Iwal (also calledKaiwa from JabêmKai Iwac "Iwac highlanders") is anAustronesian language spoken by about 1,900 people from nine villages inMorobe Province,Papua New Guinea (Cobb & Wroge 1990). Although it appears most closely related to theSouth Huon Gulf languages, it is the mostconservative member of its subgroup.

The termIwal is an endonym. Cognates in other related languages includeYabemIwac andNumbamiYuwala.

Iwal distinguishes 5 vowels and 16 consonants. Unlike most of its neighboring languages, it distinguishes the lateral /l/ from the trill /r/, the latter derived from earlier *s, as inaru from Proto-Oceanic (POc) *qasu 'smoke',ruru- from POc *susu 'breast', andur from POc *qusan 'rain'. Otherwise it appears to be the most phonologically conservative language in the South Huon Gulf chain (see Ross 1988:154–160). It has retained POc *t as /t/ (not /l/ or /y/) and POc *mw as /mw/ (not /my/ or /ny/), as inmwat 'snake' from POc *mwata.

[χ] is only heard in word-medial position.

Iwaldeictics correlate with first, second, and third person, each of which has a long and a short form. The latter appear to beanaphoric in usage. Deictics also serve to bracketrelative clauses:ete/ebe ...ok/nok/nik. By far the most common brackets areebe ...ok, but if the information in the clause is associated with either speaker or addressee, the brackets are likely to beete ...nik orete ...nok. Deictics may occur either in place of nouns or postposed to nouns, as innalk etok 'that earth/soil'.

• ete(n)ik, nik 'near speaker'
• ete(n)ok, nok 'near addressee'
• et(e)ok/eb(e)ok, ok 'away from speaker or addressee'

Traditional Iwal counting practices started with the digits of the left hand, then continued on the right hand, and then the feet to reach '20', which translates as 'one person'. Higher numbers are multiples of 'one person'. Nowadays, most counting above '5' is done in Tok Pisin; in the Iwal New Testament, all numbers above '5'—exceptbage isgabu '10'—are written with Arabic numerals and most likely read in Tok Pisin.

One unusual feature of Iwal is a small set of bioclassifying prefixes:ei- (POc *kayu) for trees,wer- for edible greens,man(k)- (POc *manuk) for birds,ih- (POc *ikan) for fish.

• eivovo 'canoe, canoe tree'
• eiweiwei 'mango tree' (POc *waiwai)
• weru 'two-leaf (Tok Pisintulip),Gnetum gnemon, a tree with paired edible leaves'
• weryambum 'cabbage'
• mankbubu 'pigeon' (POc *bune)
• mankaruel 'cassowary' (POc *kasuari)
• ihtangir 'Spanish mackerel' (Tok Pisintangir)

The basicword order in Iwal is SVO, with (mostly) prepositions, preposed genitives, postposed adjectives and relative clauses. Relative clauses are marked at both ends, and so are some prepositional phrases. Negatives come at the ends of the clauses they negate. There is also a class of deverbal resultatives that follow the main verb (and its object, if any).

Verb serialization is very common in Iwal. Within a serial verb construction, all verbs must agree intense and theperfective marker is itself a serialized verb. Negatives come at the ends of the clauses they negate.

The primary source for this article is Bradshaw (2001), whose copyright holder is Joel Bradshaw, whose contributions here are licensed under theGFDL.

• Anon. (2004). Organised Phonology Data: Iwal (Kaiwa) language. Summer Institute of Linguistics.[1]
• Bradshaw, Joel (2001). "Iwal grammar essentials, with comparative notes." In Andrew Pawley, Malcolm Ross,Darrell Tryon, eds.,The boy from Bundaberg: Studies in Melanesian linguistics in honour of Tom Dutton, 51–74. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
• Cobb, Elyse, and Diane Wroge (1990). "Iwal transfer primer and teachers' training course."Read 25(2):40–44. Summer Institute of Linguistics.
• Ross, Malcolm (1988).Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

• South Huon Gulf languages
• Languages of Morobe Province

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