Manus Koro language

For other uses, see Koro language (disambiguation).

Koro
Native to	Manus Province, Papua New Guinea
Region	northeastern Manus Island and Los Negros Island immediately east
Native speakers	(900 cited 1977–1983)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Oceanic Admiralty Islands Eastern Admiralty Islands Manus East Manus Koro
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kxr
Glottolog	bowa1234
ELP	Papitalai

The Koro language is an East Manus language spoken by approximately 900 people on northeastern Manus Island and on Los Negros Island to the east in Manus Province of Papua New Guinea. It is largely isolating and has SVO word order.

Phonology

Koro syllable structure is CV word-internally and CV(C) word-finally. The majority of consonant phonemes can occur in onset and coda position, whereas /XXnd/, /XXnd/, and /XXnd/ can occur only in onset position. Koro also exhibits word-final devoicing.

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

	Bilabial		Alveolar		Post- alveolar (Palato- alveolar)		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Plosive	p		t	ⁿd				ɟ	k
Labialised plosive	pʷ
Affricate					tʃ
Fricative			s								h
Nasal		m		n						ŋ
Labialised nasal		mʷ
Trill		ᵐʙ	r	ⁿr
Approximant		w						j
Lateral approximant				l

Vowels

Monophthong phonemes

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Open-mid	ɛ	ɔ
Open	a

Grammar

Koro is a largely isolating, head-marking, SVO language. It displays nominative–accusative alignment, with a distinction between singular, dual, and plural number in pronouns. Like many other Oceanic languages, Koro morpho-syntactically distinguishes between inalienable and alienable possession, where inalienable nouns are vowel-final, whereas alienable nouns may be consonant final, and alienable nouns but not inalienable nouns require a possessive particle ta when used in possessive constructions. There is an animacy distinction in subject pronouns. Koro uses seven sets of numeral classifiers, some of which can be used referentially (without a noun, as in the use of timou "one (people)" to refer to an individual person). The forms for "seven", "eight", and "nine" are based on subtraction from ten, as with other Eastern Admiralties languages.