Wiru language

Wiru or Witu is the language spoken by the Wiru people of Ialibu-Pangia District of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. The language has been described by Harland Kerr, a missionary who lived in the Wiru community for many years. Kerr's work with the community produced a Wiru Bible translation and several unpublished dictionary manuscripts,^[2] as well as Kerr's Master's thesis on the structure of Wiru verbs.^[3]

There are a considerable number of resemblances with the Engan languages, suggesting Wiru might be a member of that family, but language contact has not been ruled out as the reason. Usher classifies it with the Teberan languages.

Evolution

Wiru reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:^[4]

• ibi(ni) ‘name’ < *imbi
• nomo ‘louse’ < *niman
• laga ‘ashes’ < *la(ŋg,k)a
• tokene ‘moon’ < *takVn[V]
• mane ‘instructions, incantations’ < *mana
• keda ‘heavy’ < *ke(nd,n)a
• mo- ‘negative prefix’ < *ma-

Phonology

Consonants

• /p, t, k/ can be heard as aspirated [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ] in word-initial position and can also be heard with slight friction and voicing, in word-medial positions.
• /t/ can be heard as [d] when preceded by /i/ and followed by /a/ or /o/. It is heard as [ɾ] in all other intervocalic environments.^[5]

Vowels

Pronouns

Trans–New Guinea–like pronouns are no 1sg (< *na) and ki-wi 2pl, ki-ta 2du (< *ki).

Syntax

Wiru has a general noun-modifying clause construction.^[6] In this construction, a noun can be modified by a clause that immediately precedes it. The noun may, but need not, correspond to an argument of the modifying clause. Such constructions can be used to express a wide range of semantic relationships between clause and noun. The follow examples all use the same noun-modifying clause construction:

The noun-modifying clause construction imposes a falling tone on the head noun. That is, no matter what the lexical tone of the noun that is being modified is, it takes on a high-low tone pattern when it is modified in a noun-modifying clause construction.

Vocabulary

The following basic vocabulary words are from Franklin (1973,^[7] 1975),^[8] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:^[9]

References

1. ^ New Guinea World, Tua River^{[dead link]}
2. ^ Kerr, Harland (13 March 2014). "Witumo Wituda Database". Retrieved 2022-02-21.
3. ^ Kerr, Harland (1967). A preliminary statement of Witu grammar: The syntactic role and structure of the verb (MA). University of Hawaiʻi.
4. ^ Pawley, Andrew & Hammarström, Harald (2018). "The Trans New Guinea family". The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. Vol. 4. The World of Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 21–196. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
5. ^ Kerr, Harland B. (1967). A preliminary statement of Witu grammar: the syntactic role and structure of the verb. University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.
6. ^ Hendy, Caroline & Daniels, Don (2021). "The Wiru Noun-Modifying Clause Construction". Oceanic Linguistics. 60 (1): 72–102. doi:10.1353/ol.2021.0002. S2CID 236779036
7. ^ Franklin, K.J. "Other Language Groups in the Gulf District and Adjacent Areas". In Franklin, K. editor, The linguistic situation in the Gulf District and adjacent areas, Papua New Guinea. C-26:261-278. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1973. doi:10.15144/PL-C26.261
8. ^ Franklin K.J. 1975. Comments on Proto-Engan. In S.A. Wurm, Ed. New Guinea Area Languages and Language Study: Papuan languages and the New Guinea linguistic scene. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, pp. 263-275.
9. ^ Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.

Further reading

• "Outside and Inside Meanings: Non-Verbal and Verbal Modalities of Agonistic Communication the Wiru of Papua New Guinea" in Man and Culture in Oceania, Vol. 15

External links

• Timothy Usher, New Guinea World, Witu
• Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart Recordings - Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart Recordings From the Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart Photographs and Audiorecordings. MSS 477. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.