Dusner language


Dusner is a language spoken in the village of Dusner in the province of Papua, Indonesia. Dusner is highly endangered, and has been reported to have just three remaining speakers.

Sociolinguistic situation

The language is highly endangered with only three speakers reported to be remaining. In 2011, researchers from Oxford University's Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics began a project to document the vocabulary and grammar of the language, in collaboration with UNIPA and UNCEN. The project outputs were a vocabulary, a published grammar, and a website documenting the language.

Phonology

The phoneme invertory of Dusner consists of five vowels and 19 consonants.
There is no tone in the language. The phonology of the language has a high number of complex syllable onsets, some of them countervening the Sonority Sequencing Principle.

Morphology