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 (1,126 km) and the second largest in Oceania by discharge volume after Fly River, Fly. It is located in the Indonesia ...
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 the Papuan customary region of Tabi Saireri, and is divided in ...
,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
. It is surrounded by the
Kwerba languages to the north, the
Lakes Plain languages to the south, and the
East Cenderawasih Bay languages to the west.
Burmeso forms a branch of
Malcolm Ross's family of
East Bird's Head – Sentani languages, but had been considered a
language isolate
A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...
by
Stephen Wurm 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 class
In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some ...
es, 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