Tua River

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

[under construction]

The Tua River family, also called Teberan-Pawaian, is comprised of at least four very different widely-spoken languages, Dadibi, Folopa and Pawaia, and Witu…Tua River and Pio River…… tributaries of the Purari around the intersection of Papua New Guinea's Gulf, Southern Highlands and Simbu provinces.…MacDonald (1973: CITE.)

The internal classification of Tua River is as follows:

Tua River

Witu

Pawaia

Dadibi-Folopa

Dadibi

Folopa

MacDonald (1973: 122-124) gives lexicostatistics for Tua River as follows:

[under construction]

Franklin (1973: 264-268) lexicostatistics…

Murray (1918-1919) 60 comparative terms for Pawaia (Huaruha)

Brown (1919-1920) 113 comparative terms for Bara variety of Folopa

Brown (1919-1920) 117 comparative terms for Pawaia (Aurama)

Johnston (1919-1920) 126 comparative terms for Ibukairi variety of Folopa

Lind (1921-1922) 94 comparative terms for Foraba variety of Folopa

Lind (1921-1922) 102 comparative terms for Ro, Keai and Worugi variety of Folopa

Chance (1923-1924) 112 comparative terms for Sesa variety of Folopa

Kerr (1967) grammar of Witu

Kerr (1975) comparison of Wiru to proposed East New Guinea Highlands stock

Wurm (1975: 488-490) recapitulates Wiru phonemic inventory, pronouns and verbal desinences drawn from Kerr (1967)

Franklin (1968) Gulf District …

Franklin ed. (1973) 100 comparative terms for Wiru, Uraru Pawaia, Dadibi and for Sopese, Boro, Suri and Tebera varieties of Folopa

Franklin (1975: 264-268) 84 comparative terms for Wiru

Trefry (1969) comparative study of Kuman and North Pawaia, 200 comparative terms, miscellaneous examples and grammar notes

Trefry (1972) phonology of North Pawaia

MacDonald (1973) comparative notes on Dadibi-Folopa and Tua River

MacDonald and MacDonald (1974) phonology of Dadibi

MacDonald (1976) grammar of Dadibi

MacDonald (1992) sketch phonology of Dadibi

MacDonald survey vocabulary of Dadibi provided by Paul Whitehouse via Summer Institute of Linguistics in Ukarumpa

Anderson and Wade (1988) Folopa ergativity

Anderson (1989) Folopa existential verbs

Anderson (1994) sketch phonology of Folopa

Anderson and Anderson (1995) phonology of Folopa

Anderson (2009) Folopa serial verbs

Anderson (2010) Folopa grammar and (pp. 97-107) vocabulary

Anderson survey vocabulary of Folopa provided by Paul Whitehouse via Summer Institute of Linguistics in Ukarumpa

Whitby and Bai (1990, 2008) dictionary of Dadibi

Additionally, the Summer Institute of Linguistics provides sketch phonologies of Witu and North Pawaia, but they're unattributed.

[under construction]

Dadibi-Folopa Teberan …

Teberan-Pawaian …

Wurm (1962: 118) Mikaru placed with East New Guinea Highlands Phylum. Franklin (1968: 25) Mikaruan family. MacDonald (1973) renames Teberan family     Franklin (1975: 860) Trans-Murray stock, Dadibi-Folopa( Teberan,) Pawaia and Foe. … Ross (1995: CITE) … to which Franklin (2001: 153) concedes “Despite these relationships, there is not sufficient evidence to suggest any proven genetic relationship between Kutubuan and the Teberan Family, nor to suggest that Kutubuan and Engan should be considered as one genetic related group or as a subgroup of Trans New Guinea phylum.”

Several previous studies have assumed that Witu is either a member of or coordinate to Enga-Southern Highlands family. Wurm (1964: CITE) placed Witu with the West Central family (i.e. Enga-Southern Highlands) of his East New Guinea Highlands Stock, a classification which Kerr (1967: 1-2) characterized as “reasonably secure, [but] so far based on relatively slender evidence.” Kerr (p. 4) asserts that “Kewa is probabkly both geographically and linguistically closer to Witu than any other languages, but preliminary studies require it to be classed in a separate subfamily.” Kerr (1975: 277, ibid.) …. Franklin (1975: 264-268, CITE) included Wiru in his Proto-Engan, …

Franklin (2001) comparison of Lake Kutubu (Kutubuan) and Enga-Southern Highlands (Engan,) represented by Huli, Kewa and Pole. Conclusion (p.153): “A number of common kinship terms also occur between Kutubuan and Engan, as well as with Dadibi, again much more frequently than those of other word classes or semantic groups. Notice, however, that MacDonald (1973: 122) assigns Dadibi only a 5% relationship with Foe and calculates a 14% relationship between Polopa (the westernmost Teberan language) and Foe.

The hypothesis advanced here is that the (q.v. Franklin 1975: 264-168) is that most Witu words shared with Enga-Southern Highlands are loans from the latter, with perhaps a small number of legitimate retentions which would presumably be ancestral to both Enga-Southern Highlands and Tua River.

We agree with Franklin that Tua River is related to Lake Kutubu and hence to Foe; however, Lake Kutubu and Kikori River seem to be at least similar to one another than either is to Tua River.

This is somewhat in accordance with Greenberg's (1971: 829) Barika subgroup of his proposed South New Guinea, as was sharply cricitized by Franklin (1973: 382): “In fact the inclusion of the Teberan Family with those of the Turama-Omatian Family is probably the most misleading of the SNG subgroup.” However, Greenberg didn't second-guess Wurm's placement of Lake Kutubu with … Highlands, and his treatment seems a careless conflation rather than a taxonomic insight, as these two families are sharply distinct where Greenberg's lowest-level subgroups were intended to be (and generally are) unambitious and obvious.

Franklin (1968: CITE)

MacDonald (1973) …

[under construction]

Consonants correspond as follows:

Vowels correspond as follows:

These correspondences are exemplified as follows:

Witu words are drawn from Kerr (1967, 1975) and from Franklin (ed. 1973: 592, 1975: 264-268.) All Pawaia words below are drawn from Trefry (1969, 1972) unless otherwise indicated. Abbreviated sources are as follows: kh = Kerr, kf = Frankiln (ed. 1973, 1975) gm = Murray (1918-1919,) lb = Brown (1919-1920.)

Pawaia tone is only indicated in Trefry (1972) and in limited portions of (1969.)

…

…

…

…

Aspirated apical stop /*t/ is fricated to /s/ in Pawaia:

Aspirated velar stop /*k/ is fricated and deoccluded to /h/ in Pawaia:

…

…

Initial prenasalized stops /*mb *nd *ŋg/ are merged with plain voiceless /*p *t *k/ in Witu and Pawaia:

Medial prenasalized stops /*mb *nd *ŋg/ are preserved as such in Witu … :

Due to these mergers, it's not possible to directly establish the quality of the medial where the Witu reflex is absent or ambiguous:

…

Fricative /*s/ is occluded to /t/ in Witu:

The validity of this correspondence is supported by the following loan (q.v. Kerr 1975: 279

…

…

Witu occludes initial palatal glide /*j/ to /t/:

This change is partially shared with the Kewa languages immediately to the west, where Southern Highlands initial /*j/ is occluded to /*s/ when followed by high back vowel /*u/. It seems probable that the Witu change was preceded by a merger with /*s/, which was then merged with /t/ (above.)

…

Pawaia raises /*a/ to /ɛ/ when followed by /*i/ in the next syllable: