Pawaia

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Pawaia, known to its speakers as /hũe/ (“speech”,) is spoken by 2,000-2,600 people (1972) in two dialect groups living along the Pio and Purari rivers in Papua New Guinea's Gulf and Simbu provinces (Trefry 1969: 1, 1972: 106.). Trefry describes the northern dialect, spoken by the Oyobe people of the Karimui Plateau (MacDonald 1973:117-118.)

Murray (1918-1919) 60 comparative terms for Huaruha

Brown (1919-1920) 117 comparative terms for Aurama

Trefry (1969) comparative study of Kuman and North Pawaia, 200 comparative terms, miscellaneous examples and grammar notes for North Pawaia

Trefry (1972) phonology of North Pawaia

Franklin ed. (1973) 100 comparative terms for Uraru Pawaia

Additionally, the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Ukarumpa provides a sketch phonology of North Pawaia, but it's undated and unattributed.

Trefry (1969: 7-8, 1972: 107) gives 10 consonants and 6 vowel qualities for North Pawaia as follows:

Low-mid back vowel /ɔ/ is rare.

Vowels are in turn distinguished by high vs. low tone and by the presence vs. absence of nasalization, for a total of 24 combinations:

Unfortunately, tone is indicated only in Trefry (1972) and in limited portions of (1969.)

Pawaia lacks a contrast between voiceless (aspirated) and voiced (plain) stops because erstwhile aspirated stops /*t *k/ are reflected as fricatives /s h/, while voiced stops /*b *d *g/ have been devoiced to /p t k/ in a regional trend affecting languages as far west as the Bosavi region. The frication of /*k/ to /h/ is shared with Folopa to the west, and occurs conditionally in Dadibi.

Consonant clusters do not occur. Vowels may occur in any sequence.

Trefry (1969: 52, 77-78) gives North Pawaia pronouns in two case forms as follows:

The third person subjects/objects are identical to the near demonstrative.

Trefry (1969: 52) provides the following indicative conjugations for the verb /hɛt/ ~ /hɛn/ “see”, with indicative mood indicated by /-ɛ/:

The equivalence of the second person singular and plural foms shows the second person free pronoun /ono/ to have originally referred to the second person plural.

Trefry (1972: 107, 116-117) states that the southern dialects differ from Oyobe Pawaia in the following respects: 1) the presence of phonemic glottal stop /ʔ/ 2) the absence of phonemic apical non-stop /l/ 3) stops [t k d g] are allophones of a single phoneme /t/ 4) the presence of a low front rounded vowel /œ/.

[under construction]

Murphy's Huaruha and Brown's Aurama preserve a medial [h] which has been lost in Trefry's Pawaia and Franklin's Uraru Pawaia:

Franklin's Uraru Pawaia [ʔ] …