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Peckham unpublished survey vocabulary of Javor obtained in digitalized form from Paul Whitehouse via the Summer Institute of Linguistics.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