Berik language
| Berik | |
|---|---|
| Sewan | |
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Tor Atas district, Sarmi Regency |
Native speakers | (1,200 cited 1994)[1] |
Foja Range (Tor–Kwerba)
| |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bkl |
| Glottolog | beri1254 |
Berik (Sewan) is a Papuan language spoken in Indonesia.[2] Speakers are located in four village groups on the Tor River, in Sarmi Regency, Papua Province.[3]
US linguist John McWhorter cited Berik as an example of a language which puts concepts "together in ways more fascinatingly different from English than most of us are aware".[4] Illustrating this, in the phrase Kitobana (meaning "[he] gives three large objects to a male in the sunlight"), affixes indicating time of day, object number, object size, and gender of recipient are added to the verb.[4]
Locations
[edit]In Sarmi, Berik is spoken in:[1]
- Tor Atas District
- Beu Village
- Bota-Bora Village
- Dangken Village
- Kanderjan Village
- Safron Tane Village
- Samanente Village
- Taminambor Village
- Tenwer Village
- Toganto Village
- Waaf village
- Sarmi Timur District
- Sewan Village
- Bonggo District
- Tarontha Village
Phonology
[edit]Consonants
[edit]| Labial | Alveolar | (Alveolo-) palatal |
Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m [m] | n [n] | ng [ŋ] | ||
| Plosive & affricate |
voiceless | p [p] | t [t] | k [k] | |
| voiced | b [b] | d [d] | j [d͡ʑ] | g [ɡ] | |
| Fricative | f [f] | s [s] | |||
| Approximant | l [l] | y [j] | w [w] | ||
| Tap | r [ɾ] | ||||
Vowels
[edit]Berik has the common six vowel system (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ plus /ə/).[5]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i [i] | u [u] | |
| Mid | e [e] | ə [ə] | o [o] |
| Open | a [a] |
Verbal morphology
[edit]Westrum (1988:150) briefly indicates that Berik encodes whether the action takes place during the day (diurnal) or during the night (nocturnal) in the verb morphology, a rare case of periodic tense whose markers are not easily segmentable.[6]
| Period | Present | Past | Future |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diurnal | gulbana | gulbanant | gulbafa |
| Nocturnal | gulbasa | gulbafant | gubafa |
Sample
[edit]Notes
[edit]- 1 2 Berik at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ↑ "Asian Linguistics Maps: Maluku (the Moluccas) & West Papua". www.muturzikin.com. Muturzikin. Retrieved 1 December 2025.
- ↑ Matthews, "Berik Literacy Program", p. 109
- 1 2 (McWhorter 2008)
- ↑ Westrum, "A Grammatical Sketch of Berik," p. 137
- ↑ Jacques, Guillaume (2023). "Periodic tense markers in the world's languages and their sources". Folia Linguistica. 57 (3): 539–562. doi:10.1515/flin-2023-2013.
- ↑ Taken from Jones, "In Pursuit of Discourse Particles", p. 130
References
[edit]- Jones, Linda K. (1992), "In Pursuit of Discourse Particles", in Hwang, Shin Ja J.; Merrifield, William R. (eds.), Language in context: Essays for Robert E. Longacre (PDF), Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics, 107, Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington, pp. 127–36, archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-10-16
- Matthews, Delle P. (1990), "The Berik Literacy Program: From Illiteracy to National Language Proficiency", Irian: Bulletin of Irian Jaya, 18: 109–24
- McWhorter, John (21 March 2008), "No Tears for Dead Tongues", Forbes, retrieved 2011-05-09
- Westrum, Peter N. (1988), "A Grammatical Sketch of Berik", Irian: Bulletin of Irian Jaya, 16: 137