Dusner is a language spoken in the village of Dusner in the province of West Papua, Indonesia. Dusner is highly endangered, and has been reported to have just three remaining speakers.[2][1][3]
Sociolinguistic situation
The language is highly endangered with only three speakers reported to be remaining.[2][1][3] In 2011, researchers from Oxford University's Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics began a project to document the vocabulary and grammar of the language, in collaboration with UNIPA (State University of Papua) and UNCEN (Cenderawasih University, Papua).[4][5] The project outputs were a vocabulary, a published grammar,[2] and a website documenting the language.
Phonology
The phoneme inventory of Dusner consists of five vowels and 19 consonants (five of which are only attested in loanwords from Indonesian/Papuan Malay).[2]
| front | back | |
|---|---|---|
| high | i | u |
| mid | e | o |
| low | a |
| labial | alveolar | palatal | velar | glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nasal | m | n | (ɲ) | ŋ | ||
| plosive/ affricate |
voiceless | p | t | (t͡ʃ) | k | |
| voiced | b | d | (d͡ʒ) | g | ||
| fricative | β | s | (h) | |||
| liquid | r (l) | |||||
| glide | w | j | ||||
(Phonemes in parentheses in the table are only attested in loanwords from Papuan Malay)
There is no tone in the language. The phonology of the language has a high number of complex syllable onsets, some of them contravening the Sonority Sequencing Principle.
Morphology
References
- ^ a b c Malvern, Jack (21 April 2011). "Last few speakers of Indonesian language Dusner nearly wiped out by flood, volcano". The Australian. Retrieved 24 April 2011.
- ^ a b c d e f Dalrymple, Mary; Mofu, Suriel (2012). Dusner. LINCOM Europa. ISBN 9783862882786.
- ^ a b "April 21, 2011: articles on the Dusner language, spoken by 3 last speakers". SOROSORO: So the languages of the world may live on!. Retrieved 2013-02-08.
- ^ Alleyne, Richard (2011-04-21). "Oxford University mission to save a language spoken by three people". Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2011-04-24. Retrieved 2013-02-08.
- ^ "Multimodal language documentation for Dusner, an endangered language of Papua". University of Oxford, Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics. Retrieved 2013-02-08.
External links
- "Multimodal language documentation for Dusner, an endangered language of Papua". University of Oxford, Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics. Retrieved 2013-02-08.
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