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Elseng
Elseng
Morwap
Region	Papua, Indonesia: Jayapura and Keerom regencies - Abepura, Arso, Kemtuk Gresi, and Senggi districts; Lake Sentani area - south, southwest.
Native speakers	300 (2018)
Language family	Border or language isolate Elseng;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mrf
Glottolog	else1239
ELP	Elseng

Elseng (Morwap, Janggu, Sawa, Tabu^[2]) is a poorly documented Papuan language spoken by about 300 people (in 1991) in the Indonesian province of Papua. It is also known as Morwap, which means "what is it?" ‘Morwap’ is vigorously rejected as a language name by speakers and government officials.^[1]

Elseng is spoken in Omon village, Gresi Selatan district, Jayapura Regency; it is also called Tabu or Tapu.^[3]

Classification

Laycock classified Elseng as a language isolate but noted pronominal similarities with the Border languages. Ross included it in Border because of these similarities but noted that it does not appear to share any lexical similarities with the family. However, this may be an effect of the paucity of data on Elseng. Foley similarly classifies Elseng as an isolate.^[2]

An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)^[4] also found lexical similarities with the Border languages.

Phonology

Consonants:^[2]
		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		k
	voiced	b			g
	prenas.	ᵐb			ᵑɡ
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s
Fricative	voiced	v
Approximant		w	l	j

Vowels:^[2]
	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e	ə
Open	a

Pronouns

Pronouns are:^[2]

	sg	pl
1excl	ka	kam
1incl	yo
2	so	sem
3	yi

Basic vocabulary

Elseng basic vocabulary from Menanti (2005), quoted in Foley (2018):^[5]^[2]

Elseng basic vocabulary
gloss	Elseng
‘bird’	bisyas
‘blood’	sakwos
‘bone’	wok
‘breast’	pan
‘ear’	waskwos
‘eat’	tou
‘egg’	syungwin
‘eye’	nafon
‘fire’	bət
‘give’	venenggiʔ
‘go’	gele
‘ground’	mo
‘hair’	nimbias
‘hear’	sɨkwen
‘leg’	poksən
‘louse’	ku
‘man’	seseu
‘moon’	məm
‘name’	tin
‘road, path’	mol
‘see’	nɨnggwen
‘sky’	kuil
‘stone’	səpak
‘sun’	ningnaf
‘tongue’	mosən
‘tooth’	an
‘tree’	sək
‘water’	vetev
‘woman’	saun

The following basic vocabulary words are from Voorhoeve (1971, 1975),^[6]^[7] as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:^[8]

gloss	Elseng
head	walambiap
hair	nimbias
ear	mo; uskŋs
eye	naf
nose	sənpokep
tooth	an
tongue	mɔs; mɔsən
leg	pokəs
louse	ku
dog	wəs
pig	wo
bird	bisjas; bisyas
egg	suŋun
blood	wətwən
bone	ok
skin	son; sɔn
breast	pan
tree	sək
man	sisɛu; sisew
woman	saɔ
sun	ninaf
moon	mɔm
water	wətel; wətəl
fire	bot; bɔt
stone	səpat
road, path	mul
eat	to

Sentences and phrases

Example sentences and phrases in Elseng:^[2]

(1)

ka

1

makən

POSS

teti

father

‘my/our father’

(2)

waso

man

amsan

good

‘good man’

(3)

tele

father

si

garden

fa-san

work-?

‘Father is working (his) garden.’

(4)

tele

father

bas

?

to-san

eat-?

‘Father is eating.’

References

^ ^a ^b Elseng at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g 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.
^ Burung, Wiem. 2000. A Brief Note on Elseng. SIL International Electronic Survey Reports 2000–001.
^ Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013).
^ Menanti, Jackie. 2005. Sociolinguistic Report on the Elseng Language in Sia-Sia Village, Keerom County, Papua, Indonesia. Unpublished report. Jayapura: SIL Indonesia.
^ Voorhoeve, C.L. "Miscellaneous Notes on Languages in West Irian, New Guinea". In Dutton, T., Voorhoeve, C. and Wurm, S.A. editors, Papers in New Guinea Linguistics No. 14. A-28:47-114. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1971. doi:10.15144/PL-A28.47
^ 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.