Mikarew

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

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Mikarew (Makarub) is spoken by … people living in the Bogia subdistrict of Papua New Guinea's Madang Province.

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Pöch (1908: 158) 8 terms for Alépapun

Ray (1919) …

Schorr (n.d.) dictionary of Mikarew (unobtained)

Capell (1951-1952: 138-141) grammar sketch and (pp. 198-200) 73 comparative terms for Makarub

Z'graggen (1969, 1971: ) … (pp. 90-91) 13 comparative terms (pp. 109-110) nominal number and (pp. 146-148, 162-164) 21 tense-inflected verb stems for Mikarew

Z'graggen (1970) …

Z'graggen (1972) comparative vocabulary of Mikarew

Z'graggen (1975) …

Laycock (1973) …

Foley (2005: 119-121) 60 comparative terms for Mikarew drawn from Capell (1951-1952) and Z'graggen (1971, 1972)

In addition to these, Paul Whitehouse provided a digitalized survey vocabularies of Mikarew via the Summer Institute of Linguistics Ukarumpa; however it is undated and unattributed.

Capell (1951-1952: 138-139) gives 13 or 14 consonants and 9 vowels for Makarub as follows:

According to Capell, there is no difference between voiceless and voiced stops: “The plosives are devoiced; i.e. intermediate in acoustic effect between voiced and voiceless. At first writing both series were used in the word-lists, but did not prove to have been written at all consistently, and a distinction was not phonemic. The same remarks apply to s for which z also was first used in some words.” However, Z'graggen's representations, while not entirely consistent, correlate non-randomly with Stanhope's (1972) Kire values. Accordingly, we posit that Stanhope's three stop prosodies, aspirated, plain, and voiced, are present, but are somewhat difficult for elicitors to distinguish. Additionally, /z/, reflecting medial /*j/, is plainly distinct from /s/.

Capell suggests that labial fricative [f] may be an allophone of /p/. Since these are distinct in Z'graggen's vocabularies, it's better to state that [f] is an allophone of bilabial fricative /ɸ/.

We propose 18 consonants as follows:

Capell (1951-1952: 139-140) gives pronouns in two case forms for Makarub as follows, with Z'graggen's (1972) forms presented for comparison. The accusative is distinguished only in the first person:

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Z'graggen (1971: CITE) … Capell (1951-1952: 140-141) …

Capell (1951-1952: 141) gives five numbers for Makarub as follows: