Kambera language

Kambera
Spoken in	Indonesia
Region	Lesser Sunda Islands
Native speakers	235,000  (2000)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian (MP) Nuclear MP Central–Eastern MP Sumba–Flores ? Sumba Sumba Island Kambera
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xbr
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Kambera (also known as Sumbanese, East Sumbanese, Oost-Sumbaas, Humba, Hilu Humba, East Sumba, and Sumba) is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia. Kambera is a member of Bima-Sumba subgrouping within Central Malayo-Polynesian inside Malayo-Polynesian.^[1] The island of Sumba, located in the Eastern Indonesia, has an area of 12,297 sq. km.^[2] The name Kambera comes from a traditional region which is close to a town in Waingapu. Because of export trades which concentrated in Waingapu in the 19th century, the language of the Kambera region has become the bridging language in eastern Sumba. There are many names for the language Kambera. Its speakers refer to Kambera as hilu Humba ‘Sumbanese language’. In the Dutch literature, Kambera is known as Sumbaneesch, Sumba(a)sch, Oost-Sumbaas and Kamberaas.^[3] In Indonesian literature, it is referred as Bahasa Sumba/Kamberaor Bahasa Sumba Timur dalam dialek Kambera (‘Eastern Sumbanese in the Kambera dialect’).^[4]

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i iː	u uː
Mid	e ai	o au
Low	a, aː

The diphthongs /ai/ and /au/ function phonologically as the long counterparts to /e/ and /o/, respectively.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	p	t		k
Implosive	ɓ	ɗ
Voiced affricate			dʒ
Nasal	m	n		ŋ
Prenasalized stop	ᵐb	ⁿd		ᵑɡ
Prenasalized affricate			ᶮdʒ
Fricative					h
Lateral		l
Rhotic		r
Semivowel	w		j
Prenasalized semivowel			ᶮj

Kambera formerly had /s/, but a sound change occurring around the turn of the 20th century replaced all occurrences of former /s/ with /h/.

Morphology

Pronouns and Person Markers

Personal pronouns are used in Kambera for emphasis/disambiguation and the syntactic relation between full pronouns and clitics is similar to that between NPs and clitics. NPs and pronouns have morphological case.

Personal Pronouns

Person	Number
	Singular	Plural
1INC		nyuta
1EXCL	nyungga	nyuma
2	nyumu	nyimi
3	nyuna	nyuda

Kambera, as a head-marking language, has rich morpho-syntactic marking on its predicators. The pronominal, aspectual and/or mood clitics together with the predicate constitute the nuclear clause. Definite verbal arguments are crossreferenced on the predicate for person, number and case (Nominative (N), Gentive (G), Dative (D), Accusative (A)). The four main pronominal clitic paradigms are given below.

	Nominative	Genitive	Accusative	Dative
1SG	ku-	-nggu	-ka	-ngga
2SG	(m)u-	-mu	-kau	-nggao
3SG	na-	-na	-ya	-nya
1PL.INC	ta-	-nda	ta-	-nda
1PL.EXC	ma-	-ma	-kama	-nggama
2PL	(m)i-	-mi	-ka(m)i	-ngga(m)i
3PL	da-	-da	-ha	-nja

Examples:

(1)	apu-nggu'
	granny-1SG.GEN
	"My granny."

(2)	ana-na'
	child-3SG.GEN
	"His child."

(3)	Kau	pa.ta.lunggur-ya	na	wihi-na
	scratch	CAU.be sore	ART	leg-3SG.GEN
	"He scratched his leg sore." (lit. "He scratched and caused his leg to be sore")

(4)	Na-tari-bia	nahu	angu-na
	3SG.NOM-watch-MOD	now	companion-3SG.GEN
	"He just watches his comapnion."

(5)	Ningu	uma-nggua
	be.here	house-3SG.GEN
	"I have a house." (lit. "Here is a house of mine.")

(6)	Nyuda-ha-ka	nahu	da	ana-nda
	they-3PL.ACC-PRF	now	ART	child-1PL.GEN
	"They are our children now."

The items in the table below mark person and number of the subject when the clause has continuative aspect.

Person	Number
	Singular	Plural
1INC		-ndanya
1EXCL	-nggunya	-manya
2	-munya	-minya
3	-nanya	-danya

Examples:

(1)	Lunggur-nanya	na	Ihi-na
	scratch-3SG.CONT	ART	body-3SG.GEN
	"He is scratching his body."

(2)	"Laku-nnguya	ina",	wa-na
	go-1SG.CONT	mother	say-3SG
	"'I am going, mother," he said.'"

Footnotes

1. ^ Klamer, 1998
2. ^ Klamer 1998
3. ^ Klamer 1998
4. ^ Klamer 1998

Bibliography

• Klamer, Marian (1998). Kambera. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 

• Klamer, Marian (2005). "Kambera". In Adelaar, Karl Alexander and Himmelmann, Nikolaus. The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar. London: Curzon Press. 

External links

• Ethnologue report for language code:xbr