Tangko
Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute
Situation
Tangko is spoken by approximately 100 people (2009) living in a single village, Kawe or Kawemaot, in the Merauke Regency of Indonesia's Papua province. The people call themselves the Senggaop, and their language Tangko after the term for “what?” (Hughes 2009: 4, 11-13.) Tangko is currently attested only by a single survey vocabulary.
Sources
Hughes (2009: 27-37) 238 comparative terms for Tangko of Kawemaot village
Phonology
There is no published phonology of Tangko. Based upon comparison to Nakai, Tangko likely has 11 or 12 consonants and 6 vowels as follows:
m | n | ||
p | t | s | k |
mb | nd | ŋg | |
w | [r] | j |
i | ɯ | u |
ɛ | ɔ | |
Any consonant except apical non-stop /r/ may occur initially.
Bilabial voiceless stop /p/ is realized as fricative [ɸ] initially and as a stop [p p̚] finally. An alternate analysis would have final [p] synchronically reanalyzed as an allophone of /mb/, in contrast to a bilabial fricative /ɸ/ initially. Apical voiceless stop /t/ occurs only initially, as root-medial and final reflexes of Nakai-Tangko /*t/ have merged with /r/ and fricated to /s/ [s ø] respectively. Velar voiceless stop /k/ is usually realized as uvular in all positions, and is lenited to [ɢ ʁ] root-medially.
Prenasalized stops /mb nd ŋg/ have denasalized allophones [b d k] word-initially. Bilabial prenasalized stop /mb/ is realized as plain stop /b/ medially. As apical prenasalized stop /nd/ occurs only initially, /r/ may be considered its non-initial allophone, though this is historically so only in the case of medial /r/, where the reflexes of Ok /nd/ have merged with those of /r/. Prenasalized velar stop /ŋg/ may be realized as nasal [ŋ ɴ] in any position, and is always a nasal finally.
Consonant clusters no not occur except across morpheme boundaries in compounds.
Only a restricted set of consonants occurs word-finally:
m | n | ||
p | s | k | |
ŋg [ŋ] | |||
r |
Pronouns
Hughes (2009: 28-29) gives Tangko free pronouns as follows:
Tangko | |
1 sg. | nɛɾ |
2 sg. | qɛp |
3 sg. | ɛɾ |
1 pl. | nɥɽ |
2 pl. | ʔip̚ |
3 pl. | ʔiɾ |
Verbal morphology
Nothing is known about Tangko verbal morphology, although a common desinence /-em/ is easily spotted in Hughes' vocabulary (q.v. 2009: 35-37.)