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| Ogea | |
|---|---|
| Erima | |
| Native to | Papua New Guinea |
| Region | Madang Province |
| Ethnicity | Ogea people |
Native speakers | 2,200 (2003)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | eri |
| Glottolog | ogea1238 |
Ogea orErima is aPapuanlanguage spoken byapproximately 2210 people living in an area 18 kilometers south of the town ofMadang, in theMadang Province ofPapua New Guinea.[2]
Phonemically, Ogea has a 15vowel system with 17consonants.Syntactically, Ogea is aSubject-Object-Verb (SOV) language, withadjectives followingnouns, anddeictics following adjectives—the reverse ofEnglish.
Morphologically, Ogea is a highly inflected,suffixing language, with most of the complexity occurring withverbs. There are over 100 basic verbal suffixes, the number of which is significantly multiplied byallomorphic variants. Ogeasentences are often composed of chains of verbs, with suffixes indicating sentence medial versus final positions. Ogea verbs encode inter-clausal temporality (temporal succession—one action occurs following another—and temporal overlap—actions occur simultaneously). They alsoencode switch reference.Switch reference indicates whether the referents of theclause in question are referents in the following clause.
It is useful toclassify Ogea verbal suffixes into two major categories:endocentric andexocentric, following the lead of Staalesen and Wells. Endocentric suffixes occur between the verb root and the exocenter. Endocentric suffixes include manner, object, and benefactive suffixes, among others. The same set of endocentric suffixes are used with varying sets of exocentric suffixes. The endocenter is composed of the verb root plus the endocentric suffixes. Exocentric suffixes encode inter-clausal temporality,tense,mood, subject, and switch reference. They are termed exocentric because they may contain suffixes that relate to the clause that follows. That is, the inter-clausal temporality and switch reference relate the current clause to the one that follows it.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Plosive/ Affricate | voiceless | p | t | k | ||
| voiced | b | d | dʑ | ɡ | ||
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᵑɡ | |||
| Fricative | s | h | ||||
| Trill | r | |||||
| Approximant | w | l | j | |||
/w/ may also be heard as [β] before /e/.[3]
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | nasal | plain | nasal | ||
| High | i, iː | u, uː | ũ, ũː | ||
| Mid | e, eː | o, oː | |||
| Low | a, aː | ãː | |||