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 Kerr's work with the community produced a Wiru Bible translation and several unpublished dictionary manuscripts, as well as Kerr's Master's thesis on the structure of Wiru verbs.

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

• can be heard as aspirated in word-initial position and can also be heard with slight friction and voicing, in word-medial positions.
• can be heard as when preceded by and followed by or . It is heard as in all other intervocalic environments.

Vowels

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, 1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:

Syntax

Wiru has a general noun-modifying clause construction. 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.

Evolution

Wiru reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:

• 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

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.