Dusner is a language spoken in the village of Dusner in the province of West Papua, Indonesia. Dusner is highly endangered, and has been reported to have just three remaining speakers.[2][1][3]
Sociolinguistic situation
The language is highly endangered with only three speakers reported to be remaining.[2][1][3] 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 (State University of Papua) and UNCEN (Cenderawasih University, Papua).[4][5] The project outputs were a vocabulary, a published grammar,[2] and a website documenting the language.
Phonology
The phoneme inventory of Dusner consists of five vowels and 19 consonants (five of which are only attested in loanwords from Indonesian/Papuan Malay).[2]
(Phonemes in parentheses in the table are only attested in loanwords from Papuan Malay)
There is no tone in the language. The phonology of the language has a high number of complex syllable onsets, some of them contravening the Sonority Sequencing Principle.