Kaki Ae language
Language isolate of Papua New Guinea
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kaki Ae, or Tate, is a language spoken by about 500 people, half the ethnic population, near Kerema, in Papua New Guinea. It was previously known by the foreign designation Raeta Tati.
Classification
Kaki Ae has been proposed to be related to the Eleman languages, but the connections appear to be loans.[2] Søren Wichmann (2013)[3] tentatively considers it to be a separate, independent group. Pawley and Hammarström (2018) treat Kaki Ae as a language isolate due to low cognacy rates with Eleman, and consider the few similarities shared with Eleman to be due to borrowed loanwords.[4]
Distribution
Kaki Ae is spoken in Auri, Kupiano, Kupla (7.990545°S 145.790882°E), Lou (8.015988°S 145.813268°E), Ovorio (7.987255°S 145.809446°E), and Uriri (7.978345°S 145.794638°E) villages in Central Kerema Rural LLG, Gulf Province.[1][5]
Pronouns
The Kaki Ae pronouns are:
sg pl 1 nao nu'u 2 ao ofe 3 era era-he
Phonology
Kaki Ae has no distinction between /t/ and /k/. (The forms kaki and tate of the name both derive from the rather pejorative Toaripi name for the people, Tati.)
Vocabulary
The following basic vocabulary words are from Brown (1973),[7] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:[8]
gloss Kaki Ae head aro hair uʔumo ear oʔi eye ere nose noʔi tooth huʔu tongue anara leg fera louse saruta dog evera bird mini egg mini umu blood ivare bone uki breast ame tree oproro man aru woman aʔu sun lare moon fuiya water haime fire aiyeʔi stone ere name iru eat muake one okiao two uʔungka
Further reading
- Clifton, John M. 1995. A grammar sketch of the Kaki Ae language. In: Albert J. Bickfield (ed.), Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session, 33–80. Grand Forks, North Dakota: SIL.
