| Also Known As: Yimas Language
Description:
The Yimas Language is spoken by the Yimas people of Papua New Guinea. It is a polysynthetic language with (somewhat) free word order. It is an ergative-absolutive language morphologically but not syntactically, although it has several other case-like relations encoded on its verbs. It has over 9 classes (genders) of nouns, and a unique number system.
It is an endangered language, being widely replaced by Tok Pisin, and to a lesser extent, English, and it is unclear if any youth are native Yimas speakers...... full article at Wikipedia |
