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Usku, or Afra, is a nearly extinct and poorly documented Papuan language spoken by 20 or more people, mostly adults, in Usku village, Senggi District, Keerom Regency, Papua, Indonesia.
| Usku | |
|---|---|
| Afra | |
| Region | Usku village, Senggi District, Keerom Regency, Papua, Indonesia |
Native speakers | 20 to 160 (2007)[1] |
Pauwasi
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | ulf |
| Glottolog | usku1243 |
| ELP | Afra |
 Usku is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
Wurm (1975) placed it as an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea, but Ross (2005) could not find enough evidence to classify it. Usher (2020) found that it was one of the West Pauwasi languages, though divergent from the other two branches of that family.[2] Foley (2018) classifies Usku as a language isolate.[3]
An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)[4] found lexical similarities between Usku and Kaure. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing or genetic inheritance.
Basic vocabulary of Usku from Im (2006), quoted by Foley (2018):[5][3]
| gloss | Usku |
|---|---|
| ‘bird’ | rkwe |
| ‘blood’ | misie |
| ‘bone’ | kra |
| ‘breast’ | mi |
| ‘ear’ | bekria |
| ‘eat’ | nggreka |
| ‘egg’ | kri |
| ‘eye’ | nifi |
| ‘fire’ | yo |
| ‘give’ | roti |
| ‘go’ | rifri |
| ‘ground’ | taʔ |
| ‘hair’ | klekondia |
| ‘hear’ | yukri |
| ‘I’ | o |
| ‘leg’ | nafu |
| ‘louse’ | nimi |
| ‘man’ | na |
| ‘moon’ | menggrine |
| ‘name’ | təkwar |
| ‘one’ | kuskafi |
| ‘road, path’ | tra |
| ‘see’ | fra |
| ‘sky’ | mumgre |
| ‘stone’ | pani |
| ‘sun’ | winene |
| ‘tongue’ | bra |
| ‘tooth’ | ninggre |
| ‘tree’ | ninani |
| ‘two’ | narse |
| ‘water’ | a/æ |
| ‘we’ | no |
| ‘woman’ | ria |
| ‘you (sg)’ | po |
| ‘you (pl)’ | so |
The following basic vocabulary words are from the Trans-New Guinea database:[6]
| gloss | Usku |
|---|---|
| head | flekle |
| hair | flekle-kunda |
| ear | beikli |
| eye | nifi |
| tooth | neŋkle |
| tongue | bra |
| leg | nafu |
| louse | nimi |
| bird | lokwe |
| egg | kle |
| blood | kla; mise |
| bone | kla; mi |
| skin | ninje; ninye |
| breast | kiombra |
| tree | weli |
| man | mekenja; mekenya |
| woman | jomia |
| sun | nei |
| moon | meŋgerne |
| water | ei |
| fire | jo; yo |
| stone | pane |
| road, path | tra |
| eat | kepo |
| one | kisifaini |
| two | narna |
Usku morphology as inferred by Foley (2018):[3]
- dative marker se
- tense suffix -mu ~ -mo
- allative postposition se
- ablative e
Word order in Usku is SOV.[3]
Some of the few documented sentences in Usku are:[3]
(1)
e
3
wang
money
o
1SG
ai
father
se
DAT
roti-mo
give-TNS
‘She gave money to my father.’
(2)
e
3
kompong
village
se
DAT
rifli-mo
go-TNS
‘He went to the village.’
(3)
kɨnmar
person
kompong
village
e
ABL
duar-mo
come-TNS
‘That person came from the village.’
(4)
kɨnmar
person
mra-mu
dog-ERG/FOC?
ya-mu
bite-TNS
‘The dog bit that person.’
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