Keuw (Keu, Kehu) is an
unclassified
Classified information is material that a government body deems to be sensitive information that must be protected. Access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of people with the necessary security clearance and need to know, ...
language of
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torres ...
.
Keuw is spoken in a swampy lowland region along the Poronai River in Keuw village (kampung) of
Wapoga District,
Nabire Regency,
Papua province, Indonesia. According to oral folklore, the Keuw were originally from Woisaru, and then moved to Sanawado, which may be locations in Wapoga District.
Classification
Mark Donohue (2007) said that Kehu is "probably a
Geelvink Bay language, but no one knows enough about those languages, systematically, to say this with confidence for
ny of thembeyond Barapasi, T(ar)unggare and Bauzi."
Timothy Usher (2018) classifies it as a
Lakes Plain language, closest to
Awera and
Rasawa–
Saponi. According to Foley, based on some lexical and phonological similarities, Keuw may possibly share a deep relationship with the Lakes Plain languages.
Palmer (2018) treats Keuw as 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 ...
.
Phonology
Phonology of Keuw from Kamholz (2012), quoted in
Foley (2018):
[Kamholz, David. 2012. The Keuw isolate: preliminary materials and classification. ''Language and Linguistics in Melanesia Special Issue: History, Contact and Classification of Papuan Languages'': 243–268.]
Consonants
Keuw has ten consonants.
Vowels
Keuw has five vowels.
Tone
Keuw has contrastive
tone. Some
minimal pair
In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate ...
s demonstrating phonemic tonal contrasts:
*''áalìyò'' ‘tongue’, ''áalíyò'' ‘house’
*''kíilyô'' ‘possum’, ''kíilyò'' ‘arrow’
*''úukyò'' ‘grandfather’, ''úunyô'' ‘woman’
Syntax
Keuw has
SOV word order, as exemplified by the sentence below. The morphemic suffixes remain unglossed.
Basic vocabulary
Basic vocabulary of Keuw from Kamholz (2012), quoted in
Foley (2018):
:
The following basic vocabulary words are from the Trans-New Guinea database:
:
References
External links
Keuw field recordings
{{Papuan languages
Endangered languages
Language isolates of New Guinea
Endangered language isolates
Wapoga languages
Tonal languages