Kalamang
Karas
Region	West Papua
Native speakers	(100 cited 2000)[1]
Language family	Trans–New Guinea Berau Gulf West Bomberai Kalamang
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kgv
Glottolog	kara1499
ELP	Karas
Karas is classified as Severely Endangered by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger.
Kalamang Show map of Western New Guinea Kalamang Show map of Indonesia Kalamang Show map of Southeast Asia
Coordinates:3°28′S132°41′E / 3.47°S 132.68°E /-3.47; 132.68

Kalamang, sometimes also calledKaras, is a divergentTrans–New Guinea language spoken on the biggest of theKaras Islands off theBomberai Peninsula, that is part of theWest Bomberai family. It is spoken in Antalisa and Mas villages on Karas Island.^[2]

• The consonants /f/ and /h/ are uncommon, with f mostly appearing in loanwords.^[5] The palatal plosives, /c/ and /ɟ/, also appear mostly in loans, though some come from a historically palatalised /t/ or /d/.^[6]

• The vowels /a e i/ are reduced to [ə] in unstressed syllables in fast or casual speech.

Additionally, the following diphthongs are present: /ei/, /oi/, /ou/, /ui/.

Cowan (1953) records the following pronouns for Karas.

Visser (2020) records the following pronouns for Karas of Maas village:

The free possessives and possessive suffixes can occur together.^[7]

Nouns take suffixes marking theirpossessors. Nouns can bereduplicated, either fully or partially, often resulting in aplural interpretation, though this may alter the meaning of the noun in some other way, such as intensifying, or it mayderive a verb, as inmun "flea",munmun "search for fleas." A subset ofkinship terms can mark plurality with a suffix of the form-mur/-mumur, but this is not found on other nouns. Some noun roots cannot appear alone, and must take a possessive suffix or some other marker, one group of these being some kinship terms which are required to have possessive suffixes, such asnam- "husband", ortara- "grandparent, grandchild".^[8] Nouns can becompounds, either the first or second component may be thehead, with the other being the modifier. In compounds where the second element is the head, it may be optionally possessive marked, but this is lexicalised, as the form of the possessive marker is fixed (e.g.kokok nar(-un) chicken egg-(possessive suffix)".^[9]

Pronouns have distinct roots for eachperson in the singular and plural, along with making aclusivity distinction in the first person plural, and from the plural stems, a dual pronoun can be formed by suffixing-ier. The first-person plural inclusive pronounpi, may be used as a generic orimpersonal reference. The third person singular pronounma refers toinanimate referents of any number, the other third person forms are not used for inanimates. Suffixes-(ah)utak andtain attach to the pronoun roots, both meaning "only", though-tain serves more to emphasise or single out a referent from a larger group, while-(ah)utak primarily quantifies.-gan, -(nV)ninggan, on duals or plural pronouns respectively, expresses "both, all".^[10] Possessive pronouns are formed by a suffix-gon on the first-person singular and plural-exclusive, and-in on other roots, and may either modify a head noun, or stand alone (e.g.anggon may mean either "my" or "mine, my (one)".^[11]

The order of elements in thenoun phrase is thus: A possessor noun phrase or pronoun may precede the head noun, and these are the only elements that may do so. After the head noun are in order,quantifiers, possessive pronouns,attributive modifiers, anddemonstratives.^[12]

Possession is usually marked by a possessive suffix on the possessed noun, optionally accompanied by a noun phrase referring to the possessor preceding the head, or less commonly, a pronoun. A possessive pronoun may follow the head noun, which may be either marked or unmarked with a possessive suffix, though possessive pronouns much more commonly occur alone, rather than modifying a head noun. The nounsesa, ema "mother, father" often use this construction, as they may only take a possessive suffix to form ateknonym, a very common way of addressing someone, where they are referred to as the parent of their eldest child. It is also found with compound nouns that obligatorily take a fossilised possessive suffix, since the suffix slot cannot be used to indicate possession on these compounds.^[13]

Quantifiers include bothnumeral, and non-numeral quantifiers. Reduplication on numerals isdistributive, thoughKon "one", whenreduplicated, can mean "a few", or "not any/nothing" in a negated clause. Reduplication on the non-numeral quantifierbolon "little", intensifies the meaning.^[14]

There are numeralclassifiers, which are prefixes that attach to a numeral, or the content interrogativepuraman "how many", expressing some feature of the noun being quantified, such askis- for long, thin objects, ornar- for small, round ones. Not all nouns have a classifier assigned to them, for example, human nouns do not, but for those which do, the use of a classifier with a numeral is obligatory.^[15] Many classifiers also function as nouns referring to parts of wholes, liketak- "leaf, page, flat object", orar- "stem", and are possessed in this context.^[16] When functioning as classifiers, a single noun referring to a kind of plant may occur with different classifiers, depending on which part of it is being discussed, like the plant as a whole, its fruits, its seeds, etc.^[17] When a quantifier is the only post-head modifier object noun, in addition to the noun taking the object marker=at, the quantifier receives the object quantifier suffix-i. If there is another post-noun modifier however, object status is marked only by the object marker attaching to the final element of the noun phrase.^[18]

The marker=ten attaches topredicates placed after the noun within the noun phrase, turning them into modifiers. Its use is not required on stative verbs, which fill the role ofadjectives, in this function. Constructions using=ten can be consideredrelative clauses.^[19] The associative marker=kin appears on a modifying noun, to mark meanings including possession, purpose or location, likenika war=kin line fish-kin "fishing line."^[20]

Kalamang has a number of differentdemonstrative roots, with different syntactic behaviour.Wa, me "this, that" exhibit the full range of possibilities, they can follow a noun in a noun phrase, be an argument or predicate of a non-verbal clause (identificational function), and they are also the only ones that can be used as pronouns. These forms can also take suffix-ndi, meaning "like (this/that", or suffixes-bes, -rip, -sen "(this/that) many, big, far".Me is also often used in forms expressing a change of setting or time in a narrative. Other forms include the fardistalowa, which is often used for nonvisible referents, andyawe andosa, which mark elevation rather than distance, "up" and "down" respectively. These demonstratives can be used as modifiers to a head noun, and identificationally, but cannot be used as pronouns, and are often used adverbially as well when marked for thelocative or lative. Theanaphoric demonstrative,opa is only used as a modifier, referring to already mentioned or accessible referents. When demonstratives have the object marker attached, it takes a reduced form with them-t, while the locative=ko and lative=ka are augmented to-t=ko and-n=ka.^[21]

Postpositions areclitics, because they are not bound to the head of the noun phrase, but always attach to the last element, like English 's^[22] The postposition=at marksobjects, both direct and someindirect objects, depending on the verb, whether animate or inanimate. The only situation where it doesn't surface is if the object is marked astopic withme.^[23] The object marker co-occurs with the object quantifier suffix if there is no other following modifier.^[24]

The marker=ki has two functions, as aninstrumental marker, and as a benefactive marker in the "give" construction.^[25] Thesimilative is marked by=kap.^[26]Comitative=bon marks either animate or inanimate accompaniment. Unlike other postpositions, it may co-occur with=at, since it also functions as acoordinator, and it may stand alone with an omitted head if the accompanying referent is obvious from context.^[27]

Thelocative=ko, konggo, which marks location (though sometimes goal, when placed after some verbs of motion), and thelative=ka, =kongga, which marks the source or goal of a movement, each have two forms depending on whether the referent they mark is inanimate or animate, respectively. The animate lative and locative may also mark the indirect objects of some verbs.^[28] To show more specific locational meanings, there are locational nouns, such askeit- "top(side)" orkol- "outside". They cannot appear alone, and must be either used in locative or lative marked noun phrases, be either marked as possessed, or take a suffix of the form-pis, -kadok "-side".^[29]

Noun phrases can be coordinated via juxtaposition, or through the use of the comitative postposition=bon, which follows each coordinated referent.Ye "or" following the coordinands is used fordisjunctive coordination.^[30]

Verbs most often function as thepredicate of aclause. Often, multiple verbs will do so in a complex predicate. Verbs can be either active orstative; stative verbs covering meanings that English generally usesadjectives for, as adjectives are not a distinct word class from verbs in Kalamang. Verbs take the attributive marker=ten to modify a noun within a noun phrase; this marker is used much less often with stative verbs.^[31] Verbs can benominalised with-un, resulting in an abstract noun, such as derivingririn-un "length" fromririn "long", orkonenen-un "memory" fromkonenen "remember".^[32]Reduplication on active verbs has a range of possible meanings, includingdurative, distributive, andhabitual, with adiminutive reading also possible for some verbs. Reduplication of stative verbsintensifies the meaning, which is done alongside attaching the intensification clitic=tun for most.^[33]

Most verbs are regular, but there are someirregular verbs which display variation between ending with a vowel, or attaching a finaln ort before some inflectional clitics. Most follow the same pattern of whichclitic triggers each ending, but some do not. When not followed by a clitic, irregular verbs may end either in a vowel, or inn, thoughbo "go" surfaces asbot when it is the only verb in a predicate, or when following alocative or lative marked noun phrase in a complex predicate, butbo when occurring with other verbs in a complex predicate. Directional verbs are a set of irregular verbs with unique behavior, they precede locative marked noun phrases rather than following them as other verbs do, take a unique imperative ending-ei, and can becausativised by the markerdi=. There are also many irregular verbs to do with cutting or breaking that all end inma, and many of these have intransitive counterparts where thema is replaced withcie, and/or a related noun (e.g.sanggoup "branch",sanggotma "break off (a branch)",sanggoyie "(a branch) be broken".^[34]

There is bothvalency reducing, and increasing morphology. In terms of valency reducing, there is areflexive prefixun- is used, though it is not frequent.^[35]Reciprocal procliticnau= forms reciprocals, but may have more specific meanings, as insaur "shoot",nau=sair "be at war".^[36] For valency increasing, there is theapplicative cliticko=, which causes a referent to become the object of the verb, when it would have been more peripheral in the underived form. For examplegareor "pour", takes the thing poured as its object, whileko=gareor takes the location of the pouring as the object.^[37] There are twocausative clitics,di= andma=.di= may only attach to directional verbs as insara "ascend"di=sara "raise/put up", though it also attaches to some non-verbal predicates; some other verbs may form a causative withma= instead.^[38]

Verbs mayincorporate an object noun, which will directly precede the verb and not be marked as an object, (e.g. Non-incorporatedter=at na vs incorporatedter-na, drink (the/some) tea vs tea-drink) The noundon "thing", is only attested incorporated, never as an object in its own noun phrase.^[39]

Multiple predicational elements, including both verbs, and locative or lative marked noun phrases, can be combined to form a complexpredicate within a single clause, in which predicate-level markers appear only once, attached to the final element.^[40] Locative and lative marked nouns may appear alongside other verbs, to add explicit sources or goals to a complex predicate of motion; in this context, the locative only indicates goal, the lative may indicate either source or goal. Manner verbs precede them, verbs of motion may precede or follow them, while any verb may be the final verb in the construction, indicating an action done in the location, once arriving.^[41]

The predicate linker=i is often used to form complex predicates, attaching to the first element. These include those involving verbs of motion (e.g.ecien=i sara return-LINK ascend "go back up",talep-pis=i bot outside-side=LINK go "walk outside"), or an action and its result (e.g.pue=i parair hit=LINK break "break (by hitting)/hit and break). A verb may be doubled, both copies taking=i, to indicate an action done repeatedly or until some other action takes place. Using the verbkoyet after an elements marked with=i forms the completive aspect, meaning "After VERBing", which is then followed by a different clause.^[42]

Some verbs appearing in complex predicates cannot appear on their own, such askuru andbon, both meaning "bring", they are followed by a motion, or a locative or lative marked noun phrase indicating the goal.toni appears after a verb of speech or thought, introducing acomplement expressing what is said or thought, while it can appear before another verb, to indicate desire instead. A verbnominalised with-un may precedeeranun "cannot" to indicate lack of ability.^[43]

Serial verb constructions, in which no element links the verbs, and all verbs used may appear independently, are also present. These may express actions performed in sequence, often with the second as the goal of the first, and often include a motion verb, but this is not required.Bo "go", which surfaces asbot when used alone, may appear as the first verb in a serialisation with the meaning "become", followed by a stative verb indicating the result state.Bo, as well asra "move", can also appear as the first verb, indicating the second verb is the goal of motion. Verbs of posture can appear in a serialisation showing the posture one is in while doing another action.paruo "do/make" can appear as the first verb to causativise the second verb, though it is not productive, mostly appearing with stative intransitive verbs.^[44]

The typicalword order of a Kalamang clause issubject, object, predicate. Subjects are unmarked, while objects are marked with=at. Subject and objectdo not need to be mentioned overtly, if the context makes it clear that it is being referred to.^[45]

Topicalisation can be done through fronting a referent to the beginning of the sentence, marking it with the topic markerme, or both.Me is placed after a noun phrase, following a postposition if there is one, though if the noun phrase would be object marked with=at, the object marker does not surface.Me also has uses for topicalising clauses. Subjects can also be topicalised by apposing them to a personal pronoun.Focus is marked by the clitics=a, =ba following the focused element, coming after a postposition, just as the topic marker does.^[46]

Structure oftrivalent clauses varies; For verbs of showing and sending, both objects are marked with=at, and may occur in either order. With most other trivalent verbs, the theme is marked with=at, and is followed by a recipient marked with the animate locative or lative,=konggo or=kongga. In both of these structures, the direct object (theme) is rarely mentioned overtly.^[47] The meaning "give" is expressed with a zero morpheme, where the argments are in order: The agent; the theme, which takes the object marker=at; and the recipient, which takes the benefactive marker=ki if it is a noun, but not if it is a pronoun, and is optionally preceded by the causativedi=, with seemingly no change in meaning. As with other ditransitive clauses, the theme is often not overt. Linguist Eline Visser, who wrote A Grammar of Kalamang, says that "a clause consisting of a noun followed by a pronoun [...] or of two pronouns [...] is always interpreted as a give-construction by Kalamang speakers". Predicate final grammatical markers, which usually attach to the verb, attach to the recipient. A give-construction can appear after an=i marked verb in a complex predicate, and may consist of just the recipient (e.g.rep=i ka "get and give to you")^[48]

Reflexive clauses can be formed through the use of the reflexive prefixun- on a verb, and the subject pronoun often takes the quantifying-tain suffix. This suffix is also encountered in sentences with reflexive meaning without the use ofun-, though such examples are ambiguous. More often,diri, areflexive pronoun loaned from malay, is used as the object, with a Kalamang possessive suffix.^[35]

The verbslebe, or more rarelynemies, can be used to formcomparative clauses, with the referent the subject is compared against as their object. The property being compared is not mentioned overtly. Instead of a dedicated comparative construction, two clauses describing opposite properties may be juxtaposed.^[49]

The verbmambon is used to form clauses ofexistence and possession, with the subject being the referent whose existence or possession is predicated (e.g. "I have a pen" is expressed with a similar structure to "There is my pen.")^[50]

Many elements can function as apredicate without the use of a verb, including unmarked nouns or pronouns (both personal and possessive) to expressequation, inclusion, or possession,demonstratives, quantifiers, and locative or (rarely) lative marked referents to express location or goal. Asimilative=kap marked referent, a referent preceded bynain "like", or one marked by both, expresses similarity, while the use of both makers may also express equality of some property like height. These often have the topic markerme following the subject. In identificational clauses, which have a demonstrative as one of the elements, it will appear after a focus marked noun, but before a topic marked noun.^[51]

Aspect,mood, andmodality are marked in Kalamang at various spaces across the clause, with both post-subject particles, and post-predicate clitics being common, but there are other possibilities as well.^[52] Temporal adverbials come before the subject. A small class of manner adverbs precede the predicate, while intensifying clitics follow it, as well asweinun "too, as well".^[53]

Theirrealis clitic=et attaches to the predicate, marking future or hypothetical situations, such as possibilities or explanations of how something is done, and it appears in conditional clauses. In clauses with irrealis=et, the clitic=re may attach to an argument, usually the subject, producing a clause warning of danger, something bad that may happen.Volitional=kin marks an event that is desired, or imminent.Imperative clauses are formed with a final clitic=te, though motion verbs, or transitive verbs ending inma take a suffix-ei instead. If the subject of the imperative clause is plural a clitic=tar is used, with irregular or motion verbs taking=r instead.Prohibitives attach a suffix-mun to a subject pronoun, if present, and a clitic=in to the predicate. Unlike the imperative, it can have a non second-person subject, and will then indicate that something should or must not happen.^[54]

Other markers of modality are free forms. Borrowings from Malay,bisa "can", andharus "must", appear after the subject usually, but before the subject in the apodosis of acondition.Gen andreon both mean "maybe", and just differ in position;gen follows the subject,reon, the predicate. There are also modality related forms with more complex behaviour, such assuka- "(not) like", which takes a possessive suffix and is negated, anderanun, which appears as part of a complex predicate.^[55]

After the subject,aspectual markers can be found. The iamitive particlese, he (thehe allomorph can appear after a vowel) indicates something already done, or is aperfect, completed state with present relevance, while the nondumtok means "still", or "first". Under negation,se means "not anymore", whiletok has the meaning "not yet". Aspectual markers can also attach to the predicate,=teba marks theprogressive, and can co-occur with other predicate clitics, preceding the irrealis or imperative, but following the volitional or negative.^[56]

Verbal clauses arenegated with the clitic=nin attaching to the predicate. Some other predicate enclitics cannot combine with it, though it may be followed by the irrealis=et, which results in a negatedconditional clause. Imperatives are negated with distinctprohibitive markers.=nin negates non-verbal clauses with a preposition-marked noun phrase as predicate, and may also negate unmarked nouns in predicate position, though finalge may also be used for this.Ge is required to negate predicate demonstratives and possessive pronouns. As well as these grammatical forms, there are also dedicated negative verbs. Negation ofexistential clauses, which may also express possessive semantics, uses the negative existential verbsaerak instead ofmambon, without a negative clitic. Negation of desire is expressed usingsuka (a borrowing from Indonesiansuka "like") which takes a possessive suffix that may either co-refer to the subject, or be fixed in the third-person singular form, and is followed by eitherge, or a verb negated by=nin to express an undesired action. Negation of ability uses the verberanun "cannot", following the lexical verb, which takes the nominalising suffix-un.^[57]

Interrogative words occur in-situ. The roottama means "which" on its own, but can be marked locative or lative to question location, or goal/source, respectively. Other interrogatives are the pronounsnaman, neba "who, what",puraman "how many", andtamandi "how/why".Polar interrogatives can be marked by just a final rising-falling intonation, but often end with the tagye ge? "or not?", though tagsge,e, andto are also possible.^[58]

Clauses can becoordinated through juxtaposition, thoughconjunctions are also often used. Many come in pairs, where a native Kalamang conjunction, aloaned conjunction, or both may be used, without a change in meaning.Eba/ba andterus "then", are a native and loaned pair, and come between the clauses they connect. Similar pairs includeye andatau "or",ye follows each conjunct,atau only the first; andba andtapi "but".=tauna and=tenden "so", both attach to a clause expressing a reason, with the result following.^[59] The markermena "or else/lest", elsewhere used to mean "later", can function to link two clauses together, in which the second expresses a negative outcome or possibility, with the first often stating something done to prevent it^[60]

Clause markers=te, =ta mark a non-final clause, often with a sequential or causal meaning, and these are often also followed by the topic markerme.Eba may follow a clause with the non-final marker=ta, resulting in a consequential, "so that" meaning.^[61]

Relative clauses can be formed with the attributive marker=ten attaching to a predicate placed after a head noun. The role of the head noun in the relative clause is only ever subject. More often, sentences with meanings corresponding to relative clauses in other languages will be expressed by two distinct clauses in sequence (e.g. instead of "I caught the dog that bit me", one would say something analogous to "The dog bit me, then I caught it".)^[62]

Complement clauses follow the main clause, and are used for embedding speech or thought. The verbtoni "say", can be used when followed by a complement clause of speech, or appear in a complex predicate following another verb of speech or thought likegonggin "know", orgerket "ask", though these may also be used alone. Speech need not be introduced with an overt speech verb however, depending on context,wandi "like this" may introduce it, as well as the iamtive particlese, or the interjection "eh", all of which are also common alongside speech verbs.^[63]

Conditional clauses can be formed with=ero/=o attaching to the predicate, often the Austronesian loankalau appears at the start of the clause.Concessive conditionals are formed withtaero, which may be derived from=taet "more, again", followed by=ero/=o; often the malay loanbiar is used at the start of the clause.^[64] Irrealis=et can also be used to form conditionals, referring to the scene or situation where the apodosis applies, and it is often followed by the topic markerme in this function. When=et follows the negator=nin, this forms a negative conditional clause.^[65]

Tail-head linkage is commonly used in discourse in Kalamang, in which a clause, or just its predicate, is repeated at start of a following clause chain. This structure often uses the completive aspect=i koyet, a complex predicate.Ma he me "That's it" (lit. It is that), is often used to end a particular stretch of discourse.^[66]

In 2023, Kalamang was used bymachine learning researchers for a benchmark called "Machine Translation from One Book". It was chosen because of its negligible presence in the Internet and because field research materials were collected by Eline Visser, who published "A grammar of Kalamang" as her PhD thesis. Although Kalamang is primarily oral language, it can be written in theIndonesian alphabet. Researchers used all existing materials (grammar book, short dictionary, and small set of Kalamang-English sentences) to test howlarge language models (LLM) can learn a language from a single source, and tested the quality of translations.^[67] In 2024, researchers from Google showed that their latest LLM,Gemini 1.5, can translate English to Kalamang with similar quality to a human who learned from the same resources.^[68]

• Cowan, H. K. J. (1953).Voorlopige Resultaten van een Ambtelijk Taalonderzoek in Nieuw-Guinea (in Dutch). 's-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff.
• Visser, Eline (19 January 2022).A grammar of Kalamang. Language Science Press.ISBN 978-3-96110-343-0.
• Visser, Eline. 2021."Kalamang dictionary".ids.clld.org.. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.)TheIntercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig:Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (CLDF dataset)

• Timothy Usher, New Guinea World,Kalamang

• Languages of Western New Guinea
• Severely endangered languages
• West Bomberai languages

• Language articles citing Ethnologue 25
• CS1 errors: generic name
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Language articles with old speaker data
• Pages using gadget WikiMiniAtlas
• ISO language articles citing sources other than Ethnologue
• CS1 Dutch-language sources (nl)