| Eipo | |
|---|---|
| Lik | |
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Eipo River area in Eipumek District,Pegunungan Bintang Regency,Highland Papua |
| Ethnicity | Eipo people |
Native speakers | (3,000 cited 1987)[1] |
Trans–New Guinea
| |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | eip |
| Glottolog | eipo1242 |
Eipo (Eipomek), orLik, is aMek language of the eastern highlands of Eipumek District,Pegunungan Bintang Regency,Highland Papua. It spoken by theEipo people who live along theEipo River. A large percentage of its vocabulary is shared withUna andTanime, and they form one dialect area.[2]
Eipo belongs to the Eastern branch ofMek languages, which is a family of closely related languages belonging to the larger grouping ofTrans-New Guinea languages.
The Eipo language is spoken by about 3,000 people along theEipo River in the valley ofEipomek, which is situated in the eastern highlands ofHighland Papua.[1]
Eipo exhibits the following 16 phonemic consonants:[3]
| Bilabial | Labio- dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | c | k | ɡ | |||
| Fricative | β | f | s | |||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||||||
| Tap or flap | ɾ | |||||||||
| Approximant | j | |||||||||
Eipo has five phonemic vowels:[3]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Open-mid | e | o | |
| Open | a |
Diphthongs are not regarded as separate phonemes.[3]
Eipo is generally isolating language, but exhibits an elaborate system of agglutination in verb formation.
The usual word order of Eipo issubject-object-verb (SOV).
Eipo has only four basic spatialdeictics, which are usually accompanied by pointing gestures, since the deictics are used during face-to-face communication to refer to positions relative to the person.[5]: 119
Eipo has many compound interrogatives:[5]: 95
Eipo is not historically a written language, but in recent decades aLatin alphabet has been devised for it. The letter values are mostly those of the IPA letters given above, with the exceptions of/β/⟨w⟩,/ŋ/⟨ng⟩,/ɾ/⟨r⟩, and/j/⟨y⟩.
