Mauwake

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Mauwake, also known as Ulingan, is spoken by as many as 4,000 people (2000) living in 15 villages along and in the hills just inland of the coast between the Kumil and Nemuru rivers in the Bogia district of Papua New Guinea's Madang province. To the south are spoken its nearest linguistic relatives, Bepour and Moere, as well as the closely-related Mawak and Kowaki languages of the Timper River family; to the west are the only somewhat less-related Maiani, Miani and Mala of the Kaukombar River family; to the southeast along the coast is the more distantly related Amako language a Beteka (Medebur.) Additionally the Oceanic language Beteka (Medebur) is spoken on the coat surrounded by Mauwake territory. Mauwake means “what?” Ulingan is the name of a Roman Catholic mission station (Z'graggen 1971: 50, 1975: 26, q.v. p. 3, Berghäll 2015: 4-10, 13, Pick 2020: 126-127.)

The traditional staple crop is taro, Other cultivated species include yam, sweet potato and banana, with sago consumed in times of scarcity. These crops are supplementing by hunting, including wild pigs and bandicoots, and fishing (Berghäll 2015: 10 )

Berghäll (2015: 21-24) distinguishes three loosely-defined dialect groups within the Mauwake speech community, although the differences between them are slight and primarily phonological rather than lexical or grammatical:

Mauwake

Ulingan – Ulingan, Sikor and Meiwok villages

Papur – Papur, Tarikapa and Yeipamir villages

Muaka – Muaka, Moro, Mereman, Sapara, Aketa, Amiten/Susure/Wakoruma and Saramun villages.

Capell (1951-1952: 188-192) grammar sketch of and (pp. 203-205) 84 comparative terms for Ulingan

Z'graggen (1980: 1-159) 320 comparative terms and (p. 162) pronominal paradigms for Ulingan

Järvinen (1980) 190 comparative terms for Mauwake (Ulingan) of Moro village     Järvinen (1987) Mauwake pronouns

Järvinen (1987) Mauwake focus marking

Järvinen (1991) Mauwake pronouns

Järvinen (1992) sketch phonology of Mauwake (Ulingan)

Berghäll (Järvinen) (2006) Mauwake negation

Berghäll and Kwan (2007) dictionary of Mauwake

Berghäll (2010) grammar of Mawuake of Moro village

Berghäll (2015) grammar of Mawuake of Moro village

Kwan (1989) Mauwake /kema/ “liver”

Pick (2020: 128-131) grammar sketch of Mauwake after Berghäll (2015) and …

Berghäll (2015: 25-51) gives 14 or 15 consonants and 5 vowels for Mauwake of Moro village as follows:

Velar nasal /ŋ/ is found only in loans form neighboring languages.

Voiced stops /b d g/ are not found finally or in inflectional or derivational morphology and are much less frequent than are voicelss /p t k/. Based upon lexical comparisons to Kaukombar river languages, Berghäll (p. 31) suggests that earlier /*b *g/ were devoiced to /p k/ in Mauwake.

Fricative /ɸ/ is specified as bilabial, and does not occur finally. Berghäll (pp. 31-32) suggests that it arose as a conditioned allophone of /w/, as it corresponds to /w/ in Kaukombar River languages.

Apical rhotic non-stop /r/ is specified as a trill [r] which is in free variation with flap [ɾ] in all positions.

Bilabial non-stop /w/ is realized as [w] when next to a rounded vowel and as a labiodental voiced fricative [v] elsewhere. In the inland Papur dialect, especially in Yeipamir village, it is often realized as a bilabial [β]. Similarly, palatal non-stop /j/ is realized as voiced fricative [ʒ] in the Papur and Ulingan dialects.

Consonant clusters are found in native words only medially with three or more syllables, where they result from the elision of destressed vowels. Clusters of homorganic nasal and voiced stop are found in some loands from Tok Pisin.

Vowel sequences are realized as long vowels or diphthongs when the second vowel is of equal or greater height than the first, with high back rounded /e/ being considered lower than high front /i/ for this purpose, and as separate syllables otherwise:

Stress is not contrastive.

Berghäll (2015: 87-116) gives free pronouns for Mauwake of Moro village in five basic case forms as follows:

(Berghäll's unmarked case is called nominative here as it is used primarily to indicate subjects.)

Focal and restrictive cases are formed by the addition of suffixes to the nominative:

Dative and comitative cases are formed by the addition of suffixes to the accusative. The forms of the third person singular however are not predictable:

Another version of the restrictive is formed by the addition of the suffix /-iw/ to the genitive rather than to the nominative (above):

[under construction]

Berghäll (2015: 63-65) …:

A small number of kin terms, including /emerta/ “woman, wife”, /mua/ “man, husband”, /muuka/ “boy, child, son” and /wiipa/ “girl, daughter”, take alienable rather than inalienable possessors because they are normal nouns which have been adopted as kin terms, as does /nembesir/ “acestor (beyond grandparents)/descendant (beyond grandchildren)”..

[under construction]

Berghäll (2015: …) … in three tense forms as follows, with the formant /-i-/ interpreted as marking the non-past:

It is evident that the subject markers of the present tense are largely the same as those of the past, supporting Berghäll's ianalysis of non-past /-i-/ vs. past /-a- ~ -e-/.

…