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Kâte language
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Kâte language
Kâte is a Papuan language spoken by about 6,000 people in the Finschhafen District of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. It is part of the Finisterre–Huon branch of the Trans–New Guinea language family (McElhanon 1975, Ross 2005). It was adopted for teaching and mission work among speakers of Papuan languages by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea in the early 1900s and at one time had as many as 80,000 second-language speakers.
The name Kâte means 'forest', an epithet for the inlanders on the tip of the Huon peninsula, excepting the people living along the Mape River (Flierl and Strauss 1977). The coastal people to the south, mostly speaking Jabêm, are called Hâwec 'sea' and those to the north, speaking Momare and Migabac, are called Sopâc 'grass'. These were geographical rather than language names. The indigenous glossonyms referred to smaller linguistics units that can be called dialects. McElhanon (1974: 16) identifies five dialects at the time of earliest mission contact in 1886, each named according to how they pronounce a common word or phrase.
Wana and Wemo are nearly identical, but they differ considerably from Mâgobineng and Wamorâ, to such an extent that these might be considered to be three closely related languages. Parec was probably a transitional dialect between Wemo and Wamorâ. The Kâte dialects formed a chain with the neighboring Mape dialects. All dialects of the chain are being supplanted by Wemo (Suter 2014: 19).
Kâte distinguishes six vowels. The low back vowel â (representing /ɔ/) sounds like the vowel of UK English law or saw (Pilhofer 1933: 14). Length is not distinctive.
The glottal stop, written -c, only occurs after a vowel and Pilhofer first describes it as a vowel feature that distinguishes, for instance, bo 'sugarcane' from boc 'very' and si 'planting' from sic 'broth'. However, McElhanon (1974) notes that final glottal stop is barely phonemic in the Wemo dialect, but corresponds to a wider variety of syllable-final consonants in Western Huon languages (-p, -t, -k, -m, -n, -ŋ), which are neutralized (to -c, -ŋ) in the Eastern Huon languages, including Kâte. Pilhofer (1933) writes the lateral flap with an l, but Schneuker (1962) and Flierl and Strauss (1977) write it with an r.
The fricatives f and w are both labiodentals, according to Pilhofer (1933), but bilabials, according to Flierl and Strauss (1977). Alveopalatal z and ʒ are affricates, [ts] and [dz] respectively, but they otherwise pattern like the stops, except that z only occurs between vowels, while ʒ occurs morpheme-initially (Flierl and Strauss 1977: xv). Both Pilhofer (1933: 15) and Flierl and Strauss (1977) describe the labiovelars q and ɋ as coarticulated and simultaneously released [kp] and [gb], respectively. (The letter ɋ is a curly q with hooked tail that cannot properly be rendered if it is missing from system fonts.)
Unlike pronouns in most Papuan languages, Kâte free pronouns distinguish inclusive and exclusive in the 1st person, presumably due to Austronesian influence. However, this distinction is not maintained in pronominal affixes. The table of free pronouns is from Pilhofer (1933: 51-52). Personal pronouns are only used to refer to animate beings. Demonstratives are used to refer to inanimates.
Like nouns, free pronouns can occur in subject or object positions in clauses, although the longer form of the singular pronouns (noni, goki, eki) can only occur in subject position (Schneuker 1962: 28). Like nouns, free pronouns can also occur with directional affixes and case-marking postpositions, as in no-raonec 'from me'. go-raopec 'toward you', nâhe-hec 'with him and me', jaŋe tâmiric 'without them'. The forms in parentheses ending in -c are "emphatic pronouns" and can be added to regular pronouns, as in go gahac 'you yourself' or jahe jahac 'they themselves'.
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Kâte language AI simulator
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Kâte language
Kâte is a Papuan language spoken by about 6,000 people in the Finschhafen District of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. It is part of the Finisterre–Huon branch of the Trans–New Guinea language family (McElhanon 1975, Ross 2005). It was adopted for teaching and mission work among speakers of Papuan languages by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea in the early 1900s and at one time had as many as 80,000 second-language speakers.
The name Kâte means 'forest', an epithet for the inlanders on the tip of the Huon peninsula, excepting the people living along the Mape River (Flierl and Strauss 1977). The coastal people to the south, mostly speaking Jabêm, are called Hâwec 'sea' and those to the north, speaking Momare and Migabac, are called Sopâc 'grass'. These were geographical rather than language names. The indigenous glossonyms referred to smaller linguistics units that can be called dialects. McElhanon (1974: 16) identifies five dialects at the time of earliest mission contact in 1886, each named according to how they pronounce a common word or phrase.
Wana and Wemo are nearly identical, but they differ considerably from Mâgobineng and Wamorâ, to such an extent that these might be considered to be three closely related languages. Parec was probably a transitional dialect between Wemo and Wamorâ. The Kâte dialects formed a chain with the neighboring Mape dialects. All dialects of the chain are being supplanted by Wemo (Suter 2014: 19).
Kâte distinguishes six vowels. The low back vowel â (representing /ɔ/) sounds like the vowel of UK English law or saw (Pilhofer 1933: 14). Length is not distinctive.
The glottal stop, written -c, only occurs after a vowel and Pilhofer first describes it as a vowel feature that distinguishes, for instance, bo 'sugarcane' from boc 'very' and si 'planting' from sic 'broth'. However, McElhanon (1974) notes that final glottal stop is barely phonemic in the Wemo dialect, but corresponds to a wider variety of syllable-final consonants in Western Huon languages (-p, -t, -k, -m, -n, -ŋ), which are neutralized (to -c, -ŋ) in the Eastern Huon languages, including Kâte. Pilhofer (1933) writes the lateral flap with an l, but Schneuker (1962) and Flierl and Strauss (1977) write it with an r.
The fricatives f and w are both labiodentals, according to Pilhofer (1933), but bilabials, according to Flierl and Strauss (1977). Alveopalatal z and ʒ are affricates, [ts] and [dz] respectively, but they otherwise pattern like the stops, except that z only occurs between vowels, while ʒ occurs morpheme-initially (Flierl and Strauss 1977: xv). Both Pilhofer (1933: 15) and Flierl and Strauss (1977) describe the labiovelars q and ɋ as coarticulated and simultaneously released [kp] and [gb], respectively. (The letter ɋ is a curly q with hooked tail that cannot properly be rendered if it is missing from system fonts.)
Unlike pronouns in most Papuan languages, Kâte free pronouns distinguish inclusive and exclusive in the 1st person, presumably due to Austronesian influence. However, this distinction is not maintained in pronominal affixes. The table of free pronouns is from Pilhofer (1933: 51-52). Personal pronouns are only used to refer to animate beings. Demonstratives are used to refer to inanimates.
Like nouns, free pronouns can occur in subject or object positions in clauses, although the longer form of the singular pronouns (noni, goki, eki) can only occur in subject position (Schneuker 1962: 28). Like nouns, free pronouns can also occur with directional affixes and case-marking postpositions, as in no-raonec 'from me'. go-raopec 'toward you', nâhe-hec 'with him and me', jaŋe tâmiric 'without them'. The forms in parentheses ending in -c are "emphatic pronouns" and can be added to regular pronouns, as in go gahac 'you yourself' or jahe jahac 'they themselves'.