The Burmeso language – also known as Taurap – is spoken by some 300 people in Burmeso village along the mid
Mamberamo River
The Mamberamo (''Indonesian: Sungai Mamberamo'') is the second longest river on the island of New Guinea, after Sepik River (1,146 km) and third largest in Oceania by discharge (5,500 m3/s) volume after Fly River (7,500 m3/s) and Sepik (7,00 ...
in
Mamberamo Tengah subdistrict,
Mamberamo Raya Regency,
Papua province
Papua is a province of Indonesia, comprising the northern coast of Western New Guinea together with island groups in Cenderawasih Bay to the west. It roughly follows the borders of Papuan customary region of Tabi Saireri. It is bordered by ...
,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...
. It is surrounded by the
Kwerba languages to the north, the
Lakes Plain languages
The Lakes Plain languages are a family of Papuan languages, spoken in the Lakes Plain of Indonesian New Guinea. They are notable for being heavily tonal and for their lack of nasal consonants.
Classification
The Lakes Plain languages were tenta ...
to the south, and the
East Cenderawasih Bay languages
The East Geelvink Bay or East Cenderawasih languages are a language family of a dozen Papuan languages along the eastern coast of Geelvink Bay in Indonesian Papua, which is also known as Sarera Bay or Cenderawasih.
Languages
The East Geelvink ...
to the west.
Burmeso forms a branch of
Malcolm Ross's family of
East Bird's Head – Sentani languages
The East Bird's Head – Sentani languages form a family of Papuan languages proposed by Malcolm Ross which combines the East Bird's Head and Sentani families along with the Burmeso language isolate. Sentani had been a branch of Stephen Wurm's ...
, but had been considered a
language isolate
Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The nu ...
by
Stephen Wurm
Stephen Adolphe Wurm ( hu, Wurm István Adolf, ; 19 August 1922 – 24 October 2001) was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist.
Early life
Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and the Hungarian-sp ...
and
William A. Foley.
The language has very distinct grammatical structure. It has SOV word order.
Phonology
Probable sound changes proposed by Foley (2018):
* *p > /ɸ/
* *tʃ > /s/
Pronouns
Burmeso independent pronouns are:
:
Nouns
Burmeso has six
noun classes, which are:
:
Burmeso nouns have three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
Singular concordial suffixes are:
*-''ab'' ‘masculine’
*-''an'' ‘feminine’
*-''ora'' ‘neuter’
Examples of nominal concordial suffixes in usage:
Basic vocabulary
Basic vocabulary of Burmeso (singular and plural nominal forms) listed in
Foley (2018):
:
Many Burmeso nouns display irregular and suppletive plural forms.
:
The following basic vocabulary words are from Voorhoeve (1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:
:
References
Further reading
*Donohue, Mark. 2001. Animacy, class and gender in Burmeso. In: Pawley et al. (eds.), ''The Boy from Bundaberg: Studies in Melanesian Linguistics in Honour of Tom Dutton''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.97–117.
*Tasti, Markus and Mark Donohue. 1998. ''A Small Dictionary of Burmeso''. Unpublished ms, University of Sydney.
{{West Papuan languages
Languages of western New Guinea
East Bird's Head languages
Unclassified languages of New Guinea