Northeast Kiwai (Papua New Guinea)

Brief description

Audio recordings of Northeast Kiwai (Papua New Guinea). Recordings include mainly narratives, with some minimal pair and lexical item elicitation. This material consists of a) copies of a series of audiotapes; and b) a set of written texts from the same period. It was mostly collected in the early to mid sixties, though some goes back to the fifties. I have no record of the exact dates on which the recordings were made. Some of the written texts (such as the one titled Tuoma) have been transcribed from the audiotapes, others were dictated to the writer. There is one text, written by a semi-literate Gope man, which I have left in the author’s own hand along with a few short autograph letters written by Uroma speakers. The original audiotapes, the majority of which are 5” BASF reels, remain in my possession. Nearly all the material is in the language spoken at the village called Kivaumai on the map Kikori Papua New Guinea prepared by the Royal Australian Survey Corps in 1979. The village (Ne’edai/Gowo’u) at the time of my visits was located on a pleasant black sand beach on the seaward side of Uramu [sic] Island, situated between Paia Inlet on the west & Era Bay on the east in the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea; I understand that this village site was subsequently abandoned, perhaps due to the work of the tireless sea.