Fembi

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Fembi (Fe̱bi, Fembe,) also known as Agala or Sinale (Sinali, Tsinali,) is spoken by approximately 150-200 people (1991) living in six villages to either side of the Strickland river and north of the Osia (Carrington) river in Papua New Guinea's Western Province, just west of the border with Southern Highlands Province. Traditional Fembi territory is said to be bounded on the west by the Strickland river and on the north by the Dio (Burnettt) river. In the rugged terrain between thie Dio and the south fork of the Abai (Liddle) river are Fogobi and Dobi villages. Across the Strickland in Konai territory to the west are two Oguotibi and Tougohai, which are culturally Konai but speak Fembi. Some way up the Strickland are located Biyami village on the west bank of the Strickland, again in Konai territory, and Gabusu on the east bank next to Bogaia settlements, with both northern villages including resident Bogaia speakers (Shaw 1973: 193, Voorhoeve 1975: 392, Dwyer, Minnegal and Woodyard 1993: 3, 6, 9-10, Årsjö and Årsjö 2005: 213, San Roque 2008: 7.)

Franklin (ed. 1973: 561) 99 comparative terms for Agala

Voorhoeve (1975: 392) pronouns for Agala

Shaw (1986) 100 comparative terms for Agala

There is no published phonology of Fembi and the materials available to us are insufficient to propose one.

Voorhoeve (1975: 392) gives pronouns for Agala as follows:

No information about Fembi verbal morphology is available to us.