Two talks on South Bird's Head languages

TAMing the Iwaro Verb: Morphological Complexity in a Papuan Language by Daniel Krausse

Iwaro (ISO: pru; Glottocode: pura1253), a severely endangered South Bird’s Head (SBH) language spoken in the Southwest Papua province of Indonesia, exhibits an elaborate verbal system characterized by extensive tense/aspect/mood (TAM) morphology and pervasive agreement between subject and predicate in person, gender, and number. The language distinguishes approximately fifteen TAM categories, including the four core tenses remote past, recent past, perfect, and present, alongside present and past habituals, proximatives in past, present, and future contexts, prospective and inceptive categories, and necessitive forms. Syncretism may occur across semantically related paradigms, such as the necessitive and second-person imperative.

The verbal system distinguishes two conjugation classes: a small closed class marked by imperative -ge and a -d formative in parts of the TAM paradigm, and a large productive class marked by imperative -we and a corresponding -r formative. Iwaro also possesses causative derivation, a small set of reflexive verbs, limited pluractional stem alternations, a rich inventory of non-finite derivations used especially in clause chaining, and several copular paradigms inflecting for person, gender, and number. Adjectival inflection resembles verbal conjugation in many respects.

This talk situates these features within the broader typological profile of the SBH languages.

Nominal, verbal and adjectival morphology in Kokoda, an undocumented language of the Bird’s Head by Konstantin Henke

This talk presents results of preliminary documentary work on Kokoda (ISO: xod, Glottocode: koko1265), a threatened South Bird’s Head (SBH, sout3418) language spoken in and around South Sorong Regency, Papua, Indonesia. The language’s verbal morphology marks three core relative (rather than absolute) tenses, which further form part of at least eight TAM categories. These are subject to substantial allomorphy across verb classes. Kokoda uses phonemic stress to distinguish two such TAM categories in certain verb classes, as well as to mark the distinction between second and third person possessors in a separate class of inalienable nouns. While nominal and verbal morphology seem to differ fundamentally at first sight, a distinct class of adjectives unifies features of both: In the noun phrase, adjectival stems morphologically agree with nouns in gender and number, while at the same time also being able to take fully verbal morphology in predicative constructions.

This talk presents analytical approaches to the interaction of phonological and morphological patterns in these word classes and places them into the context of clause structure.