Onge language

The Onge language, also rendered Önge (or Ongee, Eng, Ung), is one of two known Ongan languages, spoken on the Andaman Islands in India. It is spoken by the Onge people on Little Andaman Island.

Status

Onge used to be spoken throughout Little Andaman as well as in smaller islands to the north, and possibly in the southern tip of South Andaman Island. Since the middle of the 19th century, with British colonization and the massive inflow of Indian settlers from the mainland, the number of Onge speakers has steadily declined, although a moderate increase has been observed in recent years. Currently, there are only 94 native speakers of Onge, confined to a single settlement in the northeast of Little Andaman island (see map below). It is an endangered language.

File:Distribution of different Andamanese peoples, languages, and dialects at the time of British contact compared to the present day.png

The distributions of different Andamanese peoples, languages, and dialects at the time of British contact compared to the present-day. Onge areas are in blue; south of the islands.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar
Plosive	voiceless	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
	voiced	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
Nasal		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
Approximant		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink (Template:IPAslink)	Template:IPAlink

• /ʔ/? (cf. Blevins (2007:161))

• Blevins (2007:160-161) states that /c, ɟ/ are actually affricates, and that retroflexes may or may not be phonemic.

• /kʷ/ delabializes to /k/ before /u, o/.

• Phonemic /d/ surfaces as [r] intervocalically, while arguably some words have phonemic /r/ which alternates with surface [r, l, j].

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink
Mid	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
Low		Template:IPAlink

There is some vowel harmony: 1p pl. prefix et- becomes [ot-] when the vowel in the next syllable is /u/, e.g. et-eɟale 'our faces' but ot-oticule 'our heads'.

Phonotactics

Words may be monosyllabic or longer, even in content words (unlike in the closely related Jarawa). Words may begin with consonants or vowels, and maximal syllables are of the form CVC. All Onge words end in vowels, except for imperatives, e.g. kaʔ 'give'.

Consonant-final stems in Jarawa often have cognates with final e in Onge, e.g. Jarawa iŋ, Onge iŋe 'water'; Jarawa inen, Onge inene 'foreigner'; Jarawa dag, Onge dage 'coconut'. Historically these vowels must have been excrescent, as nonetymological word-final e doesn't surface when number markers are suffixed, and the definite article (-gi after etymological consonants, -i after etymological vowels, due to lenition) appears as -i after etymological e but as -gi after excrescent e, e.g. daŋe → daŋe-gi 'tree; dugout'; kue → kue-i 'pig'.

NC clusters sometimes optionally reduce to single C, e.g. ~ 'to drink' (cf. Jarawa ).

Voiced obstruents may optionally nasalize in syllable onset when the coda is nasal, e.g. bone/mone 'resin, resin torch' (cf. Jarawa pone 'resin, resin torch').

Morphophonemics

Clusters across morpheme boundaries simplify to homorganic sequences, including geminates, which may occur after word final -e drops, e.g. daŋe 'tree, dugout canoe' → dandena 'two canoes'; umuge 'pigeon' → umulle 'pigeons'.