Kaure

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Kaure (Kaureh) is spoken by approximately 500 people (1985) living in at least five villages located north of the Taritatu (Idenburg) river, east of the Ijipo river and along the Nawa (Nava, Nawan) river, a tributary of the Taritatu, in the Kaureh district and the northeast portion of the Airu district of Jayapura regency in Indonesia's Papua province (q.v. Menanti and Rumaropen 2009: 3.) Prior to resettlement projects led by the Indonesian government in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Kaure lived only in small settlements throughout Kaure territory. Nowadays three villages, Harna, Masta and Wes, are situated to the sides of Lereh airstrip, along the upper reaches of the Nawa and surrounded by mountains approximately 50 miles southwest of Sentani. Wes was constructed by the government in the early 1980s to gather people living in small settlements scattered throughout Kaure territory, and represents a different dialect from that spoken in Harna and Masta. Aurina village is located some 25 miles to the southwest, just east of the Nawa near Kajel mountain, and represents either the same dialect as Wes or a third dialect. Harna was populated by the clans in the northeast, north of the Yapola and west of the Marteluk rivers, while those to the south and east of them relocated to Wes or to Aurina. A village Badrun in which the unrelated Sause is spoken was recently built in Kaure territory just west of Harna (Dommel and Dommel 1991: 2, Dommel, Dommel, Auri and Pokoko 1991: ix, Dommel 1992: 89-92.) Southwest of Aurina is Walet village on the Taritatu just west of confluence with Nawa River (Wambaliau 2006: 2.)

Voorhoeve (1975: 45, Smits and Voorhoeve 1994: 9-10) recognize a closely related language Narau, following the vocabularies of the Anceaux collection in which smatterings of Narau forms, said to have been collected in the Lakes Plains region, are excerpted from Giël (1959.) Narau is the name of a river which is nowadays seasonally occupied by Kapauri and Kosare people from Pagai and Naira villages respectively (Wambaliau 2006: 2;) the Kaure call this group Mbalu /mbaɺu/ (Dommel, Dommel, Auri and Pokoko 1991: 84.) While there are not enough terms in Anceaux's excerpts to arrive at a definitive conclusion, there is little in the vocabulary to suggest that Giël's Narau is anything but a variety of Kaure, with Dommel and Dommel (1991: 2) stating that the two are mutually intelligble. In light of the history of resettlement, it seems probable that Giël's Narau have since relocated to Wes or Aurina.

Galis (1956) 114 comparative terms for Kaure

Giël (1959) Narau (unobtained)

Smits and Voorhoeve (1994: 18-266) 125 comparative terms for Kaure after D.A. Mallo, for two varieties of Kaure after Anceaux and for Narau after Giël

Voorhoeve (1975: 114-115) 39 comparative terms for Kaure after Bromley (n.d.) and 12 comparative terms for Narau following Anceaux after Giël

Barr and Walker (1978: 11-14) 110 comparative terms for Kaureh of Soar and Kasu (Lereh) villages

Dommel and Werner (1985) survey of Kaure (unobtained)

Dommel and Dommel (1991) phonology of Harna-Masta dialect

Dommel, Dommel, Auri and Pokoko (1991) comprehensive vocabulary of Harna

Auri, Dommel and Pokoko (1991) Kaure conversations and (pp. 107-116) grammar sketch

Dommel (1992) Kaure kinship

Dommel (1997) Kaure kinship (unobtained)

Clouse (1997) 202 comparative terms for Kaure after Dommel and Wener (1985)

Dommel and Dommel (1991: 51, ibid.) give 11 consonants and 6 vowels for Kaure of Harna and Masta as follows:

In addition to the simple vowels given above, four diphthongs are found as follows:

Voiceless stops /p t/ are unaspirated, as is initial velar voiceless /k/. Medial /k/ is realized as [k g] following front vowels /i e ɛ/ and as fricative [x ɣ] following non-front vowels /a o u/.

In some words nasals [m n] and voiced prenasalized stops [mb nd] are in free variation.

Apical non-stop /ɺ/ is realized as a flap [ɺ] initially and as [l] syllable and word finally.

Dommel and Dommel treat phonetic glides [w j] <w y> as allophones of /i o/ respectively.

Medial /h/ is uncommon.

Only a restricted set of consonants occurs finally, two archiphonemes, /N/ [Ṽ] and /C/ and apical non-stop /ɺ/:

The nasal archiphoneme is realized as nasalization of the preceding vowel [Ṽ]. The stop archiphoneme is realized as a glottal stop [ʔ] in free variation with unreleased velar [k̚]. These are indicated in Dommel and Dommel's orthography as syllable and word-final <n> and as word final <k>.

Both stress and tone are contrastive, however tone is indicated only in Dommel and Dommel's (1991) phonology, so is specified for only a minority of terms. Stressed syllables take either a high tone or a high-mid falling tone, with high tone becoming mid tone and high-mid falling tone becoming a mid-low falling tone or a low tone in destressed positions. Systemically, then, the falling tone can be viewed as a low tone. All monosyllables are stressed. Multisyllabic roots take final stress, though the second members of compounds can be destressed.

Auri, Dommel and Pokoko (1991: 108) and Dommel, Dommel, Auri and Pokoko (1991: 82) …

[under construction]

Auri, Dommel and Pokako (1991: 109-115) …

Tense is marked with suffixes …

…

… Dommel, Dommel, Auri and Pokoko (1991) … the number of objects or the number of times an action is performed; i.e. it is the verb itself which is plural.

In the most regular pattern, verbal plurality is marked with a suffix /-teɺ/, while the singular is marked by what is synchronically an infix /-ɺ-/ followed by a stem-final vowel. This must have originally have been a suffix, as the vowel which follows is conditioned by the final vowel of the root which is then elided from the root itself:

…:

…:

…… /-akeɺ/ … /-teɺ/ … Verbal duality is indicated by a suffix /-ɺa/ which is appended to the plural form:

… suppletion …

… Verbal duality is indicated by a suffix /-ɺa/ which is appended to the plural form:

… :

… :

… /ok-/ “bring (sg.)” and /maⁱ-/ “bring (pl.)” These are not found as freestanding stems, but are followed by a verb of motion which can stand alone and does not indicate number. Between these may be found a handful of modifiers which, like /ok-/ and /maⁱ-/, are not found as freedstanding stems. The most common of these is /-ta-/, which changes the default meaning of “come” to “go” and hence that of “bring” to “carry”:

A manner of carrying can be specified by placement of an element before the object indicator. These manner particles are not found as freestanding stems. Here verbal singularity is indicated by zero /ø-/ or /-taⁱ-/ and plurality by /-maⁱ-/ or /-tamaⁱ-/ followed by /-ta-/ “going” and then the directional verb:

…