NOTES ON THE MORPHOLOGY OF ÒMA LÓNGH: THE MOST DIVERGENT OF THE KENYAH LANGUAGES

This paper provides a description of the morphology of Òma Lóngh, one of the less known Kenyah languages yet maybe the most idiosyncratic. Òma Lóngh morphology, like many other languages of Borneo and unlike most of the Philippine-type languages of Sabah, has a system of affixation only based on prefixes. Following the pattern of other Kenyah and Kayan variants, only the polysemous prefixes me- N-, fe- ke- are productively employed and no suffixation nor productive infixation process are in place. Nevertheless, the particular phonological structure of Òma Lóngh and some morphophonological processes involving prefixes combined with bases, and the use of the third singular clitic =e that triggers major phonological changes in the final rhyme of the base to which it attaches, sets this language apart from the other Kenyah languages. Unlike Kenyah and other related languages where there is a relatively transparent relationship between bases and their derived forms, the phonological changes involving prefixation and the
=e cliticization produce derived forms that are unknown to the other languages of the area making this language appear to be idiosyncratic.