Huli

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Huli is spoken by over 65,000 (1981) people living at altitudes between 1000 and 2000 meters in the fertile valleys around the Tagari (Tagali) River, a tributary of the Hegigio and Kikori, in the central western portion of Papua New Guinea's Southern Highlands Province. The staple crop of the Huli region is the sweet potato (Lomas 1988: 1, 8-9.)

Capell (1948-1949: 376) pronouns for Hoiyevia and Tarifuroro

Rule (1974) phonology and grammar of Huli

Rule (1977) comparative description of Huli, Erave (Pole) and Foe including (pp. 12-26) 353 comparative terms and (pp. 121-124) 102 Swadesh terms for Huli

Franklin (1974) 14 Huli reflexes of Proto-Engan, reprinted in Franklin and Franklin (1978: 84-85)

Franklin (1975: 264-268) 89 Huli reflexes of Proto-Engan

Franklin (2001) comparative study of languages of the southern highlands

Lomas (1988) grammar and (pp. 443-452) 513 vocabulary entries for Huli

Additionally, the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Ukarumpa provides a sketch phonology of Huli, but it's undated and unattributed.

Rule (1974: 1-9, 1977: 8-10) gives 16 consonants and 5 vowels for Huli as follows:

Vowels are further distinguished by the presence vs. absence of nasalization:

Voiceless stops /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ are aspirated, with /pʰ tʰ/ being optionally fricated to [pɸ s]. Plain stops /b g/ are initially voiceless /p k/ and medially voiced [b β g ɣ]. Both Rule and Lomas specify /d/, phonetically [t̪], as dental. Lomas (1988: 39-40) also gives /tʰ/ as dental, but Rule does not. This curious discrepancy is rooted in the origin of /d/, which reflects Enga-Southern Highlands /*j/ and /*l/, not initial /*nd/, which did not occur. Alveolar non-stop /ɾ/ occurs only medially, where it is historically equivalent to initial /tʰ/.

Fricative /ħ/ is specified as pharyngeal.

Palatal glide /j/ is realized as fricative [ʝ].

To Rule's consonants Lomas (1988: 33-75) adds rounded consonants /bʷ mbʷ tʰʷ dʷ ndʷ kʰʷ gʷ ŋgʷ ɺʷ ɾʷ jʷ/, treated as unit phonemes, and a palatal nasal /ɲ/ [ɲ ɲj].

Consonants do not occur finally. Excepting rounded /Cʷ/, there are no consonant clusters.

All examples of medial aspirated stops, and of /ħ/ which reflects initial /*k/, are historically compounds. Medials /b g/ are diachronically equivalent to initials /pʰ kʰ ħ/, while initials /b g/ are equivalent to medials /mb ŋg/. As in other Enga-Southern Highlands languages, these have become contrastive intially due to the loss of erstwhile initial vowels.

Nasalized vowels are infrequent. A few instances are known to reflect Southern Highlands /*n/, most conspicuously the first and second person singular pronouns given below.

Rule (1974: 10-11) distinguishes three word-level tones, high-falling, mid-level and low-rising. Lomas (1988: 396-398) recognizes four tone contours, falling, rising, level and rising-falling.

Rule (1974: 3, 1977: 47-48) and Lomas (1988: 189-191) give Huli pronouns in four case forms as follows:

First and second person singulars are distinguished from one another only by rising tone in the first person and and falling in the second. Lomas, but not Rule, records a tone distinction between second and third person plurals and second and third person duals as well, with the second persons taking falling and third persons level tone. This is at least superficially in accord with the distinction between duals in East Kewa (q.v. Ross 2010: 303-304.)

The form of the emphatic/reflexive suffix /-ne/ [-ne -ni] is governed by height harmony with the vowels of the root.

Huli has a body-part counting system of the type characteristic of the New Guinea region in which numbers are counted up the side of the body. Terms for higher numbers are identical to those for the body parts which are touched during tallying. Body part meanings of the numbers below twelve are not given, although some can be deduced from comparison to other Enga-Southern Highlands languages. Counting begins from the pinkie at one, proceeding to the thumb and then up the arm to the head until reaching the nose as follows (Lomas 1988: 193-205):

Rule (1974: 23-39, 1977: 76-78) gives subject desinences for Huli final indicative verbs as follows:

The semantic difference between active and stative forms, as Rule describes it, is roughly that between imperfective/progressive (“in the process of doing it”) and perfective (“in the state of having done it”.)

In addition to these, there is a past tense form which Rule calls the historic/unseen past, which does not vary by person, but is realized as /-ne/ or /-ni/ according to height harmony with the final vowel of the stem; this is used to describe events in the distant past, past events not witnessed by the speaker, or adjectivally as a past participle.