Bian Marind

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

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Bian (Mbian) River Marind, or Upper Mbian (Boven-Mbian,) is spoken be approximately 900 people (1954) living in eight villages, Kolam, Boha (Bogha,) Selo (Slou,) Mutin, Mandom, Tepas, Wan and Welo (Welau,) along the upper Bian (Mbian) river in the Merauke regency of Indonesia's Papua province, just west of the Papua New Guinea border (Drabbe 1954: 99, 190.) Its nearest neighbors are the closely related East Marind to the south, the distantly related Mandobo and Muyu languages to the north and northeast, and the unrelated Yei to the southeast. The Mbian intermarry with speakers of many nearby languages, including other Marind as well as the Muyu, Yaqay and Yei (Sohn 2006: 14-15.)

Guertjens (1933: 385-395) large vocabulary of Boven-Biansch

Drabbe (1954: 99-117) grammar of Boven-Mbian of Kolam village and (pp. 128-142) 424 comparative terms

Drabbe (1955: 148-151) 97 comparative terms for Mbian

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Drabbe (1954: 99) gives 19 consonants for Boven-Mbian as follows:

Drabbe's /v/ is often heard as [f] psyllable or word-finally.

It should be noted that historically, Drabbe's /v z/ reflect /*w *j/, with his /w j/ reflecting high vowels /*i *u/ in sequence with other vowels. Were this analysis adopted synchronically, the resulting system of 17 consonants is identical to that of Proto-Marind:

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