Pa

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Pa (Ba,) known also as Pare (Pari) or Debepare (Debepari,) is spoken by approximately 1,500 people (1975) living in the lowlands south of the Elevala river, west of the Strickland river and north of Lake Murray in Papua New Guinea's Western Province. According to Voorhoeve, Pa's five dialects differ only slightly between one another (Voorhoeve 1968: 6, 15, Voorhoeve 1975: 390.) They are called Pare by their nearest linguistic relatives, the Aekyom to the northwest (Depew 1986: 330.)

McElhanon and Voorhoeve (1970) includes Pare comparisons

Shaw (1971) comparative vocabulary of Debepare of Wakiyana village

Shaw (1986: 70) 100 comparative terms for Pare

Franklin (ed. 1973: 590) 97 comparative terms for Pa

Voorhoeve (1975: 390-391) grammar sketch of Pa

Voorhoeve (2007) 204 comparative terms for Ba and East Ba

Waldeck (2016) 459 comparative terms for Pa

Waldeck (2017) 133 additional comparative terms for Pa

Voorhoeve (1975: 390) gives 13 to 15 consonants and 7 or 8 vowels for Pa as follows:

Voiced stops /b g/ may be realized as voiced fricatives [β ɣ].

Fricatves /ɸ s/ may be realized as affricates [pɸ ts].

Nasalized ceounterparts of at least five oral vowels are found, but Voorhoeve is not certian if nasalization is phonemic. Similarly the presence of contrast high tone against low tone is suggested but not affirmed.

Voorhoeve's vowels are realized in phonetic ranges as follows:

Our own analysis of Pa, based upon the attestations of Waldeck (2016, 2017,) Voorhoeve (1975, 2007) and Shaw (1986) and informed by outcomparison to Aekyom and Kamula, posits only 12 phonemic consonants as follows:

Root-medially, no distinction is drawn between voiced and unvoiced stops:

Here initial /b/ is found only in loans and medial /*d/ has been dropped entirely, while the historical medial equivalents of /g/ and /h/ are unknown. Synchronically and structurally, it may well be accurate to consider [b ɺ g~ɣ] the root-medial allophones of initial voiced stops /b d g/ alongside voiceless /p t k/.

…

Voorhoeve (1975: 390-391) gives pronouns for Pa in three case forms as follows. No third person forms are presented:

(morphemic analysis ours)

No information about Pa verbal morphology has appeared in print save for the brief notes given in Voorhoeve (1975: 390.) Persons of either subjects or objects are not indicated on the verb. Stem forms vary by number of undergoer and tense/mood/aspect, with inflections of /da/ “eat” given as follows: