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Awara
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Morobe Province
Native speakers	1,900 (2007 census)
Language family	Trans–New Guinea Finisterre–Huon Finisterre Wantoat Awara
Language codes
ISO 639-3	awx
Glottolog	awar1248

Awara is one of the Finisterre languages of Papua New Guinea. It is part of a dialect chain with Wantoat, but in only 60–70% lexically similar. There are around 1900 Awara speakers that live on the southern slopes of the Finisterre Range, they live along the east and west sides of Leron River basin.

Culture

The Awara people value group harmony, consensus, and religion. They attend church every Sunday, during these gatherings they also discuss any sorts of problems that people may have until they find a solution. The Church and government roles are separated, but they are also not separated because people who have leadership roles in the government usually have a leadership role in the church. In addition "all local government functions (meetings, community work projects, etc) are organized at the community church gatherings, regional government matters are also discussed at the regional church meetings."

Alphabet

In Awara language has 21 letters (Aa, Ää, Bb, Dd, Ee, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Oo, Pp, Ss, Tt, Uu, Ww, Xx, Yy, Zz), 3 digraphs (Gw gw, Kw kw, Ng ng) and trigraph (Ngw ngw)

Phonology

Consonants

Awara consonants consist of a labial, coronal, and a dorsal. These are further split into voiced stops, voiceless stops, nasals, and voiced spirants. The consonants in Awara also make a distinction whether its labial or lingual. Many of the consonants in Awara have different sounds (for example voiced lateral 'l' can also make the sound 'r', also special character 'b' in voiced fricatives makes the sound of not only 'b' but 'w' and 'v').

Consonant Phonemes

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Labialised Velar	Velar	Glottal
Voiced stops	b	d		gw	g
Voiceless stop	p	t		kw	k
Voiced Fricatives	b				ḡ
Voiceless fricatives		s				h
Nasals	m	n		ŋw	ŋ
Voiced laterals		l
Glides			y

Vowels

There are 6 vowels in Awara. Vowels e,i,u generally appear before consonants m and l, but can sometimes appear after them. The vowels are split into three categories: front vowels (I and e), middle/central vowels(A and a), and back vowels(u and o). The front vowels in Awara are "Generally lax vowels [I], [e], and [u] occur before the sonorants such as [m] and [l], and to a lesser degree after [m] and [l]. There are a few allophones for vowels in Awara, [I] is usually pronounced as [t] in addition to [I],

Vowel Phonemes

	Front	Mid	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e	A	o
Low		a

Syllables

Syllables in Awara has one distinct pattern [CVC] which is split into 4 possible patterns, V, CVC, CV, and VC. These patterns make sure that consonants are always separated by a vowel, for example if you have CV and VC when combined they turn into CVC. While there is two CVC, all consonants Generally syllables have specific pattern, that is V comes before CV, which comes before VC meaning that this pattern would turn into VCVC.

Stress

Awara uses a pitch accent system this is common in many Papuan languages. Awara itself has three different patterns of stress, one primary and two secondary or alternate patterns. The primary pattern stresses the first and third syllables, while the main focus of the stress falls on the last syllable that is stressed. Example /Ayi/ -> a.yi -> 'grandmother' in this word the 'yi' is emphasized

Reduplication

In Awara reduplication is usually done with two syllable words, however there is an exception "matekmatekrn∆" which means little things is the only reduplicated word that uses a three syllable word with the derivative suffix "n∆". There are two types of reduplication in Awara. The first one duplicates an already existing word with its own meaning and lowers the semantic category of the word One example of this is 'halu' and 'haluhalu', 'halu' means 'beach' but 'haluhalu' means 'sand', while the first word refers to the beach the reduplicated form turn the word into what is on the beach(sand). The second way copies words that do not have any meaning by themselves but mean something when duplicated. For example 'gak' by itself has no meaning but 'gakgak' means 'tree species'.

Morphology

Verbs

Awara verb morphology can be split into two subcategories, ones that take inflectional affixes and ones that do not. Generally most verbs do take inflectional affixes. The only verbs that do not take the inflectional affixes are existential verbs, the existential verbs are käyä meaning 'exist' and wenä meaning 'not exist'.

Wa sade miting-u käyä

this Sunday meeting-TOP exist

This Sunday there is a meeting

"Normally existential verbs stand alone as the predicate but ti 'be' can be used with them to support tense or switch-reference" Existential verbs are classified as verbs over nouns since they are always the predicate, not as an argument or modifier in the noun phrase.

Moyo yiwit-na, nax-u wenä ti-wik

withoutStay-1P.DSfood=Top not.exist be-3s.FUT

'If we do nothing (lit. If we stay without doing anything) there will not be food'

Derivational Verb Stem Morphology

"Awara has three means for deriving verb stems: lexical compounding, benefactive compounding, and forming verbs from nouns via the addition of derivational suffix -la 'become'."

Lexical compounding uses the two types of compounds in Awara: noun-verb and verb-verb compounds. Noun-verb compounds show what is used to perform the action or what happens to the object. Verb-verb compounds describe two actions that occur, this commonly used the verb ä 'take' followed by a motion verb such as apu 'come'.

Noun-Verb example

A=lut-de-ke nä-ka-ying=unin.

PRFOC=nail-detach-ss.PF eat-p.DIFF-23P.PRES=INDIV

'They picked them with the fingernails and eat them (breadfruit)'

Verb-Verb example

Yanggä kalux=u t-äjapu na-m-Ø.

water new=TOP S.O-take-come 1S.O-give-2S.IMM

'Bring some cold (fresh) water and give it to me.'

Benefactive compounding uses the verb mi 'give', mi usually comes after the verb. This verb can also change to gatäp which means 'help' making it function as a benefactive

hängä ngäkge-kän gata-ni-mi-ngga-k.

thing much-only help-1P.O-give-s.DiPF-3s.PRES

'... he helps us with many things'

Verbs that use la 'become'... La 'become' is a suffix and can be pronounced four different ways (la, ta, da, and ka). They are used in specific instances: "la is used after a vowel, ka is used after underlying velars, ta is used after an underlying /t/ or /n/, and da is used after consonants."

A-xupi-ta-ngga-k.

PRFOC-angry-become-s.DIPF-3s.PRES

'He is angry.'

Syntax

Word Order

The basic word order of Awara clauses is SOV. "Arguments and other constituents may be marked with postpositions, which are phono- logically bound to the preceding word as clitics." Some examples of this is the =dä on the example sentence, others are =ge or =le.

'Silas=dä Yälämbing=ge wätä wamä-ngä-mi-k.'

Silas=ABL Yälämbing=DAT sore tie-3s.0-give-3s.PRES

'Silas bandaged Yalambing's sore.'

Classifiers

The noun classifier system in Awara has around 30 classifiers."Most classifiers give some indication of the physical shape or arrangement of the item named by the noun"(täpä 'cl.stick refers to things that are like a stick). Sometimes more than one classifier is included with the noun to clarify what it it used for (for example yanggä 'water' can be combined with cl.täknga 'rope' to refer to a drink). A classifier will always appear on the right of a noun and on the left of suffixes

Loan Words

Loan words in Awara primarily from from Tok Pisin, while there are some that come from English. Other words like names and religious terms come from Yabium. There are three categories of loan words: loan words that conform to Awara phonology, loan words that violate Awara phonology, and loan words that add to the Awara phonemic inventory. Loan words that conform remove their voiced stops and changes them to unreleased voiceless stops (ex 'chord' from Tok Pisin changes to kod in Awara but is spelled as [kot]). Awara pronounces [r] but it does not exist in their alphabet so it is changed to l (ex. 'rice; is pronounces as [rais] the 'r' in rice is pronounced as r through l since its an allophone of l, but it is written as l [lais]). Most of the loan words are words for things that do not exist in the Awara language in which case the letters ai often are found in loan words (ex. pilot becomes to pailot). The loan words in Awara are for anything that didn't exist in their society before.

Modal Nouns

Awara has 3 modal nouns . Nangäsä is used when expressing possibility, nangän is used when expressing obligation, and nangge is used when expressing purpose. "They can function as either the argument of a clause, as predicates, and as adverbial modifiers." Modal nouns require nonfinite clauses to accompany them and cannot exist without them.

[ Akop-nangge] natä-ke-ngä ako-pit.

come.up-Purpose want-SS.PF=after come.up-1s.FUT

'When I want to come up, I will.'

Negation

There are three phrases that are used for negation in Awara. The two most common ones are do= or =undo, they are found before inflecting verbs. Ma is the third negation phrase, it is used with imperatives, third person horatives, or a compliment of the modal noun =nangän.

.. epuxu-wa do-n-u-kin.

come.out-1s.DS NEG= 1s.o-hit-23p.PAST

'I went out and they didn't hit me.'

External links

• Alphabet and pronunciation

Category:Finisterre–Huon languages Category:Languages of Papua New Guinea Category:Languages of Morobe Province