Nancowry language

Nancowry (Nancoury, Nankwari, Mūöt) is a Nicobarese language spoken in the central Nicobar Islands. It is not mutually intelligible with the other Central Nicobarese languages, and is distantly related to Vietnamese and Khmer,

Phonology[]

Consonants[]

• The labial glide written variously v and w is written ʋ

Vowels[]

Vocabulary[]

Paul Sidwell (2017)^[3] published in ICAAL 2017 conference on Nicobarese languages.

Morphology[]

Presence of a coda-copy-infixation system. Stock of lexical roots is reduced by active word taboo and hence rely on derivation extensively.

• kóɲ - 'male, husband'
• ʔumkóɲ -'to turn into a man'
• mumkóɲ - 'eunuch'
• ʔinkóɲtet - 'widower'
• kóɲu - 'to marry, to have a man'
• kamóɲu - 'married women'

Shared morphological alternations: the old AA causative has two allomorphs, prefix ha- with monosyllabic stems, infix -um- in disyllabic stems (note: *p > h onset in unstressed σ).

• ŋok - 'to eat' / haŋok 'to feed'
• cim - 'to cry' / hacim 'to make someone cry'
• lapəʔ - 'pretty' / lumpəʔ 'to make someone pretty'
• karuʔ - 'large' / kumdruʔ 'to enlarge'

References[]