Oksapmin language

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title: "Oksapmin language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["languages-of-sandaun-province", "languages-of-southern-highlands-province", "languages-of-western-province-(papua-new-guinea)", "ok-languages", "trans–new-guinea-languages"] description: "Trans–New Guinea language spoken in Papua New Guinea" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oksapmin_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Trans–New Guinea language spoken in Papua New Guinea ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]

Field	Value
name	Oksapmin
altname	Oksap
nativename	nuxule meŋ 'our language'
states	Papua New Guinea
region	Oksapmin Rural LLG, Telefomin District, Sandaun
speakers	12,000
date	2005
ref	e25
familycolor	Papuan
fam1	Trans–New Guinea
iso3	opm
glotto	oksa1245
glottorefname	Oksapmin
dia1	Upper Oksapmin
dia2	Lower Oksapmin
script	Latin
map	Oksapmin language.svg
mapcaption	Map: The Oksapmin language of New Guinea
notice	IPA
::

|name=Oksapmin |altname=Oksap |nativename=nuxule meŋ 'our language' |states=Papua New Guinea |region=Oksapmin Rural LLG, Telefomin District, Sandaun |speakers=12,000 |date=2005 |ref=e25 |familycolor=Papuan |fam1=Trans–New Guinea |iso3=opm |glotto=oksa1245 |glottorefname=Oksapmin |dia1=Upper Oksapmin |dia2=Lower Oksapmin |script=Latin |map=Oksapmin language.svg |mapcaption=Map: The Oksapmin language of New Guinea |notice=IPA

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 and a body-part counting system that goes up to 27. 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.

Classification

Oksapmin has been influenced by the Mountain Ok languages (the name "Oksapmin" is from Telefol), and the similarities with those languages were attributed to borrowing in the classifications of both Stephen Wurm (1975) and Malcolm Ross (2005), where Oksapmin was placed as an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea. Loughnane (2009) and Loughnane and Fedden (2011) conclude that it is related to the Ok languages, though those languages share innovative features not found in Oksapmin. Usher finds Oksapmin is not related to the Ok languages specifically, though it is related at some level to the southwestern branches of Trans–New Guinea.

Phonology

Vowels

There are six monophthongs, , and one diphthong, .

Consonants

::data[format=table]

Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	unrounded	rounded	Nasal	Stop	voiceless	prenasal	Fricative	Lateral	Semivowel
::

::data[format=table]

Phoneme	Allophone
	,
	,
	,
	,
	,
	, , ,
	,
	, , ,
::

Tone

Oksapmin contrasts two tones: high and low.

References

References

1. link. (2009-09-20 , retrieved May 21, 2009.)
2. (1982). "The development of measurement operations among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea". Child Development.
3. Saxe, Geoffrey. (2012). "Cultural development of mathematical ideas: Papua New Guinea studies". Cambridge University Press.
4. {{harvp. Loughnane. 2009
5. (2011). "Is Oksapmin Ok?—A Study of the Genetic Relationship between Oksapmin and the Ok Languages". Australian Journal of Linguistics.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::