Wiru or Witu is the language spoken by the
Wiru people of
Ialibu-Pangia District of the
Southern Highlands Province
Southern Highlands is a province in Papua New Guinea. Its provincial capital is the town of Mendi. According to Papua New Guinea's national 2011 census, the total population of Southern Highlands (after the separation of Hela Province) is 515,511 ...
of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
. 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 Kerr's work with the community produced a Wiru Bible translation and several unpublished dictionary manuscripts,
as well as Kerr's Master's thesis on the structure of Wiru verbs.
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.
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, 1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:
Syntax
Wiru has a general noun-modifying clause construction.
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:
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:
*''ibi(ni)'' ‘name’ < *imbi
*''nomo'' ‘louse’ < *niman
*''laga'' ‘ashes’ < *la(ŋg,k)a
*''tokene'' ‘moon’ < *takVn
*''mane'' ‘instructions, incantations’ < *mana
*''keda'' ‘heavy’ < *ke(nd,n)a
*''mo''- ‘negative prefix’ < *ma-
References
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
{{Papuan languages
Teberan–Pawaian languages
Languages of Southern Highlands Province