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Article published In:
Variation in the Pacific: Part I
Edited by Eri Kashima and Miriam Meyerhoff
[Asia-Pacific Language Variation 6:2] 2020
► pp. 250–277

Word-initial [h]-drop variation in Nmbo

Change-in-progress in an egalitarian multilingual speech community of Papua New Guinea

| Australian National University | University of Helsinki

This paper presents a natural speech corpus-based study of word-initial [h]-drop from the Nmbo speech community of southern Papua New Guinea. It is a speech community within a traditional egalitarian multilingual language ecology sustained by a practice of virilocal exogamy, and there is strong intergenerational transmission of local vernacular languages. This study investigates the propensity of word-initial [h]-drop in nouns, based on Nmbo speech data of Kerake tribe people. The results from the Nmbo Sociolinguistic Corpus shows clear age-conditioned variation, with younger speakers showing a higher propensity for [h]-drop. Nmbo speakers residing both within and outside their Nmbo villages of origin appear to be partaking in the innovative [h]-drop. The origin of the [h]-drop appears to be from the village with a more multilingual profile, as would be predicted by the notion of a multilingual feature pool (Cheshire, Kerswill, Fox, & Torgersen, 2011, Mufwene 2001).

Keywords: Papua New Guinea, Pacific, exogamy, deletion, lenition, phonological variation, network analysis, egalitarian multilingualism, apparent time construct
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Nmbo speech community
  • 3.Data and methodology
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Linguistic conditions
    • 4.2Sociolinguistic and linguistic results
  • 5.Analysis and discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 December 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.20002.kas
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