Routamaa Judy. Kamula Grammar

Publication date: 1994
Number of pages: 101Kamula is a Papuan Language of the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. Wurm (1981) classifies Kamula as a family level isolate of the Central and South New Guinea stock and superstock of the Trans New Guinea Phylum. Shaw (1986) proposes that Kamula be placed in the Bosavi family and in the Bosavi Watershed subfamily. Lexically and grammatically, our investigations to date show very few similarities with the Bosavi family languages and so Wurm's classification is possibly more accurate. There are approximately 800 speakers of Kamula divided between 3 villages in Western Province. The main village of Kesiki, at Wawoi Falls, is a day's walk away from Samokopa and a 7 day walk away from Wasapea, situated 90 km to the south. Despite the distances between the villages, there are no dialect differences. The research for this paper was carried out under the auspices of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. The description is based on both text (100 kbytes, a variety of genres) and elicited materials collected between June 1991 and December 1993 primarily in the village of Kesiki. In particular I wish to thank Hawo Kuru for his patience in working with me on the texts, and Kamenato Adape for her joy in teaching me her language. I also wish to thank my husband, Iska, for his contribution to the analysis and for his work in formatting the paper.