Omwunra

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Omwunra (Obura,) or Omwunra-Toqura (Obura-To'okena,) one of three primary divisions of Tairora, is spoken by 2,000 people (1994) living in the Obura subdistrict of Papua New Guinea's Eastern Highland Province (Vincent and Vincent 1994: 1, q.v. Vincent 2010: iv.)

Kerr (1973: 598-624) Obura verbal subjects

Vincent and Vincent (1994) sketch phonology of Obura-To'okena

Additionally, there is unattributed (1976) 163-term survey vocabulary posted in digitalized form by Simon Greenhill, desginated as South Tairora.

Vincent and Vincent (1994) give 17 consonants and 6 vowels for Obura-To'okena as follows:

(Vincent and Vincent's <ɑ> shown as /ɐ/​ after Vincent 2010: v-vi and outcomparison)

Nasalized bilabial fricative /ᵯ/ and alveolar flap /ᵰ/ are developments of plain nasals /*m *n/, hence their placement in the chart above.

Apical non-stop /r/ is specified as a trill.

Bilabial non-stop /β/ is historically and structurally equivalent to glide /w/. There is no palatal glide /j/ because East Kainantu /*j/, which had perhaps the value [c] in proto-Tairora, has been occluded to palatalized velar /kʲ/.

Prenasalized stops /mp nt ŋkʲ/ are historically clusters; otherwise no consonant clusters occur. Final consonants do not occur.

In addition to the simple vowels, there are two diphthongs as follows:

Tone is contrastive, but is not indicated in the orthography.

Vincent and Vincent (1994) give free pronouns for Obura-To'okena as follows:

Additionally, the first singular possessive form /ni/ is given, reflecting East Kainantu /*ni/.

[under construction]

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