Language name and locationː Kirikiri, Papua province, Indonesia [Refer to Ethnologue]

语言名称和分布地区: 基里基里语, 印度尼西亚巴布亚省北部塔里库河流域地区

1. sɔʉɔ LHL

2. ɔlɔ  H tone ?

.  dlu L ( litː 'a few, a couple')

.  falu LHL ( litː 'many, all')

Linguist providing data and dateː Mrs. Heljä Clouse, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Indonesia, 1989, September 10, 1995, March 15, 2010.

提供资料的语言学家: Mrs. Heljä Clouse, 1989 年, 1995 年 9 月10 日, 2010 年 3 月 15 日.

Other comments: Kirikiri has only two words for number. The meaning of dlu is a bit indefinite. It is what comes after ‘two’, but it seems that at least traditionally it could mean either three or four. Something like Fayu, which has ‘one, two, three’; there is no word ‘four’, but then there is ‘five’. I assume that the latter just means ‘a full hand’, or something like that, but I have never heard the Kirikiri use that. If they need to express that amount, they can show their fingers, and say “like this”. I have never heard them use any native word for ‘five’. Tone: We have 7 word tone patterns, two of which I have analyzed as being LHL, but different kind. The other one is phonetically something like LML in isolation, but in a context it is not so clear. I have not been able to elicit the word for ‘two’ in isolation, as it would be a very unnatural thing to say. So my tone assignment for it is still uncertain, just an assumption based on how it seems to behave in longer contexts. I have only marked where the High tone falls on the word for ‘one’. If the tone for ‘two’ is what I suspect at the moment, the slightly higher pitch would be on the second syllable, followed by a slight fall to the starting pitch. I don’t know what kind of marking system you would use. They have indeed borrowed Indonesian numbers now with many possible variations. Kirikiri is spoken by about 250 speakers in Dofu Wahuka and Paniai villages, west of Tariku and Kliki rivers’ confluence, Papua province, Indonesia.