title: Eipo language
text: # Eipo language
  
  Eipo (Eipomek), or Lik, is a Mek language of the eastern highlands of Eipumek District, Pegunungan Bintang Regency, Highland Papua. It spoken by the Eipo people who live along the Eipo River. A large percentage of its vocabulary is shared with Una and Tanime, and they form one dialect area.
  
  ## Classification
  
  Eipo belongs to the Eastern branch of Mek languages, which is a family of closely related languages belonging to the larger grouping of Trans-New Guinea languages.
  
  ## Geographic distribution
  
  The Eipo language is spoken by about 3,000 people along the Eipo River in the valley of Eipomek, which is situated in the eastern highlands of Highland Papua.
  
  ## Phonology
  
  ### Consonants
  
  Eipo exhibits the following 16 phonemic consonants:
  
  Consonant phonemes :
  
  | | Bilabial | Bilabial | Labio- dental | Alveolar | Alveolar | Palatal | Palatal | Velar | Velar |
  | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
  | Plosive | p | b | | t | d | c | | k | ɡ |
  | Fricative | | β | f | s | | | | | |
  | Nasal | | m | | | n | | | | ŋ |
  | Tap or flap | | | | | ɾ | | | | |
  | Approximant | | | | | | | j | | |
  
  * /p/ indicates a labialized [pʷɵ].
  * /c/ indicates a palatalized [tʲ].
  
  ### Vowels
  
  Eipo has five phonemic vowels:
  
  Monophthong phonemes :
  
  | | Front | Central | Back |
  | - | - | - | - |
  | Close | i | | u |
  | Open-mid | e | | o |
  | Open | | a | |
  
  Diphthongs are not regarded as separate phonemes.
  
  ## Grammar
  
  ### Morphology
  
  Eipo is generally isolating language, but exhibits an elaborate system of agglutination in verb formation.
  
  ### Syntax
  
  The usual word order of Eipo is subject-object-verb (SOV).
  
  ## Deictics
  
  Eipo has only four basic spatial deictics, which are usually accompanied by pointing gestures, since the deictics are used during face-to-face communication to refer to positions relative to the $person.^{:119}$
  
  * a- ‘here’
  * ei- ‘up there’
  * ou-, u- ‘down there’
  * or-, er- ‘across there’ (‘across-valley’)
  
  ## Interrogatives
  
  Eipo has many compound $interrogatives:^{:95}$
  
  * yate ‘what?, which?, what kind of?’
     * yate anye ‘who?’
     * yate ate ‘why? (what for)’
     * yate arye ‘why? (what reason)’
     * yate-barye ‘why?’
     * yate-sum ‘when? (what day/time)’
  * dan- ‘where?, where to, whence’
     * dan-segum ‘whereabouts? (approximate location)’
     * dan-tam ("where side") ‘where, whence, whereto’
     * dan-ak ("where at") ‘where, whence, whereto’
  
  ## Writing system
  
  Eipo is not historically a written language, but in recent decades a Latin alphabet has been devised for it. The letter values are mostly those of the IPA letters given above, with the exceptions of /β/ ⟨w⟩, /ŋ/ ⟨ng⟩, /ɾ/ ⟨r⟩, and /j/ ⟨y⟩.
  
  