Eibela

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Eibela (Aibela,) or Aimele, also known as Kware, is spoken by approximately 300 people (2014) living primarily around Lake Campbell in Papua New Guinea's Western Province, south to Wawoi Falls and north of Lake Campbell to the southwest of Mount Bosavi along the border with Southern Highlands Province. Voorhoeve locates Kware somewhat to the east, on the southern slopes of Mount Bosavi between the headwaters of the Wawoi and Bamu rivers (Voorhoeve 1975: 395, Aiton 2014: 1.)

Shaw (1979) comparative vocabulary of Aibelasa of Ulidiye village

Shaw (1986: 67) 99 comparative terms for Aimele

Aiton (2014) grammar discussion of Eibela

Aiton (2016) vocabulary of Eibela

Aiton (2014: 2) gives 13 consonants and 6 vowels for Eibela as follows.

Vowels are said to be further distinguished by length as follows:

In addition to the simple vowels given above, four diphthongs are found; however Aiton doesn't say what they are, though at least /ɛi ai ou/ can be spotted in the data.

Aiton (2014) neither mentions nor indicates nasalization of vowels, nor does Shaw's (1986: 66) vocabulary give any examples of these save for one which follows bilabial nasal /m/; we can therefore tentatively conclude that they do not occur.

Consonant clusters do not occur.

Aiton (2014, 2016) gives pronouns for Eibela as follows:

(Aiton 2014 gives plurals with topic marker /-ja/, but comparison to Grosh and Grosh's 2004: 35-42 Kaluli shows these to be inherent to the independent forms of the plural.)

In addition to these, several case markings are described, /-jɛ/ ergative, /-ja/ absolutive/focus and one, /-mo/ locative, which can appear on pronouns (e.g. /nɪ-mo/ 1 sg. loc..)

Eibela (Aiton 2016) has a body-part counting system of the type characteristic of the New Guinea region in which the term for the number is identical to that for the body part which is touched during tallying. Counting begins from the pinkie at one, proceeding to the thumb and then up the side of the body until reaching the tip of the nose, then proceeding downward on the other side of the body. Aiton does not specify if counting begins at the left side, as in Kaluli, or at the right side as in Edolo (q.v. Gossner 1994: 77-80, Schieffelin and Feld 1998: 173-174, Grosh and Grosh 2004: 45-57.) There is evidently some confusion as to the proper location of numbers above nine; this likely springs from the influence of Kaluli (which with most of these forms are cognate) which lacks a counting point at the heel of the palm, thus numbers corresponding to points beyond that are one less than they would be in what is presumably the more traditional Eibela system, or two less when reaching the inner wrist on the other side of the body:

The term for 20/19 is given as /nolo-mio/ with /nolo/ meaning “other side;” one would assume that /nolo/ should be found on all numbers above that as it would be in other Papuan Plateau languages, but if so Aiton does not attest these forms. The terms /bɪni ʃuʃu/ and /bɪni bi/ are each given with both meanings “middle finger” and “index finger;” it seems likely that the latter means “index finger” since /bi/ means “thumb/five” elsewhere, with Edolo and Onobasulu words for “index finger” derived from /*bi/ through compounding:

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