Table Of ContentAsia-Pacific Linguistics
Open Access
College of Asia and the Pacific
The Australian National University
A dictionary of the Lakalai (Nakanai)
language of New Britain,
Papua New Guinea
Ann Chowning
Ward H. Goodenough
A-PL 29
A dictionary of the Lakalai (Nakanai) language of New Britain,
Papua New Guinea.
Ann Chowning and Ward H. Goodenough
Lakalai (Nakanai) is an Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea spoken in 42 coastal
and hinterland villages in five dialects spread along the coastal strip and hinterland of Kimbe
Bay, from Cape Hoskins in West New Britain Province, to Bialla in East New Britain
Province. This dictionary represents the Bileki dialect spoken with minor variations in 19
villages in the eastern part of the Hoskins Peninsula.
The work stems from a project of anthropological research begun in 1954 by a small team
from the University of Pennsylvania under the leadership of Ward H. Goodenough. The
Lakalai-English dictionary is principally the work of the late Ann Chowning based on seven
field trips between 1954 and 1992, during which she lived in Galilo village.
In the last few decades the way of life of the Lakalai people has undergone many
changes; this dictionary provides a valuable record of cultural practices and beliefs as they
were in the 1950s and 1960s. With about 8,000 headwords and 10,000 distinct sense units, it
is one of the largest dictionaries of any Austronesian language of western Melanesia. At Ann
Chowning’s request, Wolfgang Sperlich and Andrew Pawley in 2012-2014 compiled an
English-Lakalai reversal, which contains over 8,000 main entries and sub-entries.
Asia-Pacific Linguistics
__________________________________
Open Access
A dictionary of the Lakalai (Nakanai)
language of New Britain,
Papua New Guinea
Ann Chowning
Ward H. Goodenough
A-PL 29
Asia-Pacific Linguistics
__________________________________
Open Access
EDITORIAL BOARD: Bethwyn Evans (Managing Editor),
I Wayan Arka, Danielle Barth, Don Daniels, Nicholas Evans,
Simon Greenhill, Gwendolyn Hyslop, David Nash, Bill Palmer,
Andrew Pawley, Malcolm Ross, Hannah Sarvasy, Paul Sidwell,
Jane Simpson.
Published by Asia-Pacific Linguistics
College of Asia and the Pacific
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia
Copyright in this edition is vested with the author(s)
Released under Creative Commons License (Attribution 4.0 International)
First published: 2016
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/107217
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Creator: Chowning, Ann, author.
Title: A dictionary of the Lakalai (Nakanai) language of New Britain, Papua New
Guinea / Ann Chowning, Ward H. Goodenough
ISBN: 9781922185310 (ebook)
Series: Asia-Pacific Linguistics; A-PL 29.
Subjects: Nakanai language – Dictionaries - English.
Nakanai language – Papua New Guinea – New Britain Island.
Lakalai (Melanesian people) – Papua New Guinea – New Britain Island
Austronesian languages – Papua New Guinea – New Britain Island
New Britain Island (Papua New Guinea) – Languages.
Papua New Guinea – Languages.
Other Creators/
Contributors: Goodenough, Ward Hunt, author.
Australian National University; Asia-Pacific Linguistics
Dewey Number: 499.203
Cover photo: Ann Chowning with her adoptive family, Galilo village, West New Britain,
Papua New Guinea. Photo by Ron Duncan in Expedition: Bulletin of the Museum
of the University of Pennsylvania, 1966, Vol 8(1), p.12.
Acknowledgements
We are indebted to a number of institutions and individuals who played a part in the making
of the dictionary. (The story of the dictionary project is told in some detail in section 6.) The
first expedition to Lakalai, in 1954, was funded by the Department of Anthropology and the
University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, by the American Philosophical
Society, and by the Tri-Institutional Pacific Program (Yale University, University of Hawaii,
and Bernice P. Bishop Museum). The Valentines’ fieldwork in 1956 was supported by a
Fulbright scholarship. Ann Chowning’s several later field trips to Lakalai, between 1962 and
1992, were supported by the Columbia University Council of Research, the Research School
of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University, the University of Papua New Guinea
and Victoria University of Wellington.
Charles (Val) Valentine collaborated with us in collecting a first lexical file. A.G.
Floyd of the Department of Forests, Territory of Papua and New Guinea, prepared an
botanical report containing many Lakalai plant names and their scientific determinations.
Typing of a first draft in 1955 was aided by a grant from Barnard College. The 1968
draft was typed by secretarial staff of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies,
Australian National University. Subsequently Raymond Johnston, of the Summer Institute of
Linguistics, kindly lent Ann Chowning his MS on Lakalai social essentials, from which she
extracted lexical materials.
Thanks are due to Andrew Pawley, for his encouragement and assistance in preparing
the dictionary for publication and for editing the Lakalai-English part. For production of the
camera ready version we are grateful to Wolfgang Sperlich, who entered the Lakalai-English
text in a dictionary-making database (using TshwaneDJe TLex propriatory software),
reformatted entries, and created an English-Lakalai finder list. Thanks also to Robin Hooper
for much practical support and to Marie Duhamel who assisted in data entry.
IV
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ……………………………………….............................. IV
Key to abbreviations ………………………………………............................ VI
Part I: Introduction to Lakalai ………………………………………............... 1
1. The Lakalai language and its relatives ……………………………………………… 1
2. Notes on the sound system and orthography …………………………………......... 3
3. Grammar sketch …………………………………………………………………… 5
4. Notes on the making of the dictionary …………………………………………...... 13
5. Selected bibliography of works relating to Lakalai language and society ……….... 16
Part II: Lakalai-English dictionary …………………………………………... 18
Part III: English-Lakalai finder list ………………………………..................245
V
Key to abbreviations
Sources
Some abbreviations refer to named sources, most of which are unpublished materials. For
fuller information about the sources see Acknowledgements and Section 6: Notes on the
making of the Lakalai dictionary.
Eng. English
(F) from A.G. Floyd
(H) from P. Hees
(J) from R. Johnston
(NT) from the New Testament (Buka Tabu) in Lakalai
(TP) borrowed from Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin)
(T) borrowed from Tolai
(V) from C. Valentine
Grammatical categories
adj. adjective
du. dual
exc. exclusive
inc. inclusive
n. noun
p. person
pl. plural
poss. possessive
s.|sg. singular
v. verb
VI
Part I:
The Lakalai language and its relatives
1. The Lakalai language and its relatives
The people who call themselves Lakalai live in the central and eastern parts of the Hoskins
Peninsula, Hoskins District, West New Britain Province, at approximately 150°30′ to 150°6′
E and 5°25′ to 5°40′ S. In 1954 the Lakalai numbered about 2,700, dispersed over some 19
villages. Today the population exceeds 10,000. The data on which this dictionary is based
come from the eastern part of this region, known as Kulabe (or Malulu ‘deeps’), chiefly from
the villages of Galilo and Rapuri. There are small dialectal variations within the Lakalai
speaking region, e.g., some villages at the eastern end lose /h/.
Naming languages in New Britain is not a straightforward matter. The Lakalai language
is often called Bileki (Muku, Mamuga and Nakanai are other names for it). Strictly speaking,
Bileki is the indigenous name for the western part of the Lakalai speaking region (otherwise
known as Bobute ‘shallows’ because of its many reefs).
The Lakalai or Bileki language is closely related to several other languages spoken on
the north coast of New Britain and the immediate hinterland east of the Hoskins Peninsula:
Ubae, Vele, Loso and Maututu (see map). These languages have a high degree of mutual
intelligibility and structural similarity with each other and with Lakalai. The differences are
largely lexical. Johnston (1980) regards them (including Lakalai) as dialects of a single
language, which he calls Nakanai. Ubae is the most divergent among them and has strongest
claims to be considered a separate language.
The Nakanai dialect complex spans some 42 villages, with a total population of
upwards of 13,000. Its closest relative is Meramera (or Melamela), situated to the east of
Maututu. It is also close to Xarua, and Bola (also known as Bokavi) and Bulu, to the west. All
these languages belong to the Oceanic branch of the vast Austronesian family. Within
Oceanic, Ross (1988) assigns them to the Meso-Melanesian subgroup, which comprises the
Oceanic languages of New Ireland, Bougainville and the western Solomons, as well as those
of the north coast of New Britain including and east of the Willaumez Peninsula.
Lakalai is the most important of the Nakanai dialects. It has the most speakers, is closest
to the commercial centres of Kimbe and Cape Hoskins and is the dialect best known to
speakers of other parts of the dialect complex. It has been the subject of a detailed descriptive
grammar (Johnston 1980).
Many Lakalai now call their language ‘Nakanai’. This usage is unsatisfactory inasmuch
as ‘Nakanai’ has long been the name (originally used by the Tolai people of the Gazelle
Peninsula) given to a region of northwest New Britain that embraces several distinct
languages and also because speakers of Lakalai borrowed the name as ‘Lakalai’, as they
lacked an /n/ phoneme. However, /n/ has now been added to the phoneme inventory as a
result of borrowings from Pidgin and English.
Many loanwords from New Guinea Pidgin are used in Lakalai discourse. No attempt
has been made to include all such words in this dictionary but those that are included are
marked by (TP) after the headword. Most Lakalai speakers from whom Chowning and
Goodenough obtained their materials in 1954 were also familiar with Tolai (Kuanua), the
1
language used by the Methodist Overseas Mission in New Britain (later merged with other
missions to form the United Church in New Britain). At that time this was not true of the
villages in which the Valentines worked, which are Catholic. In Methodist villages,
particularly, a few Tolai words have been introduced into Lakalai. These loanwords are
marked with (T). Both Tolai and Pidgin English words may be pronounced contrary to
Lakalai phonological patterns, e.g. with consonant clusters, with final consonants, and among
younger, educated speakers /n/ is increasingly replacing /l/.
Nakanai and neighbouring languages
2
2. Notes on the sound system and orthography
The Lakalai sound system is not complicated. In the indigenous lexicon there are 12
consonant and five vowel phonemes. Two other consonants, /n/ and /ŋ/, occur in borrowed
words. /ŋ/ is written ng. The consonants are:
Bilabial Frontal Dorsal Post-Dorsal
Voiceless stops p t k
Voiced stops b d g
Spirants v s h
Voiced nasal m (n) (ŋ)
Voiced lateral l
Voiceless trill r
The vowels are:
Front Central Back
unrounded unrounded rounded
High i u
Mid e o
Low a
There appear to be no phonemic semivowels. Phonetic [w] and [y] seem best regarded
as allophones of /u/ and /i/ respectively. At first we assumed that there was a separate /w/
phoneme. As our materials expanded, however, its occurrence proved so extremely rare as to
warrant re-examining its status. It then appeared that the occurrence of [w] was a function of
stress (see below). No certain contrasts could be obtained. Literate Lakalai speakers, however,
tend to use the letter w, especially in spelling personal names, e.g., Lowa for /Loua/.
The phoneme /t/ is pronounced [ts] before /i/. /h/ is often difficult to hear and it seems to
be dropped under some conditions by some speakers and under other conditions by all
speakers, in the case of the Hahili clan. But /h/ is not totally in free variation with its absence
and there are many contrasts, e.g. /la-haro/ ‘sun’ and /la-aro/ ‘rafter’, /paha/ ‘to chop’ and
/paa/ ‘to search’.
No consonants occur in phrase-final or word-final position except as follows: when
word final /i/ after /s/ is phrase-final (i.e followed by pause), then /i/ is optionally dropped or
retained only in the release of the preceding /s/, and when word-final /u/ after /m/ is phrase-
final, /u/ is regularly dropped in normal speech, the preceding /m/ tending to be held for the
duration of the dropped vowel. Compare /la-pem/ ‘the axe’ (phonetically [lapemm]) and /la-
pemu t-aku/ 'my axe’.
Vowels are usually lengthened slightly when stressed. They also occur doubled (held
for two units of syllabic duration rather than one). Every possible sequence of two vowels
(VV) is found. Two vowels of the same quality occurring in sequence often reduce to a single
short vowel, unless the result would produce a word of one short syllable. Thus the
combination of va- and abi produces either vaabi or vabi, and the combination of paa and
muli produces pamuli. However, when /a/ is suffixed to a word ending in /a/ the final /a/ of
the root shifts to /e/. Thus paha ‘chop’ and pahe-a ‘chop it’, in which the suffixed /a/ is the
third person singular objective pronoun. Verbs that we first recorded with this suffixed
pronoun as ending in /ea/ had to be checked as to whether the root without the suffix ended in
/e/ or /a/, but some may have been missed. In some instances, this ambiguity may produce
3
