Wiru
Witu
Native to	Papua New Guinea
Region	Ialibu-Pangia District, Southern Highlands Province
Ethnicity	Wiru
Native speakers	(15,300 cited 1967, repeated 1981)[1]
Language family	Papuan Gulf ? Teberan–Pawaian[2] Wiru
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wiu
Glottolog	wiru1244
ELP	Wiru
Map: The Wiru language of New Guinea   The Wiru language   Trans–New Guinea languages   Other Papuan languages   Austronesian languages   Uninhabited

Wiru orWitu is the language spoken by theWiru people ofIalibu-Pangia District of theSouthern Highlands Province ofPapua New Guinea. The language has been described by Harland Kerr, a missionary who lived in the Wiru community for many years. Kerr's work with the community produced a Wiru Bible translation and several unpublished dictionary manuscripts,^[3] as well as Kerr's Master's thesis on the structure of Wiru verbs.^[4]

There are a considerable number of resemblances with theEngan languages, suggesting Wiru might be a member of that family, butlanguage contact has not been ruled out as the reason. Usher classifies it with theTeberan languages.

• /p,t,k/ can be heard as aspirated[pʰ,tʰ,kʰ] in word-initial position and can also be heard with slight friction and voicing, in word-medial positions.
• /t/ can be heard as[d] when preceded by/i/ and followed by/a/ or/o/. It is heard as[ɾ] in all other intervocalic environments.^[5]

Trans–New Guinea–like pronouns areno 1sg (< *na) andki-wi 2pl,ki-ta 2du (< *ki).

The following basic vocabulary words are from Franklin (1973,^[6] 1975),^[7] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:^[8]

Wiru has a general noun-modifying clause construction.^[9] In this construction, a noun can be modified by a clause that immediately precedes it. The noun may, but need not, correspond to an argument of the modifying clause. Such constructions can be used to express a wide range of semantic relationships between clause and noun. The follow examples all use the same noun-modifying clause construction:

The noun-modifying clause construction imposes a falling tone on the head noun. That is, no matter what the lexical tone of the noun that is being modified is, it takes on a high-low tone pattern when it is modified in a noun-modifying clause construction.

Wiru reflexes ofproto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:^[10]

• ibi(ni) ‘name’ < *imbi
• nomo ‘louse’ < *niman
• laga ‘ashes’ < *la(ŋg,k)a
• tokene ‘moon’ < *takVn[V]
• mane ‘instructions, incantations’ < *mana
• keda ‘heavy’ < *ke(nd,n)a
• mo- ‘negative prefix’ < *ma-

• "Outside and Inside Meanings: Non-Verbal and Verbal Modalities of Agonistic Communication the Wiru of Papua New Guinea" inMan and Culture in Oceania, Vol. 15

• Timothy Usher, New Guinea World,Witu
• Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart Recordings - Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart Recordings From the Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart Photographs and Audiorecordings. MSS 477. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.

• Teberan–Pawaian languages
• Languages of Southern Highlands Province

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