Berik language

Berik is a Papuan language spoken in Indonesia. Speakers are located in four village groups on the Tor River, in Sarmi Regency, Papua Province.^[2]

Berik
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Tor Atas district, Sarmi Regency
Native speakers	(1,200 cited 1994)[1]
Language family	Foja Range (Tor–Kwerba) Orya–Tor Tor Berik–Bonerif Berik
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bkl
Glottolog	beri1254

US linguist John McWhorter cited Berik as an example of a language which puts concepts "together in ways more fascinatingly different from English than most of us are aware".^[3] Illustrating this, in the phrase Kitobana (meaning "[he] gives three large objects to a male in the sunlight"), affixes indicating time of day, object number, object size, and gender of recipient are added to the verb.^[3]

Locations

In Sarmi, Berik is spoken in:^[1]

• Tor Atas District
  • Beu Village
  • Bota-Bora Village
  • Dangken Village
  • Kanderjan Village
  • Safron Tane Village
  • Samanente Village
  • Taminambor Village
  • Tenwer Village
  • Toganto Village
  • Waaf village
• Sarmi Timur District
  • Sewan Village
• Bonggo District
  • Tarontha Village

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	(Alveolo-) palatal	Velar
Nasal		m [m]	n [n]		ng [ŋ]
Plosive & affricate	voiceless	p [p]	t [t]		k [k]
	voiced	b [b]	d [d]	j [d͡ʑ]	g [ɡ]
Fricative		f [f]	s [s]
Approximant			l [l]	y [j]	w [w]
Tap			r [ɾ]

Vowels

Berik has the common six vowel system (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ plus /ə/).^[4]

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i [i]		u [u]
Mid	e [e]	ə [ə]	o [o]
Open		a [a]

Verbal morphology

Westrum (1988:150) briefly indicates that Berik encodes whether the action takes place during the day (diurnal) or during the night (nocturnal) in the verb morphology, a rare case of periodic tense whose markers are not easily segmentable.^[5]

Sample of diurnal and nocturnal distinctions in the paradigm of the verb ‘to give’ in Berik (Westrum 1988:150, Jacques 2023:5, Table 1).

Period	Present	Past	Future
Diurnal	gulbana	gulbanant	gulbafa
Nocturnal	gulbasa	gulbafant	gubafa

Sample

• Angtaneʻ bosna Usafe je gatas tarnap ge nuin. Tesa ga belim taban, ga jes talebowel.
• "There was once a person named Usafe who lived near the sago acreages. Whenever he finished cutting down a sago tree, he pounded it"^[6]