Kwoma

Last Updated: 2020-06-30

SLIGHTLY COMPROMISED: glottal stop not orthographically marked

Background

Language Family: Sepik-Ramu / Sepik / Middle Sepik / Nukuma

• Also referred to as Washkuk, Kwoma is spoken in the East Sepik province of Papua New Guinea.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	ᵐb	t ⁿd			k ᵑɡ	ʔ
Affricates			tʃ ⁿdʒ
Fricatives	ɸ β	s	ʃ			h
Nasals	m	n		ɲ
Flaps		ɾ
Approximants	w			j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced. Phonemes that contain a diacritic (ᵐ), (ⁿ), or (ᵑ) are prenasalized.

Vowels

• Based on the description of Bowden (1997), there appears to be three diphthongs (p. xxx). Based on the syllable structure (see Syllable Structure below), it would seem that they’d be realized as complex nuclei.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
High-Mid	e		o
Low-Mid	ɛ
Low		a

Diphthongs
/ai/, /ei/, /ou/

Alphabet

• Although Bowden (1997) indicates that the glottal stop is represented by an apostrophe (p. xxx), (“Organised Phonology Data Washkuk (Kwoma) Language” 1981) states that it is not marked (p. 1). The Crúbadán corpus does not mark it, so the language is somewhat compromised.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
b	/ᵐb/
d	/ⁿd/
e	/e/
g	/ᵑɡ/
h	/h/
i	/i/
j	/ⁿdʒ/
k	/k/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
p	/ɸ/
r	/ɾ/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
v	/β/
w	/w/
y	/j/	⟨l⟩ may be used as an alternative
’	/ʔ/
Digraph
ch	/tʃ/
ny	/ɲ/
sh	/ʃ/
ay	/ai/
ee	/ɛ/
ey	/ei/
ii	/ɨ/
iy	/i/
ow	/ou/
uw	/u/

Syllable Structure

• Syllables in Kwoma follow the order of CV(C)(C) (“Organised Phonology Data Washkuk (Kwoma) Language” 1981, 3).

Misc. Rules

• The glottal stop only occurs word-initially or intervocalically (“Organised Phonology Data Washkuk (Kwoma) Language” 1981, 3).
• The suffix /-ta/ becomes /-tʃa/ after certain morphemes (Kooyers 1974, 9).
• The suffix /-tawa/ collapses to one of four shortened versions, depending on preceding morphemes (Kooyers 1974, 10).

References

Bowden, Ross. 1997. A Dictionary of Kwoma: A Papuan Language of North-East New Guinea. Research School of Pacific; Asian Studies.

Kooyers, Orneal. 1974. “Washkuk Grammar Sketch.” In Grammatical Studies in Three Languages of Papua New Guinea, edited by Richard Loving, 5–74. Summer Institute of Linguistics.

“Organised Phonology Data Washkuk (Kwoma) Language.” 1981. SIL.