Usku language

Usku, or Afra, is a nearly extinct and poorly documented Papuan language spoken by 20 or more people, mostly adults, in Usku village, Senggi District, Keerom Regency, Papua, Indonesia.

Usku
Afra
RegionUsku village, Senggi District, Keerom Regency, Papua, Indonesia
Native speakers
20 to 160 (2007)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3ulf
Glottologusku1243
ELPAfra
Usku is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Wurm (1975) placed it as an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea, but Ross (2005) could not find enough evidence to classify it. Usher (2020) found that it was one of the West Pauwasi languages, though divergent from the other two branches of that family.[2] Foley (2018) classifies Usku as a language isolate.[3]

An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)[4] found lexical similarities between Usku and Kaure. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing or genetic inheritance.

Basic vocabulary

Basic vocabulary of Usku from Im (2006), quoted by Foley (2018):[5][3]

Usku basic vocabulary
glossUsku
‘bird’rkwe
‘blood’misie
‘bone’kra
‘breast’mi
‘ear’bekria
‘eat’nggreka
‘egg’kri
‘eye’nifi
‘fire’yo
‘give’roti
‘go’rifri
‘ground’taʔ
‘hair’klekondia
‘hear’yukri
‘I’o
‘leg’nafu
‘louse’nimi
‘man’na
‘moon’menggrine
‘name’təkwar
‘one’kuskafi
‘road, path’tra
‘see’fra
‘sky’mumgre
‘stone’pani
‘sun’winene
‘tongue’bra
‘tooth’ninggre
‘tree’ninani
‘two’narse
‘water’a/æ
‘we’no
‘woman’ria
‘you (sg)’po
‘you (pl)’so

The following basic vocabulary words are from the Trans-New Guinea database:[6]

glossUsku
headflekle
hairflekle-kunda
earbeikli
eyenifi
toothneŋkle
tonguebra
legnafu
lousenimi
birdlokwe
eggkle
bloodkla; mise
bonekla; mi
skinninje; ninye
breastkiombra
treeweli
manmekenja; mekenya
womanjomia
sunnei
moonmeŋgerne
waterei
firejo; yo
stonepane
road, pathtra
eatkepo
onekisifaini
twonarna

Morphology

Usku morphology as inferred by Foley (2018):[3]

Sentences

Word order in Usku is SOV.[3]

Some of the few documented sentences in Usku are:[3]

(1)

e

3

wang

money

o

1SG

ai

father

se

DAT

roti-mo

give-TNS

e wang o ai se roti-mo

3 money 1SG father DAT give-TNS

‘She gave money to my father.’

(2)

e

3

kompong

village

se

DAT

rifli-mo

go-TNS

e kompong se rifli-mo

3 village DAT go-TNS

‘He went to the village.’

(3)

kɨnmar

person

kompong

village

e

ABL

duar-mo

come-TNS

kɨnmar kompong e duar-mo

person village ABL come-TNS

‘That person came from the village.’

(4)

kɨnmar

person

mra-mu

dog-ERG/FOC?

ya-mu

bite-TNS

kɨnmar mra-mu ya-mu

person dog-ERG/FOC? bite-TNS

‘The dog bit that person.’

References

  1. Usku at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. New Guinea World
  3. Foley, William A. (2018). "The languages of Northwest New Guinea". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 433–568. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
  4. Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013).
  5. Im, Youn-Shim. 2006. Survey Report on the Usku Language of Papua, Indonesia. Unpublished report. Jayapura: SIL Indonesia.
  6. Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.
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