Oksapmin language

For the local-level government in Papua New Guinea, see Oksapmin Rural LLG.
Oksapmin
Oksap
nuxule meŋ 'our language'
Native toPapua New Guinea
RegionOksapmin Rural LLG, Telefomin District, Sandaun
Native speakers
12,000 (2005)[1]
Dialects
  • Upper Oksapmin
  • Lower Oksapmin
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3opm
Glottologoksa1245
ELPOksapmin
Map: The Oksapmin language of New Guinea
  The Oksapmin language
  Other Trans–New Guinea languages
  Other Papuan languages
  Austronesian languages
  Uninhabited
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Oksapmin is a Trans–New Guinea language spoken in Oksapmin Rural LLG, Telefomin District, Sandaun, Papua New Guinea. The two principal dialects are distinct enough to cause some problems with mutual intelligibility.

Oksapmin has dyadic kinship terms[2] and a body-part counting system that goes up to 27.[3] Notable ethnographic research by Geoffrey B. Saxe at UC Berkeley has documented the encounter between pre-contact uses of number and its cultural evolution under conditions of monetization and exposure to schooling and the formal economy among the Oksapmin.[4]

  1. ^ Oksapmin at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ^ The Oksapmin Kinship System Archived 2009-09-20 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved May 21, 2009.
  3. ^ Saxe, Geoffrey B.; Moylan, Thomas (1982). "The development of measurement operations among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea". Child Development. 53 (5): 1242–1248. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1982.tb04161.x. JSTOR 1129012..
  4. ^ Saxe, Geoffrey (2012). Cultural development of mathematical ideas: Papua New Guinea studies. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521761666.