====== Mer ======

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

===== Situation =====
Mer, or Miere, is spoken by 200-400 people (1991) living north of Etna Bay between the headwaters of the Wosimi and Irema rivers in the Bird's Neck region of Indonesia's West Papua province. The Semimi of Kiruru village call them Muri (Peckham 1991: 147, 148-149, 151.)

===== Sources =====
Peckham (1991: 173-180) 208 comparative terms for Mer

Peckham unpublished survey vocabulary of Javor obtained in digitalized form from Paul Whitehouse via the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

===== Phonology =====
There is no published phonology of Mer.

===== Pronouns =====
Peckham (1991: 178) gives Mer free pronouns as follows:

|< - 100px 100px >|
|1 sg.|omo               |
|2 sg.|kene              |
|3 sg.|kanoa\\ dʒaŋgaɾani|
|1 pl.|e-dumaga          |
|2 pl.|?                 |
|3 pl.|kane geɾaŋga      |

These should not be assumed to be reliable. Second person /kene/ is almost certainly in error for /keme/, while Peckham's third persons look to be phrases. The suffix /-tumaka/ in the first person plural means “all” and signifies the inclusive.

===== Verbal morphology =====
Nothing is known about Mer verbal morphology besides what can be discerned from verb forms given in Peckham's (1991: 178-180) comparative vocabulary.\\
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