Mussau-Emira language

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

Mussau-Emira
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Islands of Mussau and Emirau (New Ireland Province)
Native speakers	5,000 (2003)[1]
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic St. Matthias Mussau-Emira
Language codes
ISO 639-3	emi
Glottolog	muss1246
ELP	Mussau-Emira
Mussau is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
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Phonology

Phonemes

Consonants

Mussau-Emira distinguishes the following consonants.

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Velar
Nasal	m	n	ŋ
Plosive	p	t	k
Fricative	β	s	ɣ
Liquid		l ɾ

• Fricative sounds /β, ɣ/ may also be heard as voiced stop sounds [b, ɡ] in word-initial position and when geminated.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	ɛ		ɔ
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', niúna 'its coconut'.

Morphology

Pronouns and person markers

Free pronouns

Person	Singular	Plural	Dual	Trial	Paucal
1st person inclusive		ita	italua	itatolu	itaata
1st person exclusive	agi	ami	aŋalua	aŋatolu	aŋaata
2nd person	io	am	amalua	amatolu	amaata
3rd person	ia	ila	ilalua	ilotolu	ilaata

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. kateva
2. galua
3. kotolu
4. gaata
5. galima
6. gaonomo
7. gaitu
8. gaoalu
9. kasio
10. kasaŋaulu

References

1. Mussau-Emira at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)

Further reading

• 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. doi:10.15144/PL-A69 hdl:1885/145028
• Ross, Malcolm (1988). Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. doi:10.15144/PL-C98 hdl:1885/145428
• Mussau Grammar Essentials by John and Marjo Brownie (Data Papers on Papua New Guinea Languages, volume 52). 2007. Ukarumpa: SIL.

External links

• Kaipuleohone has archived a word list of Mussau language
• Materials on Mussau-Emira are included in the open access Arthur Capell (AC1) and Malcolm Ross (MR1) collections held by Paradisec.