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Tayap (also spelled Taiap; called Gapun in earlier literature, after the name of the village in which it is spoken) is an endangered Papuan language spoken by fewer than 50 people in Gapun village of Marienberg Rural LLG in East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea (, located just to the south of the Sepik River mouth near the coast). It is being replaced by the national language and lingua franca Tok Pisin.
Höltker's list was all that was known about Tayap in literature until the early 1970s, when the Australian linguist Donald Laycock travelled around the lower Sepik to collect basic vocabulary lists that allowed him to identify and propose classifications of the many languages spoken there. Tayap and its speakers have been extensively studied by linguistic anthropologist Don Kulick since the mid-1980s. The language is described in detail in Tayap Grammar and Dictionary: The Life and Death of a Papuan Language and in A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea.
Until World War II, when Japanese soldiers occupied the area and caused the villagers to flee into the rainforest, Gapun was located on a hill that several thousand years earlier had been an island in the sea that receded and formed the lower Sepik River. This indicates that Tayap may be the descendant of an ancient, autochthonous language that was already in place before the various waves of migration from the inland to the coast began occurring thousands of years ago. Foley (2018) also speculates that Tayap could have been part of a larger language family that was spoken on the island before the arrival of Lower Sepik speakers. As the coastline moved further northeast, Lower Sepik speakers migrated from the foothills into the new land areas created by the receding waters.
As a result of colonial activity, Gapun villagers subconsciously associate Tok Pisin with Christianity, modernity and masculinity, and they associate Tayap with paganism, "backwardness", disruptive femininity and childish stubbornness. As a result, Tayap is being increasingly, but neither consciously nor deliberately, replaced by Tok Pisin, even though the villagers all express positive sentiments towards it and insist that they want their children to speak the language. Villagers express bewilderment towards the fact that their children no longer actively speak Tayap, and believe that they have, out of stubbornness, decided to reject Tayap entirely, and that they have chosen to speak Tok Pisin instead.
Unlike the neighboring patrilineal Lower Sepik-Ramu speakers, Tayap speakers are matrilineal. Tayap is typologically very different from the neighboring Lower Sepik-Ramu languages.
Tayap also has many loanwords from the Kopar language and Adjora language languages.
In the 1970s Australian linguist Donald Laycock classified Tayap (which he called "Gapun") as a sub-phylum of the Sepik-Ramu language phylum, on the basis of Georg Höltker's 1938 word list and a few verb paradigms that Laycock gathered from two speakers.
Kulick and Terrill (2019) found no evidence that Tayap is related to the Lower Sepik languages, another branch of the erstwhile Sepik-Ramu phylum. They conclude that Tayap is a language isolate, though they do not compare it to other language families, as would be required to establish Tayap as an independent language family. Comparative vocabulary demonstrates the lexical aberrancy of Tayap as compared to the surrounding Lower Sepik languages: e.g. sene 'two' (cf. proto-Lower Sepik *ri-pa-), neke 'ear' (*kwand-), ŋgino 'eye' (*tambri), tar 'hear' (*and-), min 'breast' (*nɨŋgay), nɨŋg 'bone' (*sariŋamp), malɨt 'tongue' (*minɨŋ), mayar 'leaf' (*nɨmpramp) among the Holman et al. (2008) ranking of the Swadesh list. Cultural vocabulary such as 'village', 'canoe', 'oar', and 'lime', as well as the basic words awin 'water' (cf. *arɨm) and a 'eat' (cf. *am ~ *amb), may be shared with Lower Sepik languages. The word karep 'moon' is shared specifically with Kopar language ( karep). However, most basic vocabulary items have no apparent cognates in surrounding languages.
| + Consonants ! colspan="2" | ! Labial consonant ! Alveolar !Postalveolar ! Palatal ! Velar consonant |
| + Vowels ! ! Front vowel ! Central vowel ! Back vowel |
| +Free pronouns ! !! sg !! pl |
| +Object suffixes ! !! sg !! du !! pl |
Tayap distinguishes between realis and irrealis stems and suffixes. Verbal suffixes distinguish between Subject/Agent (S/A) and Object (O), which is marked by discontinuous morphemes in some conjugations. The ergative case (A) is marked by free pronouns and noun phrases, while the absolutive (S/O) does not have marked forms. As in many ergative Papuan languages, the ergative marker is not always included, as it is optional.
There are two genders, masculine and feminine, marked not on the noun itself but on , the ergative marker, suppletive verbal stems and verbal object suffixes. The unmarked, generic form of all nouns, including animate nouns, even humans, is feminine: however, a male referent may be masculine. Another criterion is size and shape: long, thin and large referents tend to be masculine; short, stocky and small referents tend to be feminine. This type of gender-assignment system is typical of the Sepik region. Gender is only ever marked in the singular, never in the dual or plural.
| ! gloss !! Tayap |
| mbor |
| nje |
| enamb |
| síw |
| sasik |
| ŋgabugar, kokosik, njip, mangɨm |
| ŋgesiŋe |
| njakep |
| sumusumu |
| kanuŋg |
| orem |
| aram |
| ambonor; arambwar; aramŋgor; atemb; karewa; kanakai aramŋgor; nɨŋɨr aram; pake; and |
| mbumjor; kombɨn |
| agin; akirónda; amanep; mbutak; ŋgararik; ŋgogrodak; ŋgurbewat; kurbi; masukondep; onjaŋnoŋor; tapetak |
| pasákeke |
| uráŋgeba |
| mbókokɨr < kokɨr ‘head’ |
| ŋgomar |
| aiyo, ndɨdɨmaŋ, ŋgomákokɨr, orɨnd, semb |
| tokine |
| ŋgem |
| ! gloss !! Tayap |
| sasu |
| sasupat |
| keymare |
| kosep, ŋgarorak, sasápoke |
| pisik |
| kandip |
| eporaŋ, oyaŋ |
| at |
| aiawaŋgar; indagawr; iurok; mbunbun; mɨriŋa at; njakepma arɨt; njeyewɨr at; ŋgurpan |
| sɨwɨr |
| kandap; ŋgugrub; kambobai; rewitoto; sɨwɨrdɨdɨm; sɨwɨrkararkarar |
| agu; kamus |
| tomɨktomɨk |
| tomɨktomɨk sumbwaŋa |
| tomɨktomɨk patɨrŋa (lit. ‘spider of the house’) |
| yandum |
| ŋgudum |
| mbadɨŋ |
| arúmbatak kunemb; metawr |
| mumuk |
| atɨr |
| nɨŋgasin |
| tutumb |
| arawer; mbirkraw onko; ŋgabugrip |
| kɨmɨrɨk; komɨ; urukuruk |
| kɨkri |
| arúmbatak |
| tetei |
| arúmbatak wasow (literally ’fly death’) |
| ipipir |
| katáwa |
| kakámatik |
| nekan |
| ŋgat |
| kekékato |
| ikinŋan yandum |
| tɨtɨpreŋ |
| ŋgaratgarat, kikik |
| njojok, njajak |
| sasawraŋ, numbutik |
| ndedeŋ |
| itum |
| pakɨnd |
| mbímaŋ |
| kandap |
| ! gloss !! Tayap |
| muna |
| tamwai |
| pambram |
| muna kokɨr, which literally means ‘sago head’ |
| paŋgɨp |
| munakumund |
| mum |
| wawan |
| makor or yasuk |
| wot |
| mar |
| tawar |
| iko or ndadum |
| waris |
| kondew |
| munakatar |
| kokɨparaŋ |
| yasuk |
| saiput |
In Tayap, a felled Metroxylon sagu tree can be divided into 7 parts. The Tayap names are listed below, from the base ( wot) to the crown ( mar).
The word orom means ‘in the vicinity of’.
| ! gloss !! Tayap |
| orem |
| nje |
| karar |
| mbor |
| njakep |
|
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