WiruorWitu is the language spoken by the Wiru peopleofIalibu-Pangia District of the Southern Highlands ProvinceofPapua 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 Kerr's work with the community produced a Wiru Bible translation and several unpublished dictionary manuscripts,[3] as well as Kerr's Master's thesis on the structure of Wiru verbs.[4]
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.
/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]
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.
^Kerr, Harland B. (1967). A preliminary statement of Witu grammar: the syntactic role and structure of the verb. University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.
^Franklin, K.J. "Other Language Groups in the Gulf District and Adjacent Areas". In Franklin, K. editor, The linguistic situation in the Gulf District and adjacent areas, Papua New Guinea. C-26:261-278. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1973. doi:10.15144/PL-C26.261
^Franklin K.J. 1975. Comments on Proto-Engan. In S.A. Wurm, Ed. New Guinea Area Languages and Language Study: Papuan languages and the New Guinea linguistic scene. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, pp. 263-275.
^Hendy, Caroline; Daniels, Don (2021). "The Wiru Noun-Modifying Clause Construction". Oceanic Linguistics. 60 (1): 72–102. doi:10.1353/ol.2021.0002. S2CID236779036.
^Pawley, Andrew; Hammarström, Harald (2018). "The Trans New Guinea family". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 21–196. ISBN978-3-11-028642-7.
Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart Recordings - Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart Recordings From the Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart Photographs and Audiorecordings. MSS 477. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.
