[An-lang] Two new dictionaries from SIL PNG: Kombio and Sursurunga

[René van den Berg]

Dear fellow Austronesianists and Papuanists,

 

Greetings from Ukarumpa and a belated happy new year to everybody.

 

SIL Papua New Guinea is happy to announce the publication of two
dictionaries: one of Kombio (Torricelli family; East Sepik), and the other
of Sursurunga (Oceanic; New Ireland).

 

Kombio Dictionary. Kombio - English - Tok Pisin. No year; no place; no
publisher. 408 pages.

Available online at:
<https://pnglanguages.sil.org/resources/archives/78710>
pnglanguages.sil.org/resources/archives/78710

 

For many years Joan Farr (née Henry) worked in the Kombio language, a small
endangered Torricelli language spoken by some 2,500 people in the Eastern
Sepik province of PNG. This dictionary is the linguistic legacy that Joan
left the Kombio community when she retired from SIL PNG in 2018, having
worked full-time with the Kombio people for 22 years (1987-2009) with a few
occasional contacts over the next nine years. 
This is an unfinished and unpublished dictionary, that is made available
electronically. It consists of a short introduction which contains a map of
the area, information on the dialect situation (which is complex), a number
of unresolved spelling issues, and further information on the language. The
main body is a trilingual treatment of over 4,000 entries, most of them
presented with phonetic representation, example sentences, and miscellaneous
notes. An English-Kombio and a Tok Pisin-Kombio finderlist complete the
book. 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Benroi Samson, Sharon Hutchisson, Don Hutchisson. 2018. Sálán má Worwor
Talas uri tan Kuir Wor Sursurunga [The meanings and explanations of
Sursurunga words]. Ukarumpa: SIL PNG. 870 pages. ISBN 9980 0 4287 7. 
Available online at: pnglanguages.sil.org/resources/archives/79354

 

This massive Sursurunga dictionary is the result of over 40 years of
interaction with the Sursurunga people of souther New Ireland. The
introduction explains the organisation of the entries, the phonology and the
alphabet (6 vowels; <á> is used for schva). It also provides a helpful list
of affixes, and some 30 pages of grammatical information, including the rich
and complex system of pronouns and possession. (Note that Sursurunga is one
of the few languages in the world to have quadral pronouns.)

 This dictionary is primarily meant for native speakers, as shown by the
organisation of the entries. Most words have vernacular definitions, which
are also translated in English. Here is an example of hut ‘louse’:



There are many kinds of hut. Some kinds of hut live on the head of a person,
and this hut belongs exclusively to people. It is not possible for it to be
on a different thing like pigs or some things like that. Some hut live on
domestic animals like a pig, dog, cat, and some other animals also. And when
these kinds of hut live on animals like that, then those hut are exclusively
theirs. It is not possible for them to live on something else also. All hut
live just on the blood of that thing they sit/dwell on. The hut belonging to
a person, it makes sores on the head of the person. And this kind of sore we
Sursurungas call bonbon. The women like a lot to search for people’s hut so
that they then bite-kill it. However the important thing (to them) is that
when they bite the hut, they like to hear it go poh (the sound it makes when
it pops.).

 

An English-Sursurunga finderlist, a list of semantic domains and a
bibliography complete the work.

 

 

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