Blafe

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Situation

Blafe (Mblafe) is spoken by approximately 350 people (2015) living in three villages, Weam, Kandarisa and Wereaver, located along and to the east of Bensbach river in the Morehead subdistrict of Papua New Guinea's Western province, just east of the border with Indonesia's Papua province (Evans et al. forthcoming, q.v. Carroll 2014: 3, Döhler 2015: 3.) The people of Wereaver, upriver from Weam, traditionally speak Rema, a language which according to Evans et al. is now either moribund or extinct, and Blafe speakers are recent arrivals.

Sources

Lambden (1926) (unobtained)

Williams (1936: 30-31) 7 comparative terms for Kundarisa after Lambden (1926)

O'Rear (1991) 118 comparative terms for 'Blæᵽe Wa'nana (Blafe) of Weam village

Döhler (2015) 212 comparative terms for Blafe of Weam village in Carroll ed. (2015)

Evans, Arka, Carroll, Döhler, Kashima, Mittag, Quinn, Siegel, Tama and van Tongeren (forthcoming) miscellaneous notes and forms including free pronouns for Mblafe

Phonology

[under construction]

Pronouns

[under construction]

Verbal morphology

[under construction]