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 Kerr's work with the community produced a Wiru Bible translation and several unpublished dictionary manuscripts,^[3] as well as Kerr's Master's thesis on the structure of Wiru verbs.^[4]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