Dombano

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Situation

Dombano, also known as Sebyar or Arandai, is spoken by perhaps 1,000 people (1987) living in at least three villages, Tomu, Arandai and Kecap, on the lower Sebyar River in the southern portion of the Bird's Head peninsula in the Teluk Bintuni regency of Indonesia's West Papua Province. The term Arandai has been used in the literature to refer to both Dombano and its nearest relative Kemberano, sometimes also including Kokoda (Voorhoeve 1975: 33, 1985: 3, Berry and Berry 1987: 93, 98.)

Sources

[under construction]

Galis (1955: PAGE) 26 comparative terms for Jaban-Arandai

Anceaux (n.d.) …

Greenberg (n.d.) …

Voorhoeve (1975: 102) 40 comparative terms for Arandai

Smits and Voorhoeve (1998) … Arandai

Voorhoeve (1985: 17-19) grammar sketch and (pp. 23-38) 211 comparative terms for Sebyar of Tomu village

Phonology

[under construction]

Voorhoeve (1985: 17) gives 9 consonants and 5 vowels for Sebyar as follows:

m n
p t k
b d g
ɾ
i u
e o
a

Voorhoeve treats prenasalized stops [mb nd ŋg], which occur only medially, as clusters [mb nd ng].


Pronouns

Voorhoeve (1985: 17-18) gives Sebyar pronouns in three case forms as follows:

subjectalienable poss.inalienable
1 sg.ˈnendi ˈnejgo n(a)-
2 sg.ˈandi ˈajgo a-
3 sg.uˈma maniˈago ?
1 pl.ˈnindi ? ?
2 pl.ˈjendi ˈjajgo ja-
3 pl.? manduˈajgo ?

Nominal morphology

[under construction]


Verbal morphology

[under construction]