Burmeso language

Burmeso
Burmeso
Taurap
Region	Papua: Mamberamo Raya Regency, Mamberamo Tengah subdistrict, Burmeso village on the banks of the Middle Mamberamo River
Native speakers	(250 cited 1998)
Language family	West Papuan or language isolate (extended) East Bird's Head Burmeso; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bzu
Glottolog	burm1264
ELP	Burmeso

The Burmeso language – also known as Taurap – is spoken by some 300 people in Burmeso village along the mid Mamberamo River in Mamberamo Tengah subdistrict, Mamberamo Raya Regency, Papua province, Indonesia. It is surrounded by the Kwerba languages to the north, the Lakes Plain languages to the south, and the East Cenderawasih Bay languages to the west.

Burmeso forms a branch of Malcolm Ross's family of East Bird's Head – Sentani languages, but had been considered a language isolate by Stephen Wurm and William A. Foley.^[2] The language has very distinct grammatical structure.^[3] It has SOV word order.^[2]

Phonology

Consonants:^[2]
		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	voiceless		t		k
Plosive	voiced	b	d	ʤ	ɡ
Fricative	plain	ɸ	s			h
Fricative	labial					hʷ
Liquid			r
Semivowel		w		j

Probable sound changes proposed by Foley (2018):

Burmeso independent pronouns are:^[2]

	sg	du	pl
1	da	day	boro
2	ba		bito

Burmeso has six noun classes, which are:^[2]

class	semantic category
1	male humans and associated things (contains half of all nouns)
2	female humans and associated things
3	body parts, insects, and lizards; material culture like axes and canoes, some foods; many natural phenomena
4	mass nouns
5	the two staple foods: sago tree and banana
6	arrows, coconuts, and rice (traded items)

Burmeso nouns have three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.^[4] Singular concordial suffixes are:

Examples of nominal concordial suffixes in usage:

(1)

koya

grandfather

bek-ab

good-M.SG

‘Grandfather is good.’

(2)

asia

grandmother

ek-an

good-F.SG

‘Grandmother is good.’

Basic vocabulary of Burmeso (singular and plural nominal forms) listed in Foley (2018):^[2]

Many Burmeso nouns display irregular and suppletive plural forms.^[2]

The following basic vocabulary words are from Voorhoeve (1975),^[5] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:^[6]

^ Burmeso at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h 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.
^ Haspelmath, Martin. "Grammatical, Gender and Linguistic Complexity Volume I: General issues and Specific studies". langsci-press.org. Retrieved 2021-06-14.
^ Foley, William A. (2018). "The morphosyntactic typology of Papuan languages". 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. 895–938. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
^ Voorhoeve, C.L. Languages of Irian Jaya: Checklist. Preliminary classification, language maps, wordlists. B-31, iv + 133 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1975. doi:10.15144/PL-B31
^ Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.