Asmat

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

The Asmat family consists of three or more languages spoken over a vast area of New Guinea's southwestern coastal lowlands from the Yac (Opa) river in the northwest to the mouth of the Digul river in the southeast and extending inland as much as 70 miles. Its nearest relatives as Sempan and Kamoro along the coast to the northwest (Voorhoeve 1965: 1, 1980: 1-2.) The term Asmat comes from a native word (q.v. Drabbe 1963: 218-219) meaning “people” in the sense of ethnicity or community, which becomes /asmat/ in the best-known dialect Kawenak (Drabbe 1963: 1.) Autonyms of Asmat languages and dialects are local variations of the compound /*kawei-nako/ which Drabbe glosses as “real human” (“echte mens”, Drabbe 1963: 2-3;) however Voorhoeve (1980: 2, 103) disputes this interpretation, claiming that the compound means “real stranger” and refers to carved wooden figures representing the dead.

Voorhoeve (1980: 6-14) subclassifies Asmat languages and dialects as follows:

Asmat

Casuarina Coast Asmat (Kaweinag)

Citak Asmat (Kaünak)

North Asmat

Central Asmat

Keenok

Sokoni

Keenakap

Kawenak

This revises Drabbe (1963) who did not include North Asmat or Sokoni in his survey area, and did not group Keenok, Keenakap and Kawenak into a single language.

Voorhoeve bases his language determinations upon lexicostatistical percentages as follows (pp. 8-9, 12-13):

(Keenok given mistakenly as Kawenak “KW” on p. 13 of print original.)

(Komor and Suru villages chosen to illustrate Keenok and Kawenak respectively.)

Lexical distributions (Voorhoeve 1980: 40-42) support the view that Casuarina Coast Asmat is the most divergent of the Asmat languages:

Asmat

Casuarina Coast Asmat

North and Central Asmat

Citak Asmat

North Asmat

Central Asmat

Feuilletau de Bruijn (1913) Kaja-kaja variety of Asmat (unobtained)

Feuilletau de Bruijn (1915) Kaja-kaja variety of Asmat (unobtained)

Drabbe (1950) unpublished comparative vocabulariy of Kawenak (Central) Asmat

Drabbe (1953: 96-104) 378 comparative terms for Kawenak (Central) Asmat

Drabbe (1954: 232-255) 100 comparative terms for Kawenak (Central) Asmat

Drabbe (1958) grammar of Keenok (Central Asmat) of Amor village

Drabbe (n.d.) dictionary of Keenok (Central Asmat) of Amor village

Drabbe (1959) grammar of Kawenak (Central Asmat) (unobtained)

Drabbe (1959) dictionary of Kawenak (Central Asmat) (unobtained)

Drabbe (1963) study of Asmat dialects and (pp. 212-233) 377 comparative terms for Kawenak, Keenok and Keenakap varieties of Central Asmat, Kaünak (Citak) and Kaweinag (Casuarina Coast)

Voorhoeve (1965) dictionary and grammar of Flamingo Bay variety (Surú village) of Kawenak (Central) Asmat

Voorhoeve (1975: 372-374) general description

Voorhoeve (1980) survey of Asmat dialects and (pp. 61-121) 455 reconstructed terms for Proto-Asmat

Voorhoeve (2005: 148-149, 152-154, 158-164) Proto-Asmat-Kamoro correspondences and (unexempified) reconstructions

Roesler (1972) phonology of Asmat of Ajam (unobtained)

Roesler and Roesler (2011) dictionary of Asmat (Kawenak) of Ayam village

Bromley (1973) orthography of Citak (unobtained)

Bromley (1975) orthography of Citak (unobtained)

van Arsdale (1974: 31-32) 66 comparative terms for Awok (Keenakap,) Wooi-Karmbis, Jinak (Tamnim,) Brazza and Upper Eilanden (Citak)

Lebold, Kriens and Susanto (2013) 239 comaprative terms for Central Asmat (Kawenak) of Isyaman village

[under construction]

Proto-Asmat had 11 consonants and perhaps 5 vowels as follows:

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Voorhoeve (1980: 53, 2005: 148-149) gives reflexes of Proto-Asmat consonants as follows:

(n.b. Voorhoeve gives /j/ as <y>)

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Any consonant other than apical non-stop /*ɾ/ can occur initially.

Initial bilabial nasal /*m/ is generally occluded to voiced prenasalized stop [mb] in all descendants. Unlike the Cook River languages to the south, there does not appear to be any conditioning factor which governs whether occlusion occurs or not:

… /*m/ …:

Initial apical nasal /*n/ is generally occluded to voiced prenasalized stop [nd] in all descendants. Umlike the Cook River languages to the south, there does not appear to be any conditioning factor which governs whether occlusion occurs or not::

… /*n/ …:

Initial bilabial voiceless stop /*p/ is retained as such in all decendants:

Initial apical voiceless stop /*t/ is retained as such in all descendants:

Initial aleveopalatal voiceless stop /*tʲ/ is reliably distinguished only in Kawenak, where it is affricated to [tʃ]. Elsewhere it has generally merged with the reflexes of apical /*t/ (above;) however Drabbe (1958: 4) states that Keenok /t/ can in some instances be realized as [tʲ] and that this sound corresponds to Kawenak /tʃ/:

Initial velar voiceless stop /*k/ is relatively uncommon. It is retained as such in all descendants:

Several examples of initial /*k/ are loans from recent times:

Initial bilabial voiceless fricative /*ɸ/ is retained as suchu in all descendants:

Initial voiceless fricative /*s/ is retained as such in all descendants:

Initial bilabial non-stop /*w/ …:

Apical non-stop /*ɾ/ does not occur initially.

Initial palatal non-stop /*j/ when followed by vowels other than high front /*i/ is occluded to voiced fricative /z/ in Kaünak (Citak) and in Keenakap:

When initial /*j/ is followed by high front vowel /*i/, it is often dropped rather than occluded in Kaünak (Citak):

Any consonant can occur medially.

Medial bilabial nasal /*m/ is retained as such in all descendants. Unlike initial /*m/ (above), it is not occluded to a prenasalized stop:

Medial apical nasal /*n/ is retained as such in all descendants. Unlike initial /*n/ (above), it is not occluded to a prenasalized stop:

Medial bilabial voieeless stop /*p/ …

Medial apical voicless stop /*t/ is lenited to non-stop /ɾ/ in Keenok:

Several examples in which /*t/ is not lenited to /ɾ/:in Keenok are compounds:

Medial alveopalatal voiceless stop /*tʲ/ is distinguished from apical /*t/ (above) only in Kawenak. Elsewhere it ia merged with the reflexes of /*t/, likewise leniting to /ɾ/:in Keenok

Several examples in which /*tʃ/ is not lenited to /ɾ/:in Keenok have it forming a cluster with following apical nasal /*n/ instead:

Medial velar voiceless stop /*k/ …:

Medial bilabial voiceless fricative /*ɸ/ …:

… /*F/ …:

Medial voiceless fricative /*s/ …:

Medial bilabial non-stop /*w/ is discernible primarily by its effects upon neighboring vowels.

… /*iwi/ …:

… /*w/ …:

… /*w/ …:

… /*w/ …:

… /*w/ …:

… /*w/ …:

Medial apical non-stop /*ɾ/ …:

Medial palatal non-stop /*j/ …

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

[under construction]

…:

[under construction]

No information about the verbal inflectional systems of Casuarina Coast Asmat or Citak Asmat is urrently available to us. Therefore our discussion here is based upon Keenok of Amor village (Drabbe 1958) and Kawenak of Surú village (Voorhoeve 1965.)

…

… recent past …:

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