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Kalamang language

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Kalamang
RegionWest Papua
Native speakers
100 (2000)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3kgv
Glottologkara1499
ELPKaras
Karas is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
Approximate location where Kalamang is spoken
Approximate location where Kalamang is spoken
Kalamang
Approximate location where Kalamang is spoken
Approximate location where Kalamang is spoken
Kalamang
Approximate location where Kalamang is spoken
Approximate location where Kalamang is spoken
Kalamang
Coordinates: 3°28′S 132°41′E / 3.47°S 132.68°E / -3.47; 132.68

Kalamang, sometimes also called Karas, is a divergent Trans–New Guinea language spoken on the biggest of the Karas Islands off the Bomberai Peninsula, that is part of the West Bomberai family. It is spoken in Antalisa and Mas villages on Karas Island.[2]

Phonology

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Consonants[3]
Labial Alveolar Dorsal
Plosive p b t d k g
Fricative (f) s (h)
Nasal m n ŋ
Approximant w r, l j
  • The consonants /f/ and /h/ are marginal.
Vowels[3]
Front Central Back
High i u
Mid e o
Low a
  • The vowels /a e i/ are reduced to [ə] in unstressed syllables in fast or casual speech.

Additionally, the following diphthongs are present: /ei/, /oi/, /ou/, /ui/.

Pronouns

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Cowan (1953) records the following pronouns for Karas.

singular dual plural
1st
person
exclusive aan inir piridok
inclusive aantemu (?)
2nd person kame ? kijumene
3rd person mame mjeir mubameir

Visser (2020) records the following pronouns for Karas of Maas village:

Free nominative
singular dual plural
1st
person
exclusive an in-ier in
inclusive pi-er pi
2nd person ka ki-er ki
3rd person ma m-ier mu
  
Free possessive
singular plural
1st
person
exclusive aŋ-gon pi-n
inclusive iŋ-gon
2nd person ka-in ki-n
3rd person ma-in mu-in
  
Possessive suffix
singular plural
1st
person
exclusive -an -pe, -p-in
inclusive -un
2nd person -tʃa -tʃe
3rd person -un -un

The free possessives and possessive suffixes can occur together.[4]

Machine Translation from One Book

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In 2023, Kalamang was used by machine learning researchers for a benchmark called "Machine Translation from One Book". It was chosen because of its negligible presence in the Internet and because field research materials were collected by Eline Visser, who published "A grammar of Kalamang" as her PhD thesis. Although Kalamang is primarily oral language, it can be written in the Indonesian alphabet. Researchers used all existing materials (grammar book, short dictionary, and small set of Kalamang-English sentences) to test how large language models (LLM) can learn a language from a single source, and tested the quality of translations.[5] In 2024, researchers from Google showed that their latest LLM, Gemini 1.5, can translate English to Kalamang with similar quality to a human who learned from the same resources.[6]

References

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  1. ^ "UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in danger". www.unesco.org. Retrieved 2018-08-18.
  2. ^ Kalamang language at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  3. ^ a b Visser, Eline (2016). A Grammar Sketch of Kalamang with a Focus on Phonetics and Phonology (Master thesis). University of Oslo. urn:nbn:no-54973.
  4. ^ Visser, Eline (19 January 2022). A grammar of Kalamang. Language Science Press. ISBN 978-3-96110-343-0.
  5. ^ Tanzer, Garrett; Suzgun, Mirac; Visser, Eline; Jurafsky, Dan; Melas-Kyriazi, Luke (2023). "A Benchmark for Learning to Translate a New Language from One Grammar Book". arXiv:2309.16575 [cs.CL].
  6. ^ Gemini Team, Google (February 2024), Gemini 1.5: Unlocking multimodal understanding across millions of tokens of context (PDF) {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help)

Sources

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  • Timothy Usher, New Guinea World, Kalamang