Onobasulu

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Onobasulu (Onabasulu) is spoken by approximately 1,000 people (2011) living in the eastern portion of the Papuan Plateau about halfway between Mount Haliago (Mount Sisa) to the north and Mount Bosavi to the south in Papua New Guinea's Southern Highlands Province. It is not mutually intelligble with any of its neighbors. Many Onobasulu speakers also speak Kaluli, Huli or Edolo (Shaw 1973: 195, Voorhoeve 1975: 394, Dondorp 2011: 1.)

Franklin (ed. 1973: 568) 97 comparative terms for Onabasulu

Shaw (1986: 65) 100 comparative terms for Onabasulu

Dondorp and Rule (1998) sketch phonology of Onobasulu

Dondorp (2007) dictionary of Onobasulu

Dondorp (2011) preliminary grammar of Onobasulu

Fuale, Maibi, Wasele, Hambowali, Fuga, Buesnel and Candee (2010) vocabulary of Onobasulu

Dondorp and Rule (1998) give 12 consonants and 5 vowels for Onobasulu as follows:

Vowels are further distinguished by the presence or absence of nasalization:

There is no voiceless stop /t/ because proto-Papuan Plateau /*t/ has been fricated to merge with /s/.

Voiceless and voiced velar stops /k g/ are contrastive word-initially. Medially, the contrast isn't as clear, and voiceless /k/ may be realized as voiced [g]. Voiced /g/ may be lenited to voiced fricative [ɣ] between low back vowels. Medial voiceless /k/ is not lenited to [ɣ].

Fricative /f/ is specified as labiodental.

Unoccluded fricative /h/ has been found only root-initially. Comparison to Bedamuni and Edolo shows that root-medial /*h/ has been dropped.

Apical non-stop /l/ can be realized as an alveolar lateral approximant or as an alveolar flap [l ɾ]. Initial /l/ is very uncommon and is realized as lateral [l].

Palatal non-stop /j/ can be occluded to voiced afficate [dʒ] word-initially.

Neither final consonants nor consonant clusters occur.

Acoording to Dondorp, oral and nasal vowels are in free variation with the exception of a small number of roots which are always nasalized (e.g. [fɛ̃] “louse”, [õ] “bird of paradise”,) although Rule differentiated nasal from oral vowels in his orthography.

Long vowels are interpreted as geminates. Observed vowel sequences include the following:

Dondorp (2011: 3-5) gives pronouns for Onobasulu in two case forms as follows:

Excepting the possessive forms, absolutive pronouns are marked for case in the same way as regular nominals (below.)

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… Dondorp (2011: 11-13) …

Onobasulu 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. Dondorp (2007) gives numbers only up to eleven; some of the body part meanings given below are extrapolated from Edolo and/or Kaluli, both of which agree in this respect and match Dondorp's Onobasulu attestations where this can be verified (q.v. Gossner 1994: 77-80, Schieffelin and Feld 1998: 173-174, Grosh and Grosh 2004: 45-57):

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… Dondorp (2011: 7-11) …

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… Dondorp (2011: 13-24) …