Edolo

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Edolo (Etolo, Etoro) is spoken by approximately 1,300 people (1998) living on the Papuan Plateau in villages ranging between 300 and 1200 meters above sea level, south of and on the southern slopes of Mount Haliago (Mount Sisa) along the Giwa and Sioa rivers and other tributaries of the Rentoul river , itself a tributary of the Strickland river, in Papua New Guinea's Hela (formerly Southern Highlands) Province, with a few villages across the border in Western Province. Its nearest linguistic relative is Bedamuni immediately to the west; Shaw counts 55% (1973) or 67% (1986) lexicostatistical cognacy between the two but Voorhoeve considers Edolo a dialect of Bedamuni and reports a degree of mutual intelligibility. Edolo itself has two dialects, western and eastern (Shaw 1973: 190-193, 195, 1986: 52-56, Voorhoeve 1975: 393, Gossner 1994: 3-4, 5-6,1998: 1, q.v. Schieffelin and Feld 1998: ix.)

McElhanon and Voorhoeve (1970) includes some Etoro examples under the name Bedamini

Franklin and Voorhoeve (1973: 176-181) includes some Etoro examples

Shaw (1986: 65) 100 comparative terms for Etoro

Purnell (1988) sociolinguistic survey of Etoro (unobtained)

Rule and Rule (1989) phonology and grammar sketch of of Edolo (unobtained)

Gossner (1992) sketch phonology of Edolo (unobtained)

Gossner (1993) underspecification in Edolo (unobtained)

Gossner (1993) vowel epenthesis in Edolo (unobtained)

Gossner (1994) grammar of eastern Edolo of Aya village

Gossner (1995) addenda to grammar of Edolo

Gossner (1998) phonology of eastern Edolo of Aya and Emelefo villages

Gossner and Rule (2004) sketch phonology of eastern Edolo

Gossner (2016) 2,489 terms for eastern Edolo

Gossner (1994: 12-22, 1998: 3-4, ibid., Gossner and Rule 1994) give 10 consonants and 5 vowels for eastern Edolo as follows:

Vowels are further distinguished by the presence or absence of nasalization:

Stops /p t k/ are not marked for voice. Initially, they are generally realized as voiceless [p t k] and medially most typically as voiced [b d g]. There are a number of exceptions to this generalization, but no minimal pairs which might demonstrate an underlying contrast (1998: 8-9.) Historically, this situation results from the mergers of initial apicals /*t *d/ and initial and medial velar /*k *g/, Papuan Plateau bilabial voiceless /*p/ being reflected as labiodental fricative /f/ and medial apical voiceless /*t/ having not been found medially except as [*ɺ].

Bilabial non-stop /w/ can be realized as a voiced bilabial or labiodental fricative [β v].

Gossner's apical non-stop /ɺ/ can be fronted, retroflexed or nasalized when occuring word-medially (1998: 9-12.) In eastern Edolo, intial apical nasal [n] is considered an allophone of /ɺ/, which did not occur initially, due to the merger of these sounds medially. The western dialect distinguishes medial /n/ from /ɺ/ for a total of 11 consonants as are found in Bedamuni (1994: 5, 15, 1998: 2, q.v. Voorhoeve 1975: 393, Franklin and Voorhoeve 1973: 176, Hoey and Hoey 1998: 4-10.)

Mid front vowel /ɛ/ ranges in its realization from low mid to high mid [ɛ e e̞].

Neither final consonants nor consonant clusters occur.

Gossner (1994: 66-70) gives pronouns for eastern Edolo in four case forms as follows:

In addition to the free pronouns given above, Gossner (1994: 34-36) provides a list of 24 kin terms which take one of three inalienable possessor prefixes differentiated by person but not by number. The realization of these prefixes is governed by the initial segment of the possessed root as follows:

If the root of the possessed kin term begins with a consonant, the vowels of all three possessors are retained:

If the root of the possessed kin term begins with a high front vowel /i/ , the vowels of the possessors are dropped in all three persons:

If the root of the possessed kin term begins with a mid front vowel /ɛ/, the homophonous vowels of the first and third person possessors are dropped:

If the root of the possessed kin term begins with a low central vowel /a/, there vowel of the first person possessor is lost and that of the second person possessor is retained. There are several variations of this pattern in which root-initial low central vowel /a/ is either retained, fronted and raised to mid front /ɛ/ or dropped in the third person and sometimes fronted and raised to /ɛ/ in the second person as well.

In the first of these variations, third person /ɛ-/ is realized as palatal non-stop [j]:

In the second, the third person remains as /ɛ-/ but root-initial /a/ is either raised and fronted to [ɛ] or dropped:

In two examples, root-initial /a/ is fronted and raised to /ɛ/ in the second person and dropped in the third:

In one example, the third person possessor is zero, either because /ɛ-/ has been dropped or wasn't present to begin with:

Edolo has a body-part counting system of the type characteristic of the New Guinea region in which the term for the number is identical to that for the body part which is touched during tallying. Counting begins from the right pinkie at one, proceeding to the thumb and then up the right side of the body until reaching the side of the nose, then proceeding downward on the left side of the body as follows (Gossner 1994: 77-80):

In most respects, this is identical to the Kaluli system (q.v. Schieffelin and Feld 1998: 173-174, Grosh and Grosh 2004: 45-57;) however there is no turning point at the tip of the nose, thus counting proceeds to 34 rather than to 35, and the starting point is the right pinkie rather than the left one. Gossner reports that some uncertainties have sprung up in recent years due to the use of the decimal system, as numbers above ten are no longer in common use, with /kaɺo/ sometimes now used to mean “twelve” and either /kɛ̃hɛ/ or /pa/ to mean “thirteen”.

[under construction]

… Gossner (1994: 24-34) …

[under construction]

… Gossner (1994: 45-58) …