Kaigir

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Situation

Kaigir (Kaygir, Kajgir,) also known as Kayagar, is spoken by 3,000 people (1971) living in 20 villages along the upper Cook, upper Peru and lower Gondu (Juliana) rivers (Voorhoeve 1971: 79-81, 1975: 366-367.)

Sources

Lommertsen (n.d.) grammar sketch of Kaygir (unobtained)

Voorhoeve (1971: 79-88) general description and (pp. 110-114) 89 comparative terms for Kaigir of Kawem village

Voorhoeve (1975: 368) sketch phonology and pronouns for Kaygir

Voorhoeve (2007) comparative vocabulary of Kayagar

Kim, Clouse and Price (1987) comparative vocabularies for Kayagar of Amyam (Jamkap,), Kawem (Puayo,) Kumeru (Kundubawa,) and Kaibu (Haibugir) (unobtained)

Clouse (n.d.) comparative vocabularies for Kayagar of Kawem and Haipogir villages provided in spreadsheet form by Paul Whitehouse via the Summer Institute of Linguistics

Kriens, Lebold and Menanti (2011: 44-51) 230 comparative terms for Kayagar of Atsipim, Okor and Tsemtaipim villages and 50 for Gairipim village

Phonology

[under construction]

Voorhoeve (1971: 82-85, 1975: 368) gives 11 consonants and 5 or 6 vowels for Kaigir as follows:

m	n
p	t		k
f	s		x
w	r	j

i		u
e	[ə]	o
	a

…

Pronouns

Voorhoeve (1971: 85-86, 1975: 368,) following the manuscript of Lommertsen (n.d.), gives pronouns for Kaigir in five case forms as follows, with subject forms from Kriens, Lebold and Menantni (2011: 45-46) and Clouse (n.d.) presented for comparison:

	Voorhoeve	Voorhoeve	Voorhoeve	Voorhoeve	Voorhoeve	Kriens et al.	Clouse
	subject	emphatic	indirect object	possesive	possessed
1 sg.	nax	nax-are	nax-eru	ø-nem naxa-nem	ø-nem-ar	dax	dax ~ dɔx
2 sg.	ax	ax-are	ax-eru	a-nem	a-nem-ar	ax	?
3 sg.	ekam	ekam-are	ekam-eru	e-nem	e-nem-ar	aɣarːakʰ	?
1 pl.	nep	nep-are	nep-eru	nabo-xom no-xom	no-xom-ar	depʰ	dep
2 pl.	axan	axan-are	axan-eru	axani-kim	axani-kim-ar	aɣeno	aɣan
3 pl.	ene	en-are	en-eru	ene-kem	ene-kem-ar	enː	eːn

Voorhoeve's transcriptions are phonemic; e.g. initial /n/ above is actually pronounced [d].

Comparison with possessed forms (i.e. “mine” etc.) as well as to Tamagario show first person possessives /ø-nem/, /no-xom/ to be original.

Verbal morphology