Gavak

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

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Gavak (Gabak,) also known as Dimir, is spoken by over 3.,800 people (2000) living in six villages … …along and inland from the coast … southeast of the Gilagil (Gilagi) river … district of Papua New Guinea's Madang pronvince. To the north and northwest are spoken the Waskia and Manep languages; to the southeast the only distatnly-related Bargam; to the south Garuh of the Mabuso family and …Takia… Dimir is the name of a Gavak-speaking village (Z'graggen 1971: 45, 1975: 24, Pick 2020:164-165.)

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Z'graggen (1980: 1-159) 315 comparative terms and (p. 160) pronominal paradigms for Dimir

Pick (2020: 164-183) grammar sketch, (pp. 209-212) pronominal paradigms and … for gavak of Dimir village

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Z'graggen … Isumrud …

Ross (…) …

Pick (2020) …

We find that …

Pick (2020: 165-171) gives 14 consonants and 5 vowels for Gavak of Dimir village as follows

In addition ot the simple vowels given above, two diphthongs are found as follows:

Plain voiced stops /mb nd ŋg/ are realized as stuch intiially. Medial /g/ may be realized as either [g ŋg]. Acording to Pick, medials /b d/ do not generally exist as such because Adelbert Range /*mb *nd/ have been lenited to /w r/ in this poition; however there are several examples of medial [mb nd] which are considered to be allophones of /b d/ because they are not contrastive. Plain voiced stops are not found finally.

Fricative /s/ is not found finally.

Rhotic non-stop /r/ is not found intiially.

Bilabial non-stop /w/ is sometimes realized as a voiced fricative [β]. Non-stops /w j/ are not found finally.

Mid front vowel /e/ is not found initially. Initial mid back rounded /o/ has been found in only one word, /okojo/ “five”.

Consonant clusters are found only medially.

Pick (2020: 209-212) gives free pronouns for Gavak of Dimir village in two case forms as follows:

Other case forms exist in Pick's examples but full paradigms are not given.

In addition to these (p. 180-181, 211) are verbal objects found fossilized upon a few roots::

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Pick (2020: 171-177) …

…

…

…

Pick (2020: 177-180) gives subject desinences for Gavak of Dimir village in four tense forms as follows:

(Morpheme analyses ours.)

It may be seen that the present and the future are indicated by a vowel formant /-e-/ and /-a-/ respectively, except for the seonc and third person singulars where the present is indicated by velar nasal /-ŋ-/ presumably because the underliyng subject suffixes begin with /e/.