Digul Wambon

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Digul Wambon, also known as simply Wambon, is spoken by 3,500 people (2008) living in at least six villages, Sawagit (Mbonop), Manggelum, Gaguop, Klofkam(p), Heyokobun and Bayanggop, along the Upper Digul and Tsaw rivers in the Kouh subdistrict of Indonesia's Papua province (de Vries and de Vries-Wiersma 1992: viii-ix, 1-2, 79, Jang 2008: 1-2.) Digul Wambon has borrowed a number of terms from the Central Ok languages to the north.

Jang (2003, 2008) distinguishes three dialects of Wambon, named following native usage after terms for “what?” (2008: 1-2, q.v. 2003: 47):

Digul Wambon

Ketum

Kenon-Kenyam

Kenon

Kenyam

Stokhof ed. (1982: 120-121) unattributed comparative vocabulary of Upper Uwimerah [sic]/Upper Digul

de Vries (1986) Wambon relators

de Vries (1989) unpublished thesis on Wambon and Korowai (unobtained)

de Vries and de Vries-Wiersma (1992) grammar of Digul Wambon of Sawagit village

de Vries (2010) Dumut conjoined clauses

de Vries, Wester and van den Heuvel (2012) Greater Awyu (Digul River) comparative pronouns and verbal morphology

Voorhoeve (2000) includes Digul Wambon examples drawn from de Vries (1989), de Vries and de Vries-Wiersma and de Vries (p.c.), including some words which were not otherwise published, in his revision of Healey's (1970) proto-Awyu-Dumut

Jang (2003: 39-47) 239 comparative terms for Ketum of Ater village and Kenon of Klofkamp

Jang (2008) grammar of (Kenon) Wambon of Klopkam and Manggelum

Hughes (2009: 27-37) 239 comparative terms for Wambon of Manggelum

Wester (2014) Awyu-Dumut comparative morphology including (pp. 195-210) 430 comparative terms for Digul Wambon (Kenon) after Jang (p.c.)

De Vries and de Vries-Wiersma (1992: 3-12) give 16 consonants and 5 vowels for Digul Wambon as follows:

Voiceless stops /p t k/ are realized as unreleased [p̚ t̚ k̚] word-finally. Fricative /s/ is realized as affricate [ts] initially and as [s] medially. Voiceless glottal fricative /h/ occurs only initially. Voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ occurs only medially. According to de Vries and de Vries-Wiersma, in the Manggelum area /ɣ/ is realized as glottal stop [ʔ], though Hughes' (2009: 27-37) vocabulary of Manggelum village gives voiced uvular stop [ɢ]. Alveolar non-stop /l/ may be realized as [l ɾ] in free variation.

It seems possible that de Vries and de Vries-Wiersma's inventory might be reduced considerably. Glottal fricative /h/ continues Digul River initial [ɸ], which is an allophone of /*p/ (Voorhoeve 2000: 367.) While de Vries and de Vries-Wiersma (p. 7) state that /p/ occurs word-initially, no examples of this appear in their phonology and only one, /enop palip/ “treep top,” in the texts (pp. 83- 96.) Voiced bilabial fricative /β/ is also historically a medial allophone of /*p/, although some initial examples are given. Similarly, it's stated that /k/ appears medially, but this appears to be true only in compounds or adjacent to high front vowel /i/ (/liki/ “break”,) whereas voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ is known to continue Digul River medial /*k/. Minimally, we can state that these contrasts, if phonemic, are recent in origin and carry a very low functional load.

A more conservative inventory, perhaps that of pre-Digul Wambon, with 13 consonants would be:

Only a restricted set of consonants occurs finally:

This is due to Digul River's mergers of Digul River-Ok final prenasalized stops /*mb *nd *ŋg/ with /*p *t *n/, followed by Digul Wambon's merger of final /*r/ with /t/, the last of these being shared with the Muyu-Yonggom languages to the east and southeast and the Nakai dialect of Nakai to the northeast. De Vries and de Vries-Wiersma do not recognize final /j/, instead treating final segments [Vj] as diphthongs (below).

In addition to five simple vowels, de Vries and de Vries-Wiersma give five diphthongs as follows:

Stress typically occurs on the penultimate syllable, with some words alternately stressing the final syllable in free variation. It does not appear to be contrastive.

De Vries and de Vries-Wiersma (1992: 3-12) give pronouns for Digul Wambon in four case paradigms as follows:

From a comparative perspective, final /k/ in the first person singular is unexpected; this hearing is supported by Hughes' (2009: 28) [nuk̚]. The segment /β/ in focus forms is morphologically identical to /p/ in the nominative forms.

[under construction]

De Vries and de Vries-Wiersma (1992: 23) give subject desinences for Digul Wambon final verbs as follows:

In addition to the attributive numbers /ndominuk/ “one” and /ilumo/ “two”, Digul Wambon has a body-part counting system of the type characteristic of the Digul River-Ok region, and arguably of New Guinea in general, in which the term for the number is the same as that for the body part which is touched during tallying. Counting begins from the left pinkie at one, proceeding to the thumb and then up the left side of the body until reaching the nose, then proceeding downward on the right side of the body as follows (de Vries and de Vries-Wiersma 1992: 44-48):