Isaka is the language spoken by the people of the villages of Krisa and Pasi in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. It has also been referred to as Krisa, after the village, although this name is not actually a possible word in the language itself. The sole published source for the language is Donohue and San Roque , although the authors of this have also Identified I’saka material in Donald Laycock's unpublished fieldnotes. Isaka is spoken in Krisa and Pasi villages of Bewani-Wutung Onei Rural LLG in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. I'saka presence on the coast is very recent, as they have settled in the coastal area only within the past few decades.
The sounds,, and occasionally are heard in non-contrastive free variation, making them reflexes of a single phoneme. Donohue and San Roque suggest that there was an earlier phonemic or allophonic contrast which is in the process of merging, perhaps under the influence of neighboring languages and Tok Pisin. The voiced stops are nasalized before nasal vowels. There are five oral vowel phonemes distinguished by most speakers, although older speakers sometimes also distinguish a high central rounded vowel.
front
central
back
high
mid
low
Vowels also occur nasalized, and these nasalize preceding voiced stops. For example, heart is pronounced, while none is pronounced. Donohue & San Roque present nasality as a suprasegmental feature of the syllable, rather than of the vowel.
Tone
The tone system makes four tone contrasts on single syllables, high, low, rising, and falling. Less than half the theoretically possible tone patterns which might be expected on disyllabic roots are actually found. Specifically, low-low is the only sequence of two identical tones found, and the sequence high-rise has not been observed. At least some instances of phonetic low pitch contour represent syllables that are phonologically toneless or underspecified for a tone value
Grammar
Personal pronouns show morphological variants for number, gender and case. The semantic basis for the grammatical gender system is as follows. The masculine gender indicates 'animate male entities and items immediately associated with them', and the non-masculine gender indicates anything else, i.e. a generic, default gender. I’saka has fairly strict Subject–Object–Verb word order for declarative sentences. Personal pronouns have Unmarked, Nominative, Accusative and Possessive case forms. The Nominative case pronouns are used for the subjects of transitive and intransitive verbs, the accusative pronouns for the objects of transitives. Pronouns in oblique roles take the Unmarked case form. The Unmarked case forms can also be used in place of Nominative and Possessive pronouns, but the significance of the choice is not clear. Nouns do not have case marking in core grammatical roles, although there are suffixes for Instrumental, Accompaniment/Location and Predicate possessor. Verbs have more obligatory morpholological marking than nouns. There are prefixes agreeing with the subject. A subset of transitive verbs mark their objects, either by means of an object suffix, or by suppletion of the verb stem. Most verbs do not have object marking.
