Ngalum

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Situation

Ngalum is spoken by 18,000 or more people (1964) living in the valley of the Ok Nangul river (Kiwirok) and in the valleys of the Ok Sibil and Ok Tsop along the south edge of New Guinea's central cordillera in Indonesia's Papua province (Healey 1964: 43.)

Dialects

Healey (1964: 43) states that Ngalum is spoken in three varieties with locations as follows:

1) Sibil – valleys of Ok Sibil and Ok Tsop, south of central range

2) Ngalum - valley of Ok Nangul

3) Kupel – valley of Ok Bi, possibly upper Sogber or Samur valleys

Healey's Kupel was later identified as a variety of Ketengban of the Mek family (Voorhoeve 1975: 400.)

Sources

Healey (1964: 78-97) 36 comparative terms for Sibil dialect of Ngalum and (pp. 182-188) 41 comparisons between Sibil and proto-Mountain Ok and proto-Lowland Ok

Hylkema (1996) grammar of Ngalum

Hylkema (1996) dictionary of Ngalum

Kroneman unpublished vocabulary of Ngalum, obtained in digitalized form from Paul Whitehouse via the Summer Institute of Linguistics

Additionally, an unpublished vocabulary of the SIbil dialect of Ngalum was obtained in digitalized form from Paul Whitehouse via the Summer Institute of Linguistics, however it is unattributed.

Voorhoeve (CITE) appears to reflect the same underlying material as Kroneman, including shared errors; this is also true of Kroneman's (again from Whitehouse) and Voorhoeve's (CITE) Ninggerum.

Phonology

[under construction]

Hylkema (1996) gives 14 consonants and 5 vowels for Ngalum as follows:

m n ŋ
p t k
b d
f s
w r j
i u
e o
a



Pronouns

[under construction]



Verbal morphology

[under construction]



Counting system

[under construction]