====== Mikarew ======

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

===== Situation =====
**[under contruction]**\\
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Mikarew (Makarub) is spoken by … people living in the Bogia subdistrict of Papua New Guinea's Madang Province.

===== Sources =====
**[under contruction]**\\
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Pöch (1908: 158) 8 terms for Alépapun

Ray (1919) …

Schorr (n.d.) dictionary of Mikarew (unobtained)

Capell (1951-1952: 138-141) grammar sketch and (pp. 198-200) 73 comparative terms for Makarub

Z'graggen (1969, 1971: ) … (pp. 90-91) 13 comparative terms (pp. 109-110) nominal number and (pp. 146-148, 162-164) 21 tense-inflected verb stems for Mikarew

Z'graggen (1970) …

Z'graggen (1972) comparative vocabulary of Mikarew

Z'graggen (1975) …

Laycock (1973) …

Foley (2005: 119-121) 60 comparative terms for Mikarew drawn from Capell (1951-1952) and Z'graggen (1971, 1972)\\
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In addition to these, Paul Whitehouse provided a digitalized survey vocabularies of Mikarew via the Summer Institute of Linguistics Ukarumpa; however it is undated and unattributed.

===== Phonology =====
Capell (1951-1952: 138-139) gives 13 or 14 consonants and 9 vowels for Makarub as follows:

|< - 60px 60px 60px 60px 60px >|
|   m   |  n  |  nʲ  |  ŋ  |     |
|   p   |  t  |  tʲ  |  k  |     |
|  [f]  |     |  s   |     |  h  |
|   w   |  r  |      |  ɣ  |     |


|< - 60px 60px 60px >|
|  i  |     |  u  |
|  e  |  ø  |  o  |
|  ɛ  |  ɜ  |  ɔ  |
|     |  a  |     |

According to Capell, there is no difference between voiceless and voiced stops: “The plosives are devoiced; i.e. intermediate in acoustic effect between voiced and voiceless. At first writing both series were used in the word-lists, but did not prove to have been written at all consistently, and a distinction was not phonemic. The same remarks apply to s for which z also was first used in some words.” However, Z'graggen's representations, while not entirely consistent, correlate non-randomly with Stanhope's (1972) Kire values. Accordingly, we posit that Stanhope's three stop prosodies, aspirated, plain, and voiced, are present, but are somewhat difficult for elicitors to distinguish. Additionally, /z/, reflecting medial /*j/, is plainly distinct from /s/.

Capell suggests that labial fricative [f] may be an allophone of /p/. Since these are distinct in Z'graggen's vocabularies, it's better to state that [f] is an allophone of bilabial fricative /ɸ/.\\
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We propose 18 consonants as follows:

|< - 60px 60px 60px 60px >|
|  m   |  n   |     |  ŋ   |
|  pʰ  |  tʰ  |     |  kʰ  |
|  p   |  t   |     |  k   |
|  b   |  d   |     |  g   |
|  ɸ   |      |  s  |      |
|  w   |  r   |  z  |  ɣ   |

===== Pronouns =====
Capell (1951-1952: 139-140) gives pronouns in two case forms for Makarub as follows, with Z'graggen's (1972) forms presented for comparison. The accusative is distinguished only in the first person:

|< - 100px 100px 100px 100px >|
|     |Capell    |          |Z'graggen |
|     |nominative|accusative|nominative|
|1 sg.|kø        |na        |kɔ        |
|2 sg.|nɔ        |---       |nɔ        |
|3 sg.|na ≈ nɔ   |---       |ʌ(nʌ)     |
|1 pl.|ai ≈ ɛ    |---       |ejʌ       |
|2 pl.|ja        |---       |jʌ        |
|3 pl.|mɛ        |---       |mɛ        |
|1 dl.|ka        |---       |gʌ        |
|2 dl.|kwa       |---       |gʊʌ       |
|3 dl.|ani       |---       |(ʌ)ni     |

===== Verbal morphology =====
**[under contruction]**\\
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Z'graggen (1971: CITE) … Capell (1951-1952: 140-141) …

===== Counting system =====
Capell (1951-1952: 141) gives five numbers for Makarub as follows:

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|1|amɜ'ra            |
|2|pɔ:ni             |
|3|pɔ:mɜnimkasam     |
|4|pɔ:mɜni ko pɔ:mɜni|
|5|pɔ:mɜninja pɜmɜn  |