Kaki Ae language

Kaki Ae, or Tate, is a language spoken by about 500 people, half the ethnic population, near Kerema, in Papua New Guinea. It was previously known by the foreign designation Raeta Tati.

Classification

Kaki Ae has been proposed to be related to the Eleman languages, but the connections appear to be loans. Søren Wichmann (2013) tentatively considers it to be a separate, independent group. Pawley and Hammarström (2018) treat Kaki Ae as a language isolate due to low cognacy rates with Eleman, and consider the few similarities shared with Eleman to be due to borrowed loanwords.

Distribution

Kaki Ae is spoken in Auri, Kupiano, Kupla (), Lou (), Ovorio (), and Uriri () villages in Central Kerema Rural LLG, Gulf Province.

Pronouns

The Kaki Ae pronouns are:

Phonology

Kaki Ae has no distinction between and . (The forms kaki and tate of the name both derive from the rather pejorative Toaripi name for the people, Tati.)

Vocabulary

The following basic vocabulary words are from Brown (1973), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:

Further reading

• Clifton, John M. 1995. A grammar sketch of the Kaki Ae language. In: Albert J. Bickfield (ed.), Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session, 33–80. Grand Forks, North Dakota: SIL.

References