Eipo language

Eipo belongs to the Eastern branch of Mek languages, which is a family of closely related languages belonging to the larger grouping of Trans-New Guinea languages. ==Geographic distribution==

The Eipo language is spoken by about 3,000 people along the Eipo River in the valley of Eipomek, which is situated in the eastern highlands of Highland Papua. ==Phonology==

Consonants Eipo exhibits the following 16 phonemic consonants: • /p/ indicates a labialized [pʷɵ]. • /c/ indicates a palatalized [tʲ]. Vowels Eipo has five phonemic vowels: Diphthongs are not regarded as separate phonemes. ==Grammar==

Morphology Eipo is generally isolating language, but exhibits an elaborate system of agglutination in verb formation. Syntax The usual word order of Eipo is subject-object-verb (SOV). ==Deictics==

Eipo has only four basic spatial deictics, which are usually accompanied by pointing gestures, since the deictics are used during face-to-face communication to refer to positions relative to the person. • a- ‘here’ • ei- ‘up there’ • ou-, u- ‘down there’ • or-, er- ‘across there’ (‘across-valley’) ==Interrogatives==

Eipo has many compound interrogatives: • yate ‘what?, which?, what kind of?’ • yate anye ‘who?’ • yate ate ‘why? (what for)’ • yate arye ‘why? (what reason)’ • yate-barye ‘why?’ • yate-sum ‘when? (what day/time)’ • dan- ‘where?, where to, whence’ • dan-segum ‘whereabouts? (approximate location)’ • dan-tam ("where side") ‘where, whence, whereto’ • dan-ak ("where at") ‘where, whence, whereto’ ==Writing system==

Eipo is not historically a written language, but in recent decades a Latin alphabet has been devised for it. The letter values are mostly those of the IPA letters given above, with the exceptions of , , , and . ==References==