Wiru or Witu is the language spoken by the

Wiru people The Wiru are a people of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. They speak the Wiru language. Among their rituals is the production of '' timbuwarra'' out of rattan. Wiru ancestors said to be much taller than modern population and a ...

Ialibu-Pangia District Ialibu-Pangia District is a district of the Southern Highlands Province 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, Ind ...

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 ...

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 Kerr's work with the community produced a Wiru Bible translation and several unpublished dictionary manuscripts, as well as Kerr's Master's thesis on the structure of Wiru verbs.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 The Engan, or more precisely Enga – Southern Highland , languages are a small family of Papuan languages of the highlands of Papua New Guinea. The two branches of the family are rather distantly related, but were connected by Franklin and Voorh ...

, suggesting Wiru might be a member of that family, but

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for th ...

has not been ruled out as the reason. Usher classifies it with the

Teberan languages The Teberan languages are a well established family of Papuan languages that Stephen Wurm (1975) grouped with the Pawaia language as a branch of the Trans–New Guinea phylum. There are two Teberan languages, Dadibi and Folopa (Podopa). They ...

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

External links