Lake Kutubu

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

The Lake Kutubu family consists of two to five languages spoken in the vicinity of Lake Kutubu and along the Hegigio Mubi and Waga tributaries of the Kikori River in Papua New Guinea's Southern Highlands province. The region is much less populous than the highlands to the north and northeast.

The internal classification of Lake Kutubu is as follows (Franklin and Voorhoeve 1973: 153-154):

Lake Kutubu

East Lake Kutubu

Fiwaga

Foe

West Lake Kutubu

Fasu (Faso, Namo Me)

Some

Namu Mi (Namumi)

Franklin and Voorhoeve (1973: 154) give lexicostatistical figures for Kutubuan languages as follows:

No Fiwaga or Some materials are available to us at this time.

Williams (1940) Lake Kutubu (Foe)

May and Loeweke (1965) phonology of Fasu

Loeweke and May (1966, 1980) grammar of Fasu

May and Loeweke (1981) dictionary of Fasu (Námo Mē)

May (1992) sketch phonology of Fasu

Rule (1965) Foe (unobtained)

Rule (1977) comparative description of Foe, Huli and Erave (Pole) including including 355 comparative terms (pp. 12-26) and 101 Swadesh terms (pp. 121-124)

Rule (1993) Foe (unobtained)

MacDonald (1973: 131-132) phonological inventory of Foe

Franklin and Voorhoeve (1973: 169-173) 136 comparative terms for Fasu and Foe

Franklin ed. (1973: 557-559) 100 comparative terms for Fasu, Foe and Namumi

Franklin (2001) comparative notes on Kutubuan and Engan

Shaw (1986: 71) 100 comparative terms for Namumi

[under construction]

Franklin (1968) …

Franklin and Voorhoeve (1973) …

Ross (1995: 151) proposes Enga-Kutubu on the basis of the forms of the personal pronouns (p. 161.)

Franklin (2001) …

[under construction]

Proto-Lake Kutubu had 13 consonants and probably 7 vowels as follows:

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

Neither final consonants not consonant clusters occur.

May and Loeweke treat Fasu tone as lexically contrastive, but several examples suggest it to be at least sometimes dependent upon context; e.g. /haká-sa/ “one” vs. /háka-sa/ “(that) one only” vs. /hakà-sa/ “one (group)” (1981: 7.)

Consonants correspond as follows:

…

Vowels correspond as follows:

…

These correspondences are examplified as follows, with Foe attestations drawn from Rule (1977: 12-26, 121-124, passim) and Franklin and Voorhoeve (1973: 169-173, Franklin ed. 1973: 557-558, Franklin 2001) Fasu (Faso, Namo Me) from May and Loeweke (1965, 1981,) Loeweke and May (1966, 1980) and Franklin and Voorhoeve (1973: 169-173, 176-181, Franklin ed. 1973: 557, Franklin 2001) and Namumi from Franklin ed. (1973: 559) and Shaw (1986: 71,) who draws from the same source as Franklin while including several terms not found in (1973.)

Loans from Southern Highlands are included here under the assumption that they were already established prior to the break up of Proto-Lake Kutubu.

Bilabial nasal /*m/ is retained as such in all descendants:

Apical nasal /*n/ is generally retained as such in all descendants. Initial /*n/ is markedly uncommon:

In a few disyllabic examples where medial /*n/ precedes a final vowel, medial /*n/ is lost in Foe, the vowel in the first syllable is nasalized and the second is dropped. The reason for this change is not understood:

Initial apical voiceless stop /*t/ occurs only in loans from Enga-Southern Highlands:

Medial /*t/ is generally lenited to apical non-stop /ɾ/ in all descendants:

One example of medial /*t/ following apical nasal /*n/ in the onset of the preceding syllable is realized as /n/ in Foe:

Velar voiceless stop /*k/ is retained as such in all descendants. In Foe, iinitial /k/ is realized as aspirated or fricated [kʰ kˣ x], contrasting with the subphonemic plain devoiced [k] reflexes of /*g/ (below):

Medial /*k/ is deoccluded to glottal stop [ʔ] or fricated to [x] in different varieties of Foe (Franklin and Voorhoeve 1973: 155, Franklin 2001: 144):

Bilabial voiced stop /*b/ is devoiced to /p/ in West Lake Kutubu:

Initial apical voiced stop /*d/ in non-nasal environments is lenited to non-stop /ɾ/ in West Lake Kutubu:

In two examples in which intiial /*d/ is followed by a nasalized vowel or a nasal /*m/ in the onset of the next syllable, its reflex is merged with /n/ in West Lake Kutubu:

Medial /*d/ is devoiced to /t/ West Lake Kutubu, contrasting with the lenited reflex of medial /*t/ (above), and merged with [ɾ] in Foe:

One example of medial /*d/ followed by a nasal /*m/ in the onset of the next syllable observes a different pattern than intial /*d/ in the same environment (above), merging with apical nasal /n/ in Foe but devoiced to /t/ in West Lake Kutubu:

Velar voiced stop /*g/ is devoiced to merge with the reflexes of /*k/ [k] (above) in West Lake Kutubu:

Bilabial or labiodental fricative /*f/ is retained as such in all descendants (Franklin 2001: 146.) Both Rule (1977: 8-10) and May (1992) specify /f/ as labiodental in Foe and Námo Mē respectively:

…:

Apical fricative /*s/ is retained as such in all descendants. According to Rule (1977: 8-10), Foe /s/ is realized as dental [s̪] when followed by vowels /e a/ and as retroflexed [ʂ] when followed by /i o u/, while May and Loeweke's (1981: 7) Námo Mē /s/ is realized as [ʃ] when followed by back /o u/:

Palatal fricative /*hʲ/ has been found only initially, where it is merged with the reflexes of /*h/ (below) in West Lake Kutubu and dropped in Foe:

The precise quality of the sound shown here as /*hʲ/ is not possible to determine from Lake Kutubu alone. The reason it is thought to be palatal, as opposed to unoccluded /*h/ below, is because it corresponds to /*s/ in Rumu-Omati River, while /*h/ corresponds to /*w/ in Rumi-Omati River and elsewhere, suggesting perhaps an aspiration of previous non-stops /*w *j/, /*j/ being very marginal in Lake Kutubu (below.)

Unoccluded fricative /*h/ has been found only initially, where it is retained as such in all descendants:

Bilabial non-stop /*w/ is retained as such in all descendants. It is occluded to [v] in Foe when followed by front vowels /*i *e/:

Palatal non-stop /*j/ has been found only in loans from Enga-Southern Highlands (below):

… vowels ….

…:

[under construction]

… absolutive pronouns … as follows, with attestations drawn from Rule (1977: 47-48) and May and Loeweke (1981, cf. Loeweke and May 1966: 26):

According to Rule (1977: 19,) the Foe second person dual is also used to mean third person dual when accompanied by a difference in tone /hagaʔá/. The morphological separation of Foe /-aʔa/ is based upon, besides parallelism between persons, the assumption that Foe's second and third person duals are based upon the word /ha-ge/ “two” (pp. 20, 123.)

… ergative/possessive …:

[under construction]

… Enga-Southern Highlands …:

…:

… a number of terms loaned from Lake Kutubu into West and South Kewa (q.v. Frankin and Voorhoeve 1973: 169-173,) with West Kewa attestations drawn from Franklin, Franklin and Kirapeasi (2006) and South Kewa (Pole) from Rule (1977: 12-26, 121-124):

…: