Waffa

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Situation

Waffa is spoken by approximately 1,200 people (1979) living in five villages, Kusing, Tumbuna, Siaga, Aaringun and Urint, in a valley at the headwaters of the Waffa River, a tributary of the Markham, in the Kaiapit subdistrict of Papua New Guinea's Morobe Province. According to Stringer and Hotz, there are two dialects, the central dialect and that spoken by 80 people in Urint village (Stringer and Hotz 1969: 3, Hotz and Stringer 1970: 1, McKaughan 1973: 515, Stringer 1992: 1, Stringer and Hotz 1979: 5.)

Sources

Stringer and Hotz (1969) verbal morphology and verb phrases

Hotz and Stringer (1970) discourse grammar

Stringer and Hotz (1971: 42-48) phonology of Kusing village, reprinted in McKaughan ed. (1973: 523-529)

Stringer and Hotz (1971: 49-62) nominal morphology, reprinted in McKaughan ed. (1973: 547-556)

Stringer and Hotz (1971) clauses

Stringer and Hotz (1979) dictionary of the central dialect

Hotz and Stringer, compilers (n.d.) texts

Stringer (1992) sketch phonology

Phonology

Stringer and Hotz (1971: 49-62, 1973: 523-529, 1992) give 18 consonants and 5 vowels for Waffa of Kusing as follows:

m	n		ŋ
ᵯ	ᵰ
p	t		k	ʔ
mb	nd		ŋg
ɸ	s			h
β	ɾ	j

i		u
e		o
	a

Nasalized bilabial fricative /ᵯ/ and alveolar flap /ᵰ/ are developments of plain nasals /*m *n/, hence their placement in the chart above.

Waffa is unusual among Eastern Highlands languages (and Trans-New Guinea languages generally) in distinguishing a velar nasal /ŋ/. It occurs most frequently in sequences /ŋiV/; this is a development of palatalized /*n/ [ɲ] following /*i/, as in Obura.

Voiced bilabial fricative /β/ is historically and systemically equivalent to glide /w/.

Consonants do not occur finally.

As in other Kainantu languages, medial clusters …

Stringer and Hotz (1973: 525) treat long vowels as geminate sequences, due to the fact that both, either or neither may be stressed. This, in combination with the unexpectedly free distribution of stress (1973: 526,) suggests that Stringer and Hotz' contrastive stress might be better analyzed as tone, as is found in other Eastern Highlands languages.

Pronouns

[under construction]

… Hotz and Stringer (1970 ibid., Stringer and Hotz 1971 ibid., 1979 ibid) …:

	nominative	emphatic	object	possessive	benefactive	[I myself]
1 sg.	na	ne:(-no:)	ni	ni	ni:-ni	nene
2 sg.	a	e:	i
3 sg.	iβo/iβa		iᵰa	aɾi	iᵰa-ni
1 pl.			ti
2 pl.	ŋia	ŋie:(-no:)	ŋi:
3 pl.			ija	ŋiaɾi

Verbal morphology