Kenati

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Situation

Kenati (Genatei) is spoken by 536 people living in three villages, Yabuiara, Oropina, and Arabunkara, located along the Upper Aziana River in the Obura-Wonenara district of Papua New Guinea's Eastern Highlands province (Lloyd 1973: 93, Gajdusek 1980: 142.) Kenati is one of three primary subgroups of the Kainantu family.

Sources

Gajdusek (1980: 145-146) 59 body part terms for Genatei of Arabunkara village (thanks to Harald Hammarström for drawing our attention to this attestation)

Dodd (n.d.) survey vocabulary of Azana provided in comparative spreadsheet format by Paul Whitehouse via the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Ukarumpa

Phonology

There is no published phonology of Kenati.

Pronouns

Dodd (via Whitehouse) gives pronouns for Kenati in phonetic form as follows:

1 sg.naʔe
2 sg.aʔe
3 sg.urɛrike, ijake
1 pl.tire
2 pl.anta
3 pl.urɛri ɪntea arʌðe

Verbal morphology

Nothing is known about Kenati verbal morphology besides what little can be gleaned from the third person forms in Dodd's vocabulary.