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 Kerr's work with the community produced a Wiru Bible translation and several unpublished dictionary manuscripts,[3] as well as Kerr's Master's thesis on the structure of Wiru verbs.[4]
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.
Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | ||
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᵑɡ | |||
| Liquid | (ɾ) | ɭ | ||||
| Approximant | w | j | ||||
- /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
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Open | a |
Pronouns
Trans–New Guinea–like pronouns are no 1sg (< *na) and ki-wi 2pl, ki-ta 2du (< *ki).
Vocabulary
The following basic vocabulary words are from Franklin (1973,[6] 1975),[7] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:[8]
| gloss | Wiru |
|---|---|
| head | tobou |
| hair | pine; píne |
| ear | kabidi |
| eye | lene |
| nose | timini |
| tooth | kime |
| tongue | keke; keké |
| leg | kawa |
| louse | nomo; nomò |
| dog | tue |
| pig | kaì |
| bird | ini; inì |
| egg | mu̧ |
| blood | kamate |
| bone | tono |
| skin | kepene |
| breast | adu |
| tree | yomo; yomò |
| man | ali |
| woman | atoa; atòa |
| sun | lou; loú |
| moon | tokene |
| water | ue; uè |
| fire | toe |
| stone | kue; kué |
| name | ibini; ibíni |
| eat | nakò; one ne nako |
| one | odene |
| two | takuta; ta kutà |
Syntax
Wiru has a general noun-modifying clause construction.[9] 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:
[No
1sg
ka-k-u]
stay-prs-1sg
tono
mountain
tubea.
big
'The mountain I am on top of is big.'
[Kia-nea
be.red-inf
karo
car
pi-k-i]
lie-prs-2/3pl
ail-aroa
man-woman
eida
there
piri-ki-ya.
lie-prs-2/3pl-hab
'The people who own red cars live there.'
[Kenbra
Canberra
namolo
first
no-k-o]
come-pst-1pl
ko
story
ou.
say.1sg.fut
'I'll tell the story about the first time we came to Canberra.'
[Toro
1pl
pea
all
skul
school
ke
loc
poa-rok-o]
go-opt-1pl
oi
time
no-ka-l-e...
come-pst-ds-2/3pl...
'The time for all of us to go to school arrived...'
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.
Evolution
Wiru reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:[10]
- 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-
References
- ^ Wiru at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ New Guinea World, Tua River
- ^ Kerr, Harland (13 March 2014). "Witumo Wituda Database". Retrieved 2022-02-21.
- ^ Kerr, Harland (1967). A preliminary statement of Witu grammar: The syntactic role and structure of the verb (PDF) (MA). University of Hawaiʻi.
- ^ Kerr, Harland B. (1967). A preliminary statement of Witu grammar: the syntactic role and structure of the verb. University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.
- ^ 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
- ^ 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.
- ^ Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Pawley, Andrew; Hammarström, Harald (2018). "The Trans New Guinea family". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 21–196. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
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.