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 Kerr's work with the community produced a Wiru Bible translation and several unpublished dictionary manuscripts, as well as Kerr's Master's thesis on the structure of Wiru verbs.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.

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 (< *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:

[No ka-k-u] tono tubea.

1SG stay-PRS-1SG mountain big

'The mountain I am on top of is big.'

[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 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 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.

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[V]
 * mane ‘instructions, incantations’ < *mana
 * keda ‘heavy’ < *ke(nd,n)a
 * mo- ‘negative prefix’ < *ma-