Mor language (Papuan)

Not to be confused with Mor language (Austronesian).

Mor is a nearly extinct Trans–New Guinea language of Indonesia. It is spoken along the Budidi River and the Bomberai River on the Bomberai Peninsula.^[2]

Mor
Region	Fakfak Regency, West Papua
Native speakers	30 (2012)[1] 70 semi-speakers (2012)
Language family	Trans–New Guinea Berau Gulf Mor
Language codes
ISO 639-3	moq
Glottolog	morb1239
ELP	Mor (Bomberai Peninsula, Indonesia)
Map: The Mor language of New Guinea   The Mor language   Other Trans–New Guinea languages   Other Papuan languages   Austronesian languages   Uninhabited

Classification

It may form a tentative independent branch of that family in the classification of Malcolm Ross (2005), but Palmer (2018) classifies it as a language isolate.^[3] However, the only connections are the 1sg and 2sg pronouns na- and a-:

	sg	pl
1	na-ya	ne-a
2	a-ya	omase
3	mena	morimene

Usher classifies it with the other Trans–New Guinea languages of the Berau Gulf.^[4]

Nouns

Nominal inflection for number in Mor is limited to only certain animate nouns, such as mor ‘man’ and mor-ir ‘men’. Other nouns do not inflect for number, such as is ‘bird/birds’.^[2]: 97

Vocabulary

The following basic vocabulary words are from Voorhoeve (1975),^[5] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:^[6]

gloss	Mor
head	idura
hair	sa
eye	nana
tooth	nasona
leg	bana
louse	twoa
dog	afuna
pig	bia
bird	isa
egg	utreta
blood	wabmina
bone	weten
skin	gina
tree	wara
man	hiamia
sun	seba
water	sea
fire	taha
stone	puata
name	inagenena
eat	masmore
one	nadu
two	kin

A word list of Mor has also been collected by Johannes Anceaux.^[7]

References

1. Mor at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. 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.
3. Palmer, Bill (2018). "Language families of the New Guinea Area". 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. 1–20. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
4. New Guinea World, Mor
5. Voorhoeve, C.L. Languages of Irian Jaya: Checklist. Preliminary classification, language maps, wordlists. B-31, iv + 133 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1975. doi:10.15144/PL-B31
6. Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.
7. Smits, Leo and Clemens L. Voorhoeve. 1998. The J.C. Anceaux Collection of Wordlists of Irian Jaya Languages B: Non-Austronesian (Papuan) languages (Part II). Leiden-Jakarta: Department of Cultures and Languages of Southeast Asia and Oceania.

• Ross, Malcolm (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages". In Andrew Pawley; Robert Attenborough; Robin Hide; Jack Golson (eds.). Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 15–66. ISBN 0858835622. OCLC 67292782.

External links

• Timothy Usher, New Guinea World, Mor