Foi language

Foi, also known as Foe or Mubi River, is one of the two East Kutubuan languages of the Trans-New Guinea family spoken along Lake Kutubu and Mubi River, located in the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea.^[1] Dialects of Foi are Ifigi, Kafa, Kutubu, Mubi.^[2] A Swadesh list for the Foi language was documented by The Rosetta Project in 2010.^[3] The estimated number of Foi speakers as of 2015 is between 6,000 and 8,000.^[4]

Grammar

Syntax

Source:^[5]

Foi is a subject–object–verb language, similar to most languages in Papua New Guinea.

Foe adopts the usage of focused objects as sentence-initial. In noun phrases, Foi follows the pattern of Noun + Quantifier and Adjective + Noun.

Adverbial phrases are marked postpositionally by clitics in Foi.

Foi also has a series of evidentials to mark the verbal aspect of seen, unseen, deduced, possibility, and mental deduction.

Morphology

Source:^[5]

The subject or focus transitive in a sentence is marked with -mo as shown in example (1) below.Where the focus is on the person who is eating the sweet potato.

Lexical

Foi has separate words for today and yesterday, as well as two, three, four and five days prior and hence.^[5]

Pronouns

Source:^[5]

Singular, dual, and plural are distinguished in personal pronouns. In addition, Foe also marks clusivity for first-person pronouns.

It was not made clear if a reported minimal distinction in the first-person plural form between the inclusive jia and exclusive jija is real.

Phonology

Vowels

Foi features 5 vowels.

Consonants

The 16 consonants including the glottal stop used in Foi are:

Allophonic variation of [t], [d] and [r] is common.^[5]

The vowel /y/ was mentioned as a consonant by Franklin, suggesting that the research was phonetically noted in Americanist phonetic notation.^[5] The table above has been amended according to the standards of International Phonetic Alphabet.

Body-part counting system

Foi adopts the body-part counting system. This feature can also be found in approximately 60 Trans-New Guinea Languages such as Fasu and Oksapmin.^[5]

Counting typically begins by touching (and usually bending) the fingers of one hand, moves up the arm to the shoulders and neck, and in some systems, to other parts of the upper body or the head. A central point serves as the half-way point. Once this is reached, the counter continues, touching and bending the corresponding points on the other side until the fingers are reached.^[6]

Language status

According to Ethnologue, the language status of is '5*', referring to the situation whereby the language is anticipated to be in vigorous use by all, based on the informed guess made by editorial team due to the lack of information. This status is based on Lewis and Smino's (2010) Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS).^[1]

Further reading

• Rule, Murray. 1993. The Culture and Language of the Foe: The People of Lake Kutubu, Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. Merewether, New South Wales: Chevron Niugini.

References

1. ^ e25
2. ^ International encyclopedia of linguistics. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2003. ISBN 0-19-513977-1. OCLC 51478240
3. ^ Foi Swadesh List
4. ^ Niles, Don & Weiner, James F. (2015), "Introduction:: Foi Songs and the Performance, Publication, and Poetry of Papua New Guinea Sung Traditions", Songs of the Empty Place, The Memorial Poetry of the Foi of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea, ANU Press, pp. xv–l, ISBN 978-1-925022-22-3. JSTOR j.ctt16wd0gx.6
5. ^ Franklin, Karl J. (2001). "Kutubuan (Foe and Fasu) and Proto Engan". The boy from Bundaberg: Studies in Melanesian linguistics in honour of Tom Dutton. Vol. 514. Pacific Linguistics. Andrew, Pawley; Malcolm, Ross; Darrell, Tryon (eds.). The Australian National University. pp. 143–154. doi:10.15144/PL-514
6. ^ The languages and linguistics of the New Guinea area : a comprehensive guide. Berlin. 4 December 2017. ISBN 978-3-11-029525-2. OCLC 1041880153

External links

• Timothy Usher, New Guinea World, Foe