Wiru language
Wiru or Witu is the language spoken by the Wiru people of Ialibu-Pangia District of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua 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 Kerr's work with the community produced a Wiru Bible translation and several unpublished dictionary manuscripts, as well as Kerr's Master's thesis on the structure of Wiru verbs.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.
Phonology
Consonants
- can be heard as aspirated in word-initial position and can also be heard with slight friction and voicing, in word-medial positions.
- can be heard as when preceded by and followed by or. It is heard as in all other intervocalic environments.
Pronouns
Trans–New Guinea–like pronouns are no 1sg and ki-wi 2pl, ki-ta 2du.Vocabulary
The following basic vocabulary words are from Franklin, as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:| gloss | Wiru |
| head | tobou |
| hair | pine; píne |
| ear | kabidi |
| eye | lene |
| nose | timini |
| tooth | kime |
| tongue | keke; keké |
| leg | kawa |
| louse | nomo; nomò |
| dog | tue |
| pig | kaì |
| bird | ini; inì |
| egg | mu̧ |
| blood | kamate |
| bone | tono |
| skin | kepene |
| breast | adu |
| tree | yomo; yomò |
| man | ali |
| woman | atoa; atòa |
| sun | lou; loú |
| moon | tokene |
| water | ue; uè |
| fire | toe |
| stone | kue; kué |
| name | ibini; ibíni |
| eat | nakò; one ne nako |
| one | odene |
| two | takuta; ta kutà |
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 etyma are:- ibi ‘name’ < *imbi
- nomo ‘louse’ < *niman
- laga ‘ashes’ < *laa
- tokene ‘moon’ < *takVn
- mane ‘instructions, incantations’ < *mana
- keda ‘heavy’ < *kea
- mo- ‘negative prefix’ < *ma-