Inanwatan

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Inanwatan, also known as Bira or Suabo, is spoken by perhaps 800 people (2004) living in three villages along the coast in the southwest corner of the Bird's Head peninsula in Indonesia's West Papua province. The designation Inanwatan, used for the main village as well as the district, is a Patipi term meaning “sago only,” referring to the vast sago swamps of the area; this is rendered locally as /i'rawataro/. The speakers called their language /ni'daibo/ “our language” (de Vries 2004: 1-2.) Puragi speakers call Inanwatan speakers Mirabo or Iagu (Berry and Berry 1987: 92.)

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Voorhoeve (1975: 440) …

Gravelle (1986) survey (unobtained)

Berry and Berry (1987: 99-117) 165 comparative terms for Inanwatan village

de Vries (1996) Inanwatan morphology

de Vries (1996) Inanwatan classification

de Vries (2004) Inanwatan grammar and (pp. 68-80) 926 item vocabulary

De Vries (2004: 20-26) gives 11 consonants and 5 vowels for Inanwatan as follows:

Nasals /m n/ are lenited medially to [w β] and [r ɾ] respectively, where they are represented as <w r> (pp. 20-21.)

Velar stop /k/ is uncommon, and occurs only in loans (p. 23;) South Bird's Head /*k/ being regularly reflected as glottal stop /ʔ/.

Fricatives /ɸ s/ may be realized word-initially as affricates [pɸ ts] (p. 24.) Like /k/, /ɸ/ is uncommon and found only in loans.

Low mid front vowel /ɛ/ is optionally realized as high mid [e] when immediately followed by vowels /i a/ or medial /m/ [w]. Low mid back rounded vowel /ɔ/ is realized as high mid [o] when immediately followed by high /u/ or /m/ [w].

Neither word-final consonants nor consonant clusters occur.

Stress is constrastive and can occur on any syllable. Word final stress is rare (pp. 25-26.)

De Vries (2004: 27-31) gives Inanwatan free pronouns in four case forms as follows:

Apical voiced stop [d] in the first and second plural emphatics is an occlusion of subphonemic palatal glide [j] in sequences /i[j]-V/.

Alienable possessives are free form complexes which indicate the possession of masculine and feminine referents respectively:

Final elements masculine /sɔ/ and femine /mɔ/ [wɔ] are encliticized demonstratives (below.)

Inalienable possessives are prefixed to nominals, and share a common origin with prefixed verbal undergoers (pp. 35-36.) The vowel of prefixed singular subjects suggests them to have originated as cliticized forms of free obliques:

Reflexives are formed by the prefixation of an inalienable possessor to the compound /'ira-gir-/ “body-skin,” with the final vowel denoting gender (below):

De Vries (2004: 31-32) gives proximate and distal Inanwatan demonstratives differentiated by gender as follows:

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De Vries (2004: 37-40) gives Inanwatan subject desinences in five tense forms as follows, with yesterday past /-rɛ/ realized as /-dɛ -gɛ/ when following verb stems with final high vowels /i u/ respectively:

In addition to these, there is a copular verb /-ra/ which is encliticized to predicate nominals and is in the singular persons distinguished by gender (p. 41-43.) The third persons do not take /-ra/ and their bases are those of distal demonstratives (above):

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