Gapun

Gapun is a village in Marienberg Rural LLG, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, located near the mouth of the Sepik River. The language isolate Tayap is traditionally spoken in Gapun by the Tayap people. Gapun village is the sole Tayap settlement, while all other neighboring villages are inhabited by non-related ethnic groups.^[1] The sociolinguistic history of the village has been presented in textbooks as a case study on how and why language shift and language death occur.^[2]

Gapun
Gapun Location within Papua New Guinea
Coordinates: 4.028746°S 144.50304°E / -4.028746; 144.50304 (Gapun)
Country	Papua New Guinea
Province	East Sepik Province
LLG	Marienberg Rural LLG
Languages
• Main languages	Tok Pisin and Tayap
Time zone	UTC+10 (AEST)

The village is called Saŋgap in the Kopar language.^[3]: 47

In 2018, the village was burned down and abandoned due to violence among households. The former residents fled to the nearby villages of Wongan (3.999326°S 144.532123°E / -3.999326; 144.532123 (Wongan)), Watam (3.906592°S 144.545246°E / -3.906592; 144.545246 (Watam)), and Boroi.^[3]: 16

Geography

Gapun is located on a small hill overlooking the southern banks of the Sepik. The hill on which Gapun is located is part of a plateau that stretches from the village of Bosmun (4.176323°S 144.648727°E / -4.176323; 144.648727 (Bosmun Community School)) in Yawar Rural LLG, Madang Province in the east to Gapun in the west. The hill used to be an island a few thousand years ago before alluvial sediment deposits pushed the coastline further northeast.^[1]

The village is located about 10 kilometers from the coast with an estimated a population of 110 in 1992.^[4]

Languages

Tok Pisin is now the primary language spoken in Gapun, but Tayap was historically the primary language spoken within the village.

Gapun is the only village where Tayap, a language isolate, is spoken. Gapun is currently undergoing a language shift from Tayap to Tok Pisin, since the Tayap people associate Tok Pisin with Christianity and modernity, while they associate their own traditional language with paganism and "backwardness."^[5] Further contributing to the decline of Tayap is the fact that it is not spoken in any other neighboring villages, as Gapun is surrounded by Lower Sepik-Ramu languages such as Kopar, Watam, and especially Adjora.^[1]: 202

See also

• Linguistic anthropology#Identity and intersubjectivity
• Tayap language
• Don Kulick

References

1. Foley, William A. (2018). "The Languages of the Sepik-Ramu Basin and Environs". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 197–432. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
2. Kulick, Don (2019). A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books. ISBN 9781616209049.
3. Kulick, Don; Terrill, Angela (2019). A Grammar and Dictionary of Tayap: The Life and Death of a Papuan Language. Pacific Linguistics 661. Boston/Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Inc. ISBN 9781501512209.
4. Kulick, Don (1992). Anger, gender, language shift and the politics of revelation in a Papua New Guinean village. Pragmatics 2:3.281-296.
5. Kulick, Don (1992). Language shift and cultural reproduction: socialization, self, and syncretism in a Papua New Guinean village. Cambridge England New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521414845.