Gadsup

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Gadsup consists of three languages or dialects spoken by approximately 11,500 people (1976) living in the Kainantu subdistrict of Papua New Guinea's Eastern Highlands province. The largest division, Akuna-Tompena with 10,300 speakers, is spoken in and around the valley of the Arona river just south and east of the the upper Ramu. Over nine miles to the southwest, separated from Akuna-Tompena by North Tairora speakers, live the speakers of Ontena and Oyana, with approximately 1,200 speakers between them. Oyana is said to the most divergent of the three varieties (Frantz 1976: 75.)

Gadsup is spoken in three major divisions, with Oyana said to be the most divergent (Frantz 1976: 75):

Gadsup

Oyana

Ontena

Akuna-Tompena

The differences between Gadsup of Ontena and that of Akuna may or may not be significant enough to warrant considering Ontena a separate language. The placement of Oyana above is based upon McKaughan (1964: 99-101, 1973: xvi, 403, 695-698, 699) and Frantz (1976: 75,) as no Oyana data is available to us at this time. McKaughan calculates lexicostatistical resemblances between three varieties of Gadsup as follows:

Capell (1948-1949: 111-114, 350-354) pronouns and 105 comparative terms for Gadsup

Frantz and Frantz (1962) dictionary of Akuna Gadsup

Frantz (1962: 44-63) nominal morphology of Akuna, reprinted in McKaughan ed. (1973: 424-438)

Frantz and McKaughan (1964: 84-99) final verb morphology of Akuna, reprinted in McKaughan ed. (1973: 439-449)

McKaughan (1964: 98-121) includes 546 comparative terms for Okuna village, reprinted in McKaughan ed. (1973: 694-738)

Bee (1965: 1-37) 64 Gadsup words including reflexes of proto-Kainantu, reprinted in McKaughan ed. (1973: 739-768)

Frantz and Frantz (1966: 1-11) phonology of Akuna of Ommomunta village, reprinted in McKaughan ed. (1973: 406-413)

McKaughan, compiler (1973: 469-512) texts from Aiyura village

Frantz (1974) Gadsup nominal phrases, reformatted as Frantz (2007)

Frantz (1976) sentence structure of Akuna of Wopepa and Amomonta villages

Kerr (1973: 776-795) 29 Gadsup kin terms including reflexes of proto-Kainantu

Frantz (1994) sketch phonology of Ontena village, recapitulated in an undated and unattributed manuscript from Summer Institute of Linguistics, Ukarumpa

Frantz (1995) sketch phonology of Akuna

[under construction]

As only scraps of Ontena data and no Oyana data is available, it's not possible to add much to Frantz' description of Akuna.

However some differences between Ontena and Akuna can be noted in the disposition of the postposed nominal article /*mi/ as conditioned by the final consonant of the preceding nominal root:

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There are also some differences in the dispositions of several medial clusters:

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[under construction]

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[under construction]

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