Ekari language

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Portuguese. (May 2022) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Portuguese article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must follow the LLM translation guideline, revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 559 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Portuguese Wikipedia article at [[:pt:Língua ekari]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|pt|Língua ekari}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Ekari (also Ekagi, Kapauku, Mee) is a Trans–New Guinea language spoken by about 100,000 people in the Paniai lakes region of the Indonesian province of Central Papua, including the villages of Enarotali, Mapia and Moanemani. This makes it the second-most populous Papuan language in Indonesian New Guinea after Western Dani. Language use is vigorous. Documentation is quite limited.

The voiced velar affricate /ɡʟ̝/ is pronounced with lateral release before front vowels. Doble describes both /k/ and /ɡʟ̝/ as being labialized [kʷ, ɡʟ̝ʷ] after the back vowels /o, u/ (i.e., okei 'they', euga 'more'), with /ɡʟ̝/ having 'varying' degrees of the lateral.^[2] Staroverov & Tebay describe /ɡʟ̝/ as being velar lateral [ɡʟ̝] before front vowels and uvular non-lateral [ɢʁ] before non-front vowels.^[3]

/j/ is a "more palatalized [ʒ]" (perhaps [ʝ] or [ʑ]) before the high front vowel /i/ (e.g., yina 'insect').^[2]

Staroverov & Tebay (2019) describe five vowel qualities plus length and diphthongs. Doble (1987) analyses the long vowels and diphthongs as sequences.

Ekari has pitch accent. One syllable in a word may have a high tone, contrasting with words without a high tone. If the vowel is long or a diphthong and not at the end of the word, the high tone is phonetically rising.

CV words have no tone contrast. CVV words may be mid/low or high. (In all of these patterns, here and following, initial C is optional.)

Words of the following shapes may have a contrastive high tone on the final syllable: CVCV, CVCVV. Words of the following shapes may have either a rising or a falling tone on the first long syllable: CVVCV, CVVCVV, CVCVVCVV, CVVCVCV (rare), CVVCVCVV (rare). The following word shapes do not have contrastive tone: CVCVCV, CVCVVCV, CVCVCVV, and words of 4 or more syllables.

• Doble, Marion (1962). Essays on Kapauku grammar. Nieuw Guinea Studiën. Vol. 6. pp. 152–155, 211–218, 279–298.
• Doble, Marion (1987). "A description of some features of Ekari language structure". Oceanic Linguistics. 26 (1/2): 55–113. doi:10.2307/3623166. JSTOR 3623166.
• Drabbe, Peter (1952). Spraakkunst van het Ekagi, Wisselmeren, Nederlands Nieuw Guinea (in Dutch). Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
• Steltenpool, J (1969). Ekagi-Dutch-English-Indonesian Dictionary. VKI 56. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
• Staroverov, Peter; Tebay, Sören E. (2019). "Posterior Affricate in Mee and Consonant-Vowel Place Interactions". Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology. 7. doi:10.3765/amp.v7i0.4481.

Materials on Ekari are included in the open access Arthur Capell collections held by Paradisec:

• AC1
• AC2