Eipo language
# Eipo language

Eipo (Eipomek), or Lik, is a Mek language of the eastern highlands of Eipumek District, Pegunungan Bintang Regency, Highland Papua. It spoken by the Eipo people who live along the Eipo River. A large percentage of its vocabulary is shared with Una and Tanime, and they form one dialect area.

## Classification

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:

Consonant phonemes :

| | Bilabial | Bilabial | Labio- dental | Alveolar | Alveolar | Palatal | Palatal | Velar | Velar |
| - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Plosive | p | b | | t | d | c | | k | ɡ |
| Fricative | | β | f | s | | | | | |
| Nasal | | m | | | n | | | | ŋ |
| Tap or flap | | | | | ɾ | | | | |
| Approximant | | | | | | | j | | |

* /p/ indicates a labialized [pʷɵ].
* /c/ indicates a palatalized [tʲ].

### Vowels

Eipo has five phonemic vowels:

Monophthong phonemes :

| | Front | Central | Back |
| - | - | - | - |
| Close | i | | u |
| Open-mid | e | | o |
| Open | | a | |

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 $person.^{:119}$

* a- ‘here’
* ei- ‘up there’
* ou-, u- ‘down there’
* or-, er- ‘across there’ (‘across-valley’)

## Interrogatives

Eipo has many compound $interrogatives:^{:95}$

* 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 /β/ ⟨w⟩, /ŋ/ ⟨ng⟩, /ɾ/ ⟨r⟩, and /j/ ⟨y⟩.

