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 Kerr's work with the community produced a Wiru Bible translation and several unpublished dictionary manuscripts,^[3] as well as Kerr's Master's thesis on the structure of Wiru verbs.^[4]

Wiru
Witu
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Ialibu-Pangia District, Southern Highlands Province
Ethnicity	Wiru
Native speakers	(15,300 cited 1967, repeated 1981)[1]
Language family	Papuan Gulf ? Teberan–Pawaian[2] Wiru
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wiu
Glottolog	wiru1244
ELP	Wiru
Map: The Wiru language of New Guinea   The Wiru language   Trans–New Guinea languages   Other Papuan languages   Austronesian languages   Uninhabited

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

[No ka-k-u] tono tubea.

1SG stay-PRS-1SG mountain 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

[Kia-nea karo pi-k-i] ail-aroa eida piri-ki-ya.

be.red-INF car lie-PRS-2/3PL man-woman there 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

[Kenbra namolo no-k-o] ko ou.

Canberra first come-PST-1PL story 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...

[Toro pea skul ke poa-rok-o] oi no-ka-l-e...

1PL all school LOC go-OPT-1PL time 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

1. Wiru at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. New Guinea World, Tua River
3. Kerr, Harland (13 March 2014). "Witumo Wituda Database". Retrieved 2022-02-21.
4. Kerr, Harland (1967). A preliminary statement of Witu grammar: The syntactic role and structure of the verb (PDF) (MA). University of Hawaiʻi.
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. 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
7. 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.
8. Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.
9. 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.
10. 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.