Kaki Ae, or Tate, is a language spoken by about 500 people, half the ethnic population, near Kerema, in Papua New Guinea. It was previously known by the foreign designation Raeta Tati.
Classification
Kaki Ae has been proposed to be related to the Eleman languages, but the connections appear to be loans.[2]Søren Wichmann (2013)[3] tentatively considers it to be a separate, independent group. Pawley and Hammarström (2018) treat Kaki Ae as a language isolate due to low cognacy rates with Eleman, and consider the few similarities shared with Eleman to be due to borrowed loanwords.[4]
Kaki Ae has no distinction between /t/ and /k/. (The forms kaki and tate of the name both derive from the rather pejorative Toaripi name for the people, Tati.)
The following basic vocabulary words are from Brown (1973),[7] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:[8]
gloss
Kaki Ae
head
aro
hair
uʔumo
ear
oʔi
eye
ere
nose
noʔi
tooth
huʔu
tongue
anara
leg
fera
louse
saruta
dog
evera
bird
mini
egg
mini umu
blood
ivare
bone
uki
breast
ame
tree
oproro
man
aru
woman
aʔu
sun
lare
moon
fuiya
water
haime
fire
aiyeʔi
stone
ere
name
iru
eat
muake
one
okiao
two
uʔungka
Further reading
Clifton, John M. 1995. A grammar sketch of the Kaki Ae language. In: Albert J. Bickfield (ed.), Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session, 33–80. Grand Forks, North Dakota: SIL.
^Wichmann, Søren. 2013. A classification of Papuan languages. In: Hammarström, Harald and Wilco van den Heuvel (eds.), History, contact and classification of Papuan languages (Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, Special Issue 2012), 313-386. Port Moresby: Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea.
^Pawley, Andrew; Hammarström, Harald (2018). "The Trans New Guinea family". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 21–196. ISBN978-3-11-028642-7.