Iwal language

Iwal (also called Kaiwa from Jabêm Kai Iwac "Iwac highlanders") is an Austronesian language spoken by about 1,900 people from nine villages in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea (Cobb & Wroge 1990). Although it appears most closely related to the South Huon Gulf languages, it is the most conservative member of its subgroup.

Name

The term Iwal is an endonym. Cognates in other related languages include Yabem Iwac and Numbami Yuwala.

Phonology

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 in aru from Proto-Oceanic (POc) *qasu 'smoke', ruru- from POc *susu 'breast', and ur from POc * '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 in mwat 'snake' from POc *mwata.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Dorsal
Voiceless stop	p	t		k
Voiced stop	b	d		ɡ
Nasal	m	n		ŋ
Fricative	β	s		(χ)
Lateral		l
Rhotic		r
Approximant	w		j

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

Morphology

Pronouns and person markers

Free pronouns

Person	Singular	Plural	Dual	Paucal
1st person inclusive		eitit	tutlu	totol
1st person exclusive	ayeu ~ au	amei	eilu	eitol
2nd person	mie	yem	yemlu	yemtol
3rd person	ei	eisir	sulu	sotol

Genitive pronouns

Person	Singular	Plural
1st person inclusive		a-nd
1st person exclusive	a-ngg	a-meimei
2nd person	a-m	a-im
3rd person	a-ne	a-s

Possessive suffixes

Person	Singular	Plural
1st person inclusive		-(a)nd
1st person exclusive	-(a)ngg	-(a)nggamei
2nd person	-m (-am > -em)	-(a)nggaim
3rd person	-Ø (-a > -e)	-s

Deictics

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

• 'near speaker'
• 'near addressee'
• 'away from speaker or addressee'

Numerals

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'—except bage isgabu '10'—are written with Arabic numerals and most likely read in Tok Pisin.

Numeral	Term	Gloss
1	dongke/ti	'one'
2	ailu	'two'
3	aitol	'three'
4	aivat	'four'
5	bage tavlu	'hands half/part'
6	bage tavlu ano dongke	'hands half right one'
7	bage tavlu ano ailu	'hands half right two'
8	bage tavlu ano aitol	'hands half right three'
9	bage tavlu ano aivat	'hands half right four'
10	bage isgabu	'hands both/pair'
15	bage isgabu be va tavlu	'hands both and feet half'
20	buni amol ti	'[?] person one'
100	buni amol bage tavlu	'[?] person hands half [= '5']'

Bioclassifying prefixes

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

• 'canoe, canoe tree'
• 'mango tree' (POc *waiwai)
• 'two-leaf (Tok Pisin tulip), Gnetum gnemon, a tree with paired edible leaves'
• 'cabbage'
• 'pigeon' (POc *bune)
• 'cassowary' (POc *kasuari)
• 'Spanish mackerel' (Tok Pisin tangir)

Syntax

Word order

The basic word 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

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

Note

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

References

• 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.