutinative and head-marking and has no grammatical cases. It has subject-verb-object word order, which comes from nearby Austronesian languages.^[2][3]

Meyah
Meyakh
Native to	Indonesia
Region	North Manokwari District, Manokwari Regency, West Papua
Native speakers	15,000 (2000)[1]
Language family	West Papuan East Bird's Head Mantion–Meyah Meyah
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mej
Glottolog	meya1236
Meyah Show map of Western New Guinea Meyah Show map of Southeast Asia
Coordinates: 0.767°S 133.881°E / -0.767; 133.881

Phonology

Meax has 5 vowels and 13 consonants.

Vowels^[4]

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	ɛ ⟨e⟩		o
Open		a

Consonants^[5]

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	voiceless		t	tʃ ⟨c⟩	k
	voiced	b	d	dʒ ⟨j⟩	g
Fricative		ɸ ⟨f⟩	s			h
Trill			ɾ ⟨r⟩
Glide		(w)		(j)

Pitch-accent

Like many other Papuan languages of the Bird's Head Peninsula,^[which?] Meyah is a pitch-accent language with two phonemic pitch levels: rising high and falling high, which contrast.

Pitch-accent^[6]

Rising	Falling
éj 'drink'	èj 'peel'
mós 'fish'	mòs 'toad'

Some two- and three-syllable words also have pitch accent. For example, éfes 'young' contrasts with efés 'fat', and óboha 'skull' contrasts with obóha 'tools' and obohá 'spoiled'.^[7]

Grammar

Pronouns

Pronouns demonstrate three numbers: singular, dual, and plural. The first person dual and plural pronouns also demonstrate clusivity.

Free

		Singular	Dual	Plural
1st	exc.	didif	magif	memef
	inc.		nagif	mimif
2nd		bua	goga	iwa
3rd		ofa		rua

Possessive prefixes

		Singular	Dual	Plural
1st	exc.	di-	ma-	me-
	inc.		na-	mi-
2nd		bi-	ge-	i-
3rd		ø-		ri-

These prefixes are used for verbs, body parts and kinship terms.

Nouns

Nouns in Meyah are divided into two types: alienable and inalienable, the latter of which includes terms for body parts and kinship relations, and are obligatorily marked for possessor. With alienable nouns, there is morphological complexity. The plural marker -ir can only be used with humans, pigs, and dogs. There is no other method of indicating plurality for other alienable nouns. For inanimate nouns, a plurality may be indicated by certain modifiers such as:

mod

house

ofokou

many

mod ofokou

house many

mod

house

efaga

CLF

orgomu

three

mod efaga orgomu

house CLF three

Kinship

Kinship terms, as inalienable nouns, share the same possessor prefixes as body parts and verb stems, however, they differ in the singular possessive prefixes. Instead of the '(C)i-' prefix found on first and second singular prefixes, kinship terms have 'ed-.' (1st singular) and eb- (2nd singular). On verbs and other inalienable nouns, the third person singular possessive prefix is normally unmarked, but kinship terms use the same prefix as the first person plural exclusive, me-. Terms for important kinship relations have divergent morphology, like the lack of a first-person singular possessive prefix for father akeina and mother ameina, which are also used to refer to father and mothers' brothers respectively.

Classes

There are six classes of nouns, which are differentiated on the basis of their classifier when they are modified by a numeral. The first class is a class used exclusively for humans. Classes two and three relate to food, with the former being for food growing underground and the latter being for food growing on trees and vines. When this food is removed from trees or vines, it is classified according to whether it is 'round,' placed in the fourth class, and 'flat,' found in the fifth class. Class six consists of terms for animals and 'house.'^[2]

Notes

1. Meyah at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. "Odé 2002". wals.info. Retrieved 18 August 2018.^{[failed verification]}
3. Gravelle, Gilles (1998). "Perspectives on the Bird's Head of Irian Jaya, Indonesia". In Miedema, Jelle; Odé, Cecilia; Dam, Rien A.C. (eds.). Proceedings of the Conference, Leiden, 13–17 October 1997. Rodopi. pp. 555–573. ISBN 978-90-420-0644-7.
4. Gravelle 2011, p. 30.
5. Gravelle 2011, p. 23.
6. Gravelle 2011, p. 39.
7. Gravelle 2011, pp. 39–40.

References

• Gravelle, Gilles (2011). Meyah: a language of West Papua, Indonesia. Pacific Linguistics. Vol. 619. Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-85883-625-9.

Further reading

• Gravelle, Gilles (2002). "Morposyntactic Properties of Meyah Word Classes". In Reesink, Ger P. (ed.). Languages of the Eastern Bird's Head. Pacific Linguistics. Vol. 524. Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. pp. 109–180. doi:10.15144/PL-524.109. hdl:1885/146144. ISBN 978-0-85883-494-1.
• —— (2004). The Meyah Language of Papua (PhD thesis). Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.