Reported language and dialect boundaries Geographical features

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3.2 Reported language and dialect boundaries

Respondents in all four villages indicated that Amio, Kaskas, Atui and Poronga belong to the same language, but that there are two dialects. Amio and Kaskas make up one dialect, called Amio, while Poronga and Atui comprise another dialect, called Gelimi. Each group identifies strongly with the name of its own dialect, rather than any name for the language area as a whole, which is why the language area is referred to in this report as Amio-Gelimi. In Amio and Atui villages it was reported that both children and adults are able to understand the other dialect well. Respondents in Poronga and Kaskas, however, said that, although adults can understand the other dialect, children can only understand some of it. However, people in both Atui and Poronga reported that they use their own dialect when interacting with speakers of the Amio dialect, which would seem to indicate that the Gelimi dialect is understood by Amio speakers. Neither dialect seems to have more prestige than the other, as speakers of each dialect reported their own dialect to be purer than others. Respondents in Amio and Kaskas agreed that the purest form of the Amio dialect is spoken in Amio village, because their ancestors originally lived in Amio and some people later moved to Kaskas. Similarly, residents of both Gelimi villages reported that the purest form of their dialect is spoken in Poronga, which is where that dialect originated.

3.3 Geographical features

Amio and Kaskas are geographically closer to each other than to either of the other villages, which may be one reason they share a common dialect that is distinct from the dialect spoken in the other two villages. Although Atui and Poronga are nearly as far from each other as Atui is from the Amio dialect, they are both on the western end of the language area, while Amio and Kaskas are on the eastern end. Atui is the closest village to the geographic centre of the language area, which is reflected in the lexicostatistic data.

3.4 Lexicostatistic comparison