Taiap

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Taiap (Tayap,) also known as Gapun, is spoken by perhaps 60 people (2009) living in Gapun village southeast of the Sepik and west of the Ramu in the Angoram district of Papua New Guinea's East Sepik province. Speakers call their language Tayap Mer /tajap mɛɾ (“Tayap language.”) According to Kulick and Terrill, it is well into the process of being replaced by Tok Pisin (Kulick and Terrill 2019: 1-2.) Widely considered an isolate, its nearest linguistic relatives are the languages of the Marienberg Hills family to the northwest.

Höltker (1938) 125 terms for Gapún

Laycock (n.d.) field notes on Gapun

Z'graggen (1972) 79 comparative terms for Gapun

Kulick and Stroud (1993) grammar sketch of Taiap

Kulick and Terrill (2019) grammar and dictionary of Tayap

Laycock (1973: 35-36, Laycock and Z'graggen 1975: 757) placed Gapun and Bungain, now known to belong to the Marienberg Hills family together in a Gapun Sub-Phylum-level Family of his Sepik-Ramu Phylum.

Kulick and Terrill (2019: 8-13) assert Tayap to be an isolate, However, only the possibility of a relationship with the Lower Sepik River languages (q.f. Foley 1986: 214-229) was examined in any detail, in large part because the elicited forms in Laycock's field notes lack glosses.

Based upon parallels in both free pronouns and object suffixes and as well as a number of salient comparisons in the most basic lexicon, we consider Taiap to be a member of the Torricelli Range-Sepik Coast family, within which its nearest relative is the Marienberg Hills family This is somewhat consistent with Laycock's earlier finding of a relationship between Gapun and Bungain, but his placement of these two with Sepik and Ramu rather than with Marienberg Hills and Torricelli Range is without foundation and difficult to explain.

Kulcik and Terrill (2019): 27-48) give 14 consonants and 6 vowels for Tayap as follows:

Voiecless stops /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ are generally aspirated but can be realized as unrealeased [p̚ t̚ k̚] word-finally

Voiced prenasalized stops /mb nd ŋg/ are always prenasalized initially but can be realized as plain voiced stops [b d g] medially and finally. Postalveolar affricate /ndʒ/ is usually prenasalized in all positions.

Bilabial non-stop /w/ is sometimes occluded to [v].

Alveolar non-stop /ɾ/ is most typically realized as a rhotic flap [ɾ] but is in free variation with approximant [ɹ] and lateral [l].

High mid central rounded vowel /ɵ/ does not occur initially or in vowel sequences (below.)

All vowels excepting high mid central rounded /ɵ/ are found in sequences as follows; homoorganic sequences or long vowels do not occur (pp. 32-34):

Stress generally falls on the final syllable of the root A small minority of roots take stress on a different syllable, as do a number of inflected stems (pp. 37-41.)

Kulcik and Terrill (2019): 84-87) give Tayap free pronouns in three case forms as follows:

Transitive and medial verbs indicate objects by suffixes as follows. Unlike free pronouns (above,) object suffixes distinguish plural from dual number. First persons and second persons are not distinguished in the plurals and duals (Kulick and Terrill 2019: 84-87, 145-147, 232-234):

Final verbs are marked for subject. On transitive verbs, the subject follows the obejct (above.) Irrealis subjects are the same for both transitive and intransitive verbs. Realis intransitive subjects vary according to the class of the verb stem. Unlike free pronouns and object suffixes, subject suffixes distinguish gender in singular numbers (pp. 145-147, 191-193):