Documentation of Konomala

Language	Konomala
Depositor	Christoph Holz
Affiliation	Università di Napoli l’Orientale, University of Naples L’Orientale
Location	Papua New Guinea
Collection ID	0759
Grant ID	MDP0453
Funding Body	ELDP
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/763ad0de-56c9-4720-b967-4d4b0cc2cd55

 

Summary of the collection

The project entails the documentation and description of Konomala, a so far completely undocumented Austronesian languages spoken in New Ireland (Papua New Guinea). The language is under pressure from Tok Pisin, the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea, and inter-generational transmission is precarious at best. The project ensures a long-lasting record of Konomala through the creation of an audio-video corpus, documenting a vast range of speech genres, as well as recordings dedicated to grammatical elicitation. Special attention will be given to documenting language change and language shift processes in the community.

 

Group represented

The group represented in this collection are the people living in the Konomala-speaking area of southern New Ireland. The community lives predominantly in eight coastal villages, and their principal sources of income are gardening, fishing, and selling of copra and cocoa. Erosion of linguistic proficiency is a consequence of several factors: mixed marriages, attendance of high schools outside the language area, the country’s English-only policy in the school curriculum, and high levels of internal migration among members of different language groups across the country. A shift towards a bigger local language (Siar) is observed, but the major danger to language transmission is the shift to Tok Pisin.

 

Language information

Konomala (Meso-Melanesian, Oceanic, Austronesian) was, up to this documentation project, a completely undocumented language. There is little to no description (only some sparse data in Ross 1988). There are two dialects: Konomala proper is spoken in six villages on the east coast (Wilo, Danfu, Sumsum, Purunkum, Kapsipau, Yasu), and Laket (Butam) is spoken in two villages on the west coast (Hitung, Siaman). Konomala belongs to the St George linkage, a group of about 50 languages that expand over southern New Ireland, East New Britain, Bougainville, and the northern Solomon Islands. Its closest neighbours are Siar (Frowein 2011), Kandas (undescribed), and Label (Peekel 1929–1930) to the south, and Fanamaket (undescribed), Sursurunga (Hutchinsson 1975), and Patpatar (Condra 1989) to the north. These languages are not grouped together because of tight genetic links, but because they do not fit into any of the other groupings in New Ireland.

 

Collection contents

The collection contains about 23 hours of audio-visual recordings, i.e. 15.5 hours of natural Konomala speech (narratives, procedural texts, songs, speeches, games, and riddles), 6 hours of grammatical and lexical elicitation, and 1.5 hours of Tok Pisin recordings. 9.5 hours are transcribed and translated in ELAN. The 383 photos in the collection document aspects of everyday life and cultural activities of the community and show the flora and fauna of the area. My research is based in Danfu Village, and most Konomala recordings feature the east coast dialect. Some recordings also feature the moribund west coast dialect, known as Laket or Butam. Traditional songs are rarely sung in Konomala as it is spoken today; the words are often a mix of various languages of southern New Ireland.

 

References

Beaumont, Clive H. 1972. New Ireland languages: a review. In C.H. Beaumont, D.T. Tryon and Stephen A. Wurm. Papers in linguistics of Melanesia no. 3 (Pacific Linguistics A-35). 1-41. Canberra: Australian National University.
Beaumont, Clive H. 1976. Austronesian languages: New Ireland. In Stephen A. Wurm, ed. Austronesian languages: New Guinea area languages and language study 2 (Pacific Linguistics C-39). 387-397. Canberra: Australian National University.
Condra, Ed. 1989. Patpatar language essentials. SIL PNG: Ukarumpa https://pnglanguages.sil.org/resources/archives/43567
Frowein, Friedel. 2011. A Grammar of Siar, An Oceanic Language of New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea (Ph.D. thesis). La Trobe University.
Hutchinsson, Don. 1976. Surusurunga grammar essentials. SIL PNG: Ukarumpa https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/43876
Lithgow, David and Oren R. Claasen. 1968. Languages of the New Ireland District. Port Moresby: Department of Information and Extension Services.
Peekel, Gerhard. 1929–1930. Grammatische Grundzüge und Wörterverzeichnis der Label-Sprache im Süden von Neu-Mecklenburg. Zeitschrift für Eingeborenensprachen 20, 10–34, 92–120.
Ross, Malcolm. 1988. Proto-Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia. (Pacific Linguistics: Series C, 98.) Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.

 
Acknowledgement and citation

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Holz, Christoph. 2023. Documentation of Konomala. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/183bdec9-3a80-4a97-9621-e5030aa6fc03. Accessed on [insert date here].