Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute
Mor is spoken by perhaps 300 to 400 people (2012) living in at least two villages, Mitimbɛ́r and Goras, as well as in the transmigrasi village Bomberai and the regional capital Fak-Fak in the Fakfak regency of Indonesia's West Papua province. Of these, only Mitimbɛ́r is populated exclusively by Mor speakers. The term Mor /moɾ/ means “person” (Hammarström 2012: 1-2, 2015)
In Dutch times, the Mor lived in short term settlements in the swamps and forests around the Budidi and Bomberai rivers. Mitimbɛ́r was constructed on the Bududi by the Indonesian government in a resettlement program. Traditionally, the Mor relied primarily upon sago and fish as well as wild pigs, birds and other hunted animals for food. Today, rice, sweet potato, cassava and other garden crops form a good portion of their sustinence (Hammarström 2012: 4-5, 2015.)
Anceaux (1956) (unobtained)
Anceaux (1958: pages) 10 comparative terms for Mor
Voorhoeve (1975: 102) 40 comparative terms after Anceaux (n.d.)
Voorhoeve (1975: 431) Mor free pronouns after Anceaux (n.d.)
Smits and Voorhoeve (1998: pages) 145 comparative terms for Mor after Anceaux (n.d.) and 40 after de Jong (n.d.)
Donohue (2010) comparative vocabulary for Mor of Goras village (unobtained)
Hammarström (2012) sketch grammar for Mor of Goras
In addition to these, a survey vocabulary of Mor from Tomage village was provided in comparative spreadsheet form by Paul Whitehouse via the Summer Institute of Linguistics Ukarumpa; however it is undated and unattributed.
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Hammarström (2012: 5-9) gives 15 or 18 consonants and 5 vowels for Mor of Goras village as follows:
| m | n | [ŋ] | ||
| [p] | t | k | ||
| b | d | dʒ | g | |
| ɸ | s | h | ||
| z | ||||
| [l] | ||||
| w | ɾ | j |
| i | u | |
| e | o | |
| a |
Velar nasal /ŋ/, bilabial voiceless stop /p/ and lateral non-stop /l/ are found only in loans.
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Hammarström (2012: 11-12) gives pronouns for Mor of Goras village in five case forms as follows:
| free | subject | object | inalienable | alienable | |
| 1 sg. | ˈna-ja | na- | ˈna- | ˈna- | -ne |
| 2 sg. | ˈa-ja | a- | ˈa- | ˈa- | -e |
| 3 sg. | mene | me- | ø- | ˈa- | -me |
| 1 pl. | ˈni-a | ni- | ˈni- | ˈni- | -ni |
| 2 pl. | ˈi-a | i- | ˈi- | ˈi- | -i |
| 3 pl. | ˈmire | mi- | ˈmi- | ˈi- | -mi |
The inalienable possessors as well as first and second person object forms continue Trans New Guinea undergoer/possessors. The alienable possessors originated as encliticized forms of the free oblique pronoun with suffixed high front vowel /*-i/, with mid front /e/ in the first and second person singulars regularly reflecting /*a-i/.
The homophony of the second and third person inalienables results from the loss of initial Western Peninsulas initial /*ŋg/; hence the replacement of the third person free forms with demonstratives.
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