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Abau is a Papuan language spoken in southern Sandaun Province of Papua New Guinea, primarily along the border with Indonesia.

In 2002, there were estimated to be between 4,500 and 5,000 speakers, and this number does not appear to have declined since the first accurate count in the 1970s.

Abau is reported to have whistled speech.

Phonology

Abau has the simplest phonemic inventory in the Sepik language family.

Pronouns

Pronouns are:

	sg	du	pl
1	ha ~ han	hror	hrom
2	hwon ~ hun	hoh	hom
3m	hiy ~ hi
3f	hok

The dual and plural numbers only distinguish between first person and non-first person. Also, the third-person gender distinction exists only for the singular, but not the dual or plural forms.

Noun classes

Abau noun classes are:

Abau noun classes

class	formal marker	semantics
class 1	pru	human, spirits
class 2	k(a)-	animals and default
class 3	na	small objects with some volume
class 4	s(i)-	flat surface objects
class 5	pi	long thin objects
class 6	u	geographical locations
class 7	i	flat objects with little volume
class 8	ri	certain types of trees
class 9	ein(d)-	bundles of long uncut items
class 10	reik	temporal
class 11	hnaw	bundles of long cut items
class 12	houk-	part of a long object

Nouns can take on different class affixes depending on the physical characteristics being emphasized. Examples:

su ‘coconut’

• su pi-ron /coconut class.5-one/ ‘a coconut palm’
• su ka-mon /coconut class.2-one/ ‘a coconut’

pey ‘sugarcane’

• pey pi-ron /sugarcane class.5-one/ ‘one stalk of uncut sugarcane’
• pey houk-mon /sugarcane class.12-one/ ‘one piece of sugarcane’
• pey eind-mon /sugarcane class.9-one/ ‘bundle of stored stalks of sugarcane’
• pey hnaw-mon /sugarcane class.11-one/ ‘one bundle of sugarcane ready for transport’

Like most other Sepik languages, Abau overtly marks grammatical gender (see Sepik languages#Gender). The same object can be classified as either masculine or feminine, depending on the physical characteristics intended for emphasis. Example:

youk ‘paddle’

• youk se ‘paddle M.DAT’ (focuses on the length of the paddle)
• youk ke ‘paddle F.DAT’ (focuses on the flat nature of the two-dimensional paddle blade)

Verbal morphology

Abau had three periodic tense suffixes: diurnal -kok, postmeridial -ropay and nocturnal -nayr

Vocabulary

The following basic vocabulary words are from Foley (2005) and Laycock (1968), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:

gloss	Abau
head	makwe
ear	nwek
eye	nane; nanɛ
nose	kasan
tooth	nas
tongue	sane; sanɛ
leg	sune; sunɛ
louse	mapru
dog	nwɔf; nwɔhɔ
pig	fwok
bird	ahnɛ
egg	ne
blood	nyoh
bone	ayo; i
skin	ohi
breast	mu
tree	no; nɔw
man	lu; or; ur
woman	sa
sun	e; ey
moon	yen; yeny
water	fu; hu
fire	ya
stone	məny
name	uru
eat	ra
one	mun; rin
two	pris

References

1. Abau at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
2. ^ Steven Moran and Daniel McCloy and Richard Wright. 2019. Abau sound inventory (PH). In: Moran, Steven & McCloy, Daniel (eds.) PHOIBLE 2.0. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. (Available online at http://phoible.org/inventories/view/1160, Accessed on 2019-04-23.)
3. ^ Foley, William A. (2018). "The Languages of the Sepik-Ramu Basin and Environs". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 197–432. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
4. Jacques, Guillaume (2023). "Periodic tense markers in the world's languages and their sources". Folia Linguistica. 57 (3): 539–562. doi:10.1515/flin-2023-2013.
5. Foley, W.A. "Linguistic prehistory in the Sepik-Ramu basin". In Pawley, A., Attenborough, R., Golson, J. and Hide, R. editors, Papuan Pasts: Cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. PL-572:109-144. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 2005.
6. Laycock, Donald C. 1968. Languages of the Lumi Subdistrict (West Sepik District), New Guinea. Oceanic Linguistics, 7 (1): 36-66.
7. Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.

• Laycock, D.C. (1965), "Three Upper Sepik phonologies", Oceanic Linguistics, 4 (1/2): 113–118, doi:10.2307/3622917, JSTOR 3622917

External links

• Papuaweb - a collection of source materials on Abau (PDF format)
• Abau Grammar - paper by Arjen Lock on grammar of the language (PDF format)
• Phonology Essentials - Abau Language - paper by Arjen Lock on phonology of the language (PDF format)
• Abau basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
• OLAC resources in and about the Abau language
• Listen to a sample of Abau from Global Recordings Network
• World Atlas of Language Structures information on Abau

• Upper Sepik languages
• Languages of Sandaun Province