Sebutuya ward, where people said that Gameta and Ulua were different languages, they also said that they can understand “easy things” in those two dialects but not “hard ones.” Residents in Gameta said
they can understand everything in the other three dialects. Overall, it was reported that children can understand the other dialects as well as the adults can,
although in Dimwadimwa Ulua it was reported that children’s comprehension is limited to simple language. People in Bibio also said that there are some things children cannot understand in other
dialects. In Gameta it was reported that children can only understand the speech of people as far south as Basima, excluding the Galeya area and inland Duduna ward.
In summary, most of the dialects were reported to be mutually intelligible, and people from every dialect report that they can understand Basima. The fact that comprehension was reported to be lower
among children suggests that intelligibility between dialects is, at least in part, dependent on contact. In general, according to what was reported, people are aware of the differences in pronunciation and
vocabulary between dialects and can understand each other.
2.4 Lexical similarity
2.4.1 Wordlist elicitation
The team elicited 190 items
19
following the English version of the SIL-PNG survey wordlist 1999 revision in the villages shown in table 6.
20
The survey team took additional wordlists from young people in the areas where Lithgow took his 1964 and 1989 lists.
21
Lithgow suggests that vocabulary elicited from school children reflects the language currently used, more than vocabulary given by older people
who know the older words 1992:43. Table 6. Villages where wordlists were elicited
Village name Ward
Language name given
Young person’s wordlist
Yaya Duduna
Basima Guletotounu
Duduna Basima
X Bederi
Lau’oya Lau’oya Basima
Bibio Sebutuya
Galeya Bibio
Sebutuya Galeya
X Kokauta
Sebutuya Galeya
Mowai Momo’awa
Galeya Asadebana
Momo’awa Galeya
X Waiwi
Momo’awa Galeya
Seasea Gameta
Gameta Seasea
Gameta Gameta
X Dimwadimwa
a
Ulua Ulua
Yoridan Ulua
Ulua Gwabegwabeya
Ulua Ulua
X
a
This wordlist was disqualified from the comparison since the person used for elicitation was not a native speaker from Ulua; he grew up in Gameta. There were
no other potential informants.
19
Twenty of these items were phrases that were not used in the lexicostatistical comparison.
20
Additional wordlists were also elicited in Budoya which is in the Dobu area see section 3.4.2.
21
Lithgow and Staalsen 1965 refer to five dialects: Sebutuia, Garea, Basima, Urua, and Gameta. See section 3.4 for further discussion on Lithgow’s wordlists. See section 3.4.2 for more information on young people’s wordlists.
All wordlists were elicited in English by the same member of the survey team. The adult lists were elicited from a small group of respondents, as opposed to individuals, in order to avoid problems due to
word taboos and also to avoid uncommon and borrowed words. For the primary respondent the surveyor chose one mother tongue speaker of the dialect who had grown up in the village being surveyed, and
whose parents were also from that village. This person was recorded during elicitation.
In the first village, Yaya, the surveyor sought to elicit as many synonyms as possible for each gloss. She then decided on the synonym that best matched the meaning of the English gloss and sought to elicit
the same synonym in the following villages.
2.4.2 Wordlist comparison
