Kwinsu

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Kwinsu is spoken by nearly 500 people (2004) living in a single village, Ansudu, on the north coast of the Pantai Timur district of Sarmi regency in Indonesia's Papua province. The village was named Ansudu by the Dutch. Kwinsu /kʷin-su/ means “dark bird” and is the name speakers use for both their village and their language (Lee and Wambaliau 2004: 2-3, 4.)

Lee and Wambaliau (2004: 49-62) 238 comparative terms and 21 sentences for Kwinsu of Ansudu village

There is no published phonology of Kwinsu. Comparison of Lee and Wambaliau's (2004: 49-62) vocabulary with those of Kwinsu's nearest relatives, Tena and Fitou, allows us to posit 11 consonants and 5 vowels for Kwinsu as follows:

In addition to the simple vowels given above, four diphthongs are found as follows. Diphthongs /oᵘ aᵘ/ are typically realized as [u(ᵘ) o(ᵘ)]:

There is no phonemic apical non-stop /ɾ/ because Tor Coast apicals /*d *ɾ/ have merged in Kwinsu, with initial /*ɾ/ now realized as [d] and medial /*d/ as [ɾ].

Only a restricted set of consonants occurs word-finally:

Lee and Wambaliau (2004: 50) give free pronouns for Kwinsu of Ansudu as follows:

Nothing is known about Kwinsu verbal morphology besides what little can be discerned from the examples given in Lee and Wambaliau (2004: 49-62.)