The Doromu-Koki language documentation project

The Doromu-Koki language is one of the smaller languages of Central Province, Papua New Guinea. It is a Papuan language in close proximity to the much larger Sinauḡoro Oceanic language. Doromu-Koki is spoken by about 2,000 people, half of whom are now residing outside of the language community area in the capital, Port Moresby. The language area is approximately 80 kilometres east-southeast of Port Moresby, in the inland Rigo district. The people reside in twelve villages, distributed through three dialect areas (Koki, Kokila and Korigo) in the Owen Stanley ranges, which straddle the middle of the southern portion of the island of New Guinea. Its larger related neighbour is the Maria language to the southeast; together these two languages are classified as Manubaran, Southeast, putative Trans New Guinea. The current project focuses on documenting the history of the Doromu-Koki people, producing a comprehensive grammar and publishing a Doromu-Koki/English dictionary, which will include a thesaurus and lists of other semantic domains pertinent to Doromu-Koki culture, and will hopefully prove to be of great benefit to speakers of the language for generations to come. Robert Bradshaw has been working in close collaboration with several speakers on translation, literacy and other language development issues for nearly 20 years, and especially with Luke Bomena, Emmanuel Dagere, Charles Ero, Chris Magio, Joseph Toma and Michael Tuga. This current PhD project began in February 2019.

Typological profile of Doromu-Koki

Doromu-Koki is a nominative–accusative language, which has no case marking. Arguments are marked by constituent order (TEMP A/S OBL O E V). Peripheral arguments are marked by postpositions.

The phonemic inventory consists of 12 consonants [t^h, k^h, b, d, ɡ, f, s, β, m, n, ɾ, j] and five vowels [i, ɛ, u, o, ɑ].

Like other Papuan languages, Doromu-Koki exhibits external pre-head relative clauses, has no affixes on nouns and relatively few on verbs.

The only productive strategy for indicating plurality of nouns is through reduplication, which is limited to three small subclasses of countable culturally important notions, mass degree/intensity nouns and distributive nouns, while the only inherent number distinction on nouns is found in kinship terms.

There are 199 simple verbs divided into two subclasses. There are also a handful of uninflected verbs, which have been classified as verbs of intention and of cognition/volition.

Other features include switch-reference, complex verbs and directional verbs of motion, demonstratives and locatives. The language has five open word classes and 13 closed classes.

Bradshaw, Robert L. 2007. Fuyug Grammar Sketch in Data Papers on Papua New Guinea Languages, Vol. 53. Ukarumpa, SIL-PNG. [Fuyug_ Grammar_sketch.pdf]

Bradshaw, Robert L. 2008. Doromu-Koki dialect survey report. Ukarumpa: SIL-PNG. MS. [20080218Doromu-KokiDialectSurveyReport.pdf]

Bradshaw, Robert L. 2012. Doromu-Koki Grammar Sketch in Data Papers on Papua New Guinea Languages, Vol. 58. Ukarumpa: SIL-PNG. [20121130DataPapersOnPNGLanguagesVol58DoromuKokiGrammarSketch.pdf]

Bradshaw, Robert L. 2019. Versatile postpositions in Doromu-Koki: The case of rofu. Paper presented at the Linguistics Society of Papua New Guinea conference (23-24 September 2019 – Port Moresby). [20190923VersatilePostpositionsInDoromu-Koki.pdf]

Bradshaw, Robert L. 2020. Book review of A Grammar of Nungon: A Papuan Language of Northeast New Guinea, by Hannah S Sarvasy, in Journal of the Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea, Vol. 38. [Bradshaw%20%20SARVASI%20BOOK%20REVIEW%202.pdf]

Papers from LCRC Seminars and Workshops

Bradshaw, Robert L. The language of well-being multidisciplinary symposium: discussion sessions, 24 April 2019. [20190423SymposiumDiscussion]

Bradshaw, Robert L. The adjective class in Doromu-Koki. LCRC seminar - 31 July 2019. [20190731TheAdjectiveClassInDoromu-Koki.pdf]

Bradshaw, Robert L. Differential subject marking in Doromu-Koki: Between syntax and pragmatics. LCRC seminar - 9 July 2020. [20200401DifferentialSubjectMarkingInDoromu-Koki.pdf]

Bradshaw, Robert L. Questions in Doromu-Koki. LCRC seminar - 23 September 2020. [20200930QuestionsInDoromu-Koki.pdf]

1. [Alphabet design workshop.jpg] Photo by Philip Lambrecht
2. [Village house.jpg] Photo by Philip Lambrecht
3. [Toward Kasonomu.jpg]  Photo by Philip Lambrecht
4. [Translation Workshop.jpg] Photo by Rob Bradshaw
5. [Village Family.jpg] Photo by Jinhwan Kim
6. [Traditional Dancing.jpg]  Photo by Flo McKinley