Sela

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

[under construction]

Sela is spoken by … people living in the Sela valley … Sela name of hill … two dialects, West and East Sela … (Godschalk 1993: 3-4.) There is no special relationship between Sela and Korapun to the west.

Godschalk (1993) ethnography and language notes for Sela Valley including (pp. 147-155) 535 terms for West Sela and selected East Sela, West Weip and East Weip forms

Kroneman unpublished survey vocabulary of Kimyal-Sela obtained in digitalized form from Paul Whitehouse via the Summer Institute of Linguistics

Analysis of Godschalk's (1993) West Sela suggests 12 or 13 consonants and 7 vowels as follows:

Apical voiced stop /*d/ is realized as [ɾ] between vowels.

Final fricative /s/ is alternately realized as [s t].

Glottal stop /ʔ/ is found only finally following /a ɔ/, where it contrasts with final /k/.

Neither /kʷ/ or /h/ occur finally.

Six diphthongs are found as follows:

Tone is phonemic in at least some monosyllabic roots, with high tone distinguished from falling tone. However, this distinction is given for only three pairs:

Kroneman gives Kimyal-Sela free pronouns as follows:

No information on Sela verbal morphology is currently available.

West Sela has a body-part counting system of the type characteristic of the central west New Guinea region, in which, excepting the number one, the term for the number is generally 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 top of the head, then proceeding downward on the right side of the body as follows (Godschalk 1993: 52-53):