The Sumuri language of Indonesian Papua - Documenting an endangered language isolate

Sumuri [ISO 639-3: tcm] is an endangered and almost completely undocumented language spoken on the Bomberai peninsula in the Indonesian (western) part of the New Guinea island.

To date, only hastily collected survey word lists are available leaving all other aspects of the language (and culture) still unknown. Judging from these survey lists, the Sumuri basic lexicon is completelydifferent from the surrounding languages.

As such Sumuri appears to be a language isolate - a language with no known relatives - whose documentation is uniquely valuable for the study of linguistic diversity and universals.

Furthermorge, a description of Sumuri is essential for understanding the cultural profile, settlement history and contact patterns of this little-known region. The remaining ca 500 speakers of Sumuri live in approximately 12 villages in Bintuni regency in Papua, Indonesia. Due to the complete take-over of Indonesian in the area, the Sumuri language is no longer passed on to children.

The Sumuri are concerned with the loss of their ancestral language.

The aim of this project is to collect and analyze language data and produce a modern grammatical description and an annotated audio/video corpus with a lexical database and text collection. This will be undertaken in close collaboration with the local community and the State University of Papua.

The project will be of benefit to the Sumuri community, regional researchers of various disciplines and academic linguists worldwide.