Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute
Waran, also known as Banaro, is spoken in two dialects by over 2,500 people (1973) living in nineteen villages along the upper Keram and Tamo (Clay) rivers and their tributaries in the southeast portion of Papua New Guinea's East Sepik province, just across the border from Madang province, and in one village located on the Ramu River in Madang province (Z'graggen 1971: 85-86, Laycock 1973: 22, 39, 69, Laycock and Z'graggen 1975: 739, Butler 1981: 3, 1981: 2, Juillerat 1993: 12.) The term Waran [wʌran] means “no” (q.v. Z“graggen 1972.)
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Thurnwald (1916) …
Thurnwald (1921) …
Thurnwald (n.d.) vocabulary of Banaro (unobtained)
Z'graggen (1972) 412 comparative terms for Banaro of Bingo village
Butler (1981) phonology of Banaro of Likan village (date inferred)
Butler (1981) grammar of Banaro of Likan village (western dialect)
Davies and Comrie (1985: 283-311) 115 comparative terms for Banaro of Likan village following Butler
Juillerat (1993) …
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Butler (1981) gives 15 consonants and 6 vowels for Banaro of Likan village as follows:
| m | n | ɲ | ŋ |
| pʰ | tʰ | s | kʰ |
| mb | nd | ndʒ | ŋg |
| w | ɾ | j |
| i | ɨ | u |
| e | o | |
| a |
Voiceless stops are often deaspirated and unreleased word-finally and in clusters with a following consonant.
The sound given here as /s/ is written as <s> in Butler's orthography. Initially and medailly, it can be realized as either a palatalized affricate [tʃ] or a fricative [ʃ]. Finally, it is realized as an unpalatalized fricative [s]. In Z'graggen's vocabulary of Bingo village, it is consistently given as [s] in all positions.
Bilabial non-stop /w/ is occluded to voiced fricative [β] when followed by front vowels /i e/. Apical non-stop /ɾ/ is realied as [ɾ ɺ] in free variation.
In addition to these, there is a sound which Z'graggen (1972) transcribes as glottal stop [ʔ] and Bulter (1981: 9-11) describes as the laryngealization of vowels [V̉]. Butler interprets this as non-phonemic because its occurance is not quite mandatory and it seems to appear with all initial vowels, all fiinal vowels and with both vowels of a vowel sequence. Unlike other stops, it cannot occur as the first member of a consonant cluster. If [ʔ] is to be accepted as a consonant phoneme, Banaro would have no initial vowels, final vowels or vowel sequences.
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Butler (1981: 12) interprets phonetic diphthongs [Vⁱ Vᵘ] as syllable codas /Vw Vj/. Unlike sequential vowels, they are not laryngealized.
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Butler (1981: 13-19a, q.v. Davies and Comrie 1985: 310-311 after Butler) gives pronouns for Banaro of Likan village in two case forms as follows, with Z'graggen's (1972) Bingo village forms presented for comparison:
| Butler | Butler | Z'graggen | |
| subject | oblique | ||
| 1 sg. | ŋgu | ŋa | ŋgu |
| 2 sg. | u | na | u |
| 3 sg. | ma | ma | ma |
| 1 pl. excl. | a | a | a(-wa) |
| 1 pl. incl. | nun | nun | ? |
| 2 pl. | nu | nu | nu(-wa) |
| 3 pl. | nda ~ ta- | nda ~ ta- | ndʌ(-wa) |
| 1 dl. | a ŋgoan | a ŋgoan | gwʌʔan |
| 2 dl. | u ŋgoan | u ŋgoan | u-ŋgwʌʔan |
Butler does not give a form for the third person dual, though Davies and Comrie (1985: 311) quote his unpublished vocabulary with [ˈⁿda ˈnin], meaning literally “they two”. Z'graggen (1972) gives the form [manʉ-ŋgwaʔan] with the same dual marker found on the first and second persons, but it's not immediately clear how the base should be analyzed.
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