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 | |
| Region | Usku village, Senggi District, Keerom Regency, Papua, Indonesia |
Native speakers | 20 to 160 (2007)[1] |
Pauwasi
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | ulf |
| Glottolog | usku1243[2] |
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.[3] Foley (2018) classifies Usku as a language isolate.[4]
Basic vocabulary
Basic vocabulary of Usku from Im (2006), quoted by Foley (2018):[5][4]
Usku basic vocabulary gloss Usku ‘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
Morphology
Usku morphology as inferred by Foley (2018):[4]
- dative marker se
- tense suffix -mu ~ -mo
- allative postposition se
- ablative e
Sentences
Word order in Usku is SOV.[4]
Some of the few documented sentences in Usku are:[4]
(1)
e wang o ai se roti-mo 3 money 1SG father DAT give-TNS - ‘She gave money to my father.’
(2)
e kompong se rifli-mo 3 village DAT go-TNS - ‘He went to the village.’
(3)
kɨnmar kompong e duar-mo person village ABL come-TNS - ‘That person came from the village.’
(4)
kɨnmar mra-mu ya-mu person dog-ERG/FOC? bite-TNS - ‘The dog bit that person.’
References
- Usku at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Usku". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- New Guinea World
- 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. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 433–568. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
- Im, Youn-Shim. 2006. Survey Report on the Usku Language of Papua, Indonesia. Unpublished report. Jayapura: SIL Indonesia.
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