Arammba language
| Arammba | |
|---|---|
| Region | New Guinea |
|
Native speakers
|
970 (2003) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | aram1253 |
Arammba (Aramba), also known as Serki or Serkisetavi, is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken to the south of Western Province in the Trans Fly region. Arammba belongs to the Tonda Sub-Family, which is next to the Nambu Sub-Family region and the Suki language. Alternative names for the language include Upper Morehead (a name shared with the Upper Morehead language), Rouku, Kamindjo and Tjokwasi.
The Arammba language is spoken in five villages by approximately 1000 people (Boevé & Boevé, 1999). Children learn how to read and write the Arammba language in preschool, before entering primary school which is conducted in English.
The Arammba people are semi nomadic, and live of the animals and plants in the surrounding rainforest and savannah. They also have gardens in which primarily yams are grown, but this depends on the season(Boevé & Boevé, 1999). There is no cash economy and few basic services. Aid posts for healthcare services are usually understaffed and have no supplies. While elementary school in the vernacular language is available, most do not have reading and writing materials. It is rare for students to go to secondary school as there are no secondary schools around. The Arammba region could be accessed by airplane, or by boat from the provincial capital, Daru island, though this could take up to a week.
The following tables lists the phonemes of Arammba. Graphemes are included in brackets where different from phonemic representation.
mb (mb)
d ⁿd (nd)
g ŋg (ñg)
ⁿdʒ (ndj)
ɐ̆ <à>
a <á>
Alongside with nouns, verbs constitute the only open word class in Arammba. Syntactically, they fall into three subtypes: transitive verbs, (inherently) intransitive verbs and derived intransitive verbs. Transitive verbs like -dren- ‘pound’ are inflected with a so-called absolutive prefix (which denotes the Undergoer of an action) and an appropriate nominative suffix (denoting the Actor of an action). (For more details on absolutive and nominative affixes ) Intransitive verbs like -om- ‘live’ are also inflected with an absolutive prefix and nominative suffix; however, here it is the prefix that denotes the Actor of the action (S), whereas the nominative suffix remains invariant (i.e. it invariantly marks for third person singular). Derived intransitive verbs like ngadenóg- ‘learn’ are derived from transitive roots (here: < denóg- ‘teach’); they carry a detransitiviser prefix (e.g. nga-) and are suffixed by the same set of nominative suffixes as their transitive counterparts (the only difference being of course that these suffixes now mark for S and not A function). Examples (1)-(3) below illustrate each verbal subtype as outlined above.
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