Dom language

Dom
Dom [ⁿdom˩˥]
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Gumine District and Sinasina District of the Simbu Province
Native speakers	12,000 (1994) 16,000 (2006)
Language family	Trans–New Guinea Chimbu–Wahgi Chimbu Eastern Group of Chimbu family Dom
Dialects	Era Non Ku Ilai Ku
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	`domm1246`

Dom is a Trans–New Guinea language of the Eastern Group of the Chimbu family, spoken in the Gumine and Sinasina District of the Chimbu province and in some other isolated settlements in the western highlands of Papua New Guinea.

The Dom people live in an agricultural society, which has a tribal, patrilocal and patrilineal organization. There is only small dialectal differentiation among the clans. The predominant religion is Christianity.

There are three different languages spoken by Dom speakers alongside Dom: Tok Pisin, Kuman and English. Tok Pisin serves as the Papuan lingua franca. Kuman, which is a closely related eastern Chimbu language of high social and cultural prestige, functions as the prestige language used in ceremonies and official situations. School lessons are mostly hold in English.

i u

Vowel lengthening in a contour pitched syllable has allophonic character.

[i]|#C_#

iu,io,ia uo

The Dom consonant system consists of 13 indigenous and 3 loan consonants.

The phonemes /c/[ts], /j/[ⁿdʒ]and /ʟ/[ʟ] are loan phonemes and unstable in use.

˩˥su 'two' ~ ˩˥tu 'thick'

Variants can be determined by the factors of dialect or age. Certain exceptions show archaic variants, for example the existence of intervocal [b] in the word ˥˩iba 'but' or the otherwise non-existent sequence [lk], which is used only by elderly people or in official situations. Brackets "()" show, that the allophone is used only in loanwords.

In Dom the pitch of a syllable has phonemic character. There are three phonemic patterns in monosyllabic words:

Polysyllabic words occur only in the following patterns:

wam˥˩ (personal name) ~ wam˩ 'to hitch.3SG' ~ wam˥ 'son3SG.POSS'

Dom is a suffixing language. Morpheme boundaries between person-number and mood morphemes can be fusioned.

Noun Phrase

possessor marker

relative clause

noun classifier

adjektives

appositions

If a noun phrase includes a demonstrative element, it has always the last position of the phrase:

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