Onomatopoeia in Nungon

Nungon is a Papuan language of the Finisterre branch of the Finisterre-Huon language family, spoken by about 1,000 people in the highest villages of the Uruwa River valley in the Kabwum District of Morobe Province. It is one of 600–800 Indigenous languages of Papua New Guinea and is still vital as the first language of all children of Nungon speakers in the village areas. Nungon is an umbrella term covering six village-lects, each with no more than about 350 speakers, and which differ in 10–20% of the key lexicon (Wegmann 1994). The Nungon dialects are closely related to the Yau dialects; Yau (<yuw>) is the umbrella term covering the lower-elevation village-lects in the Uruwa River valley. A full description of Nungon grammar, with a focus on the Towet village dialect, is given by Sarvasy (2017); the description of onomatopoeia in Nungon in this chapter stems from research on the Towet dialect of Nungon over the past 11 years, including over 10 months of in situ fieldwork, plus extended periods of Nungon-language communications with the speech community since the area obtained mobile phone coverage in 2015.