Keuw language

Keuw
Keuw
Kehu
Native to	Papua
Region	Wapoga River, in the foothills inland from Cenderawasih Bay: Wapoga District, Nabire Regency, Papua province
Native speakers	200 (2007)
Language family	Lakes Plain? Wapoga Keuw; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	khh
Glottolog	kehu1238
ELP	Kehu

Keuw (Keu, Kehu) is an unclassified language of New Guinea.

Keuw is spoken in a swampy lowland region along the Poronai River in Keuw village (kampung) of Wapoga District, Nabire Regency, Papua province, Indonesia. According to oral folklore, the Keuw were originally from Woisaru, and then moved to Sanawado, which may be locations in Wapoga District.^[2]

Classification

Mark Donohue (2007) said that Kehu is "probably a Geelvink Bay language, but no one knows enough about those languages, systematically, to say this with confidence for [any of them] beyond Barapasi, T(ar)unggare and Bauzi."^[3]

Timothy Usher (2018) classifies it as a Lakes Plain language, closest to Awera and Rasawa–Saponi. According to Foley, based on some lexical and phonological similarities, Keuw may possibly share a deep relationship with the Lakes Plain languages.^[4] Palmer (2018) treats Keuw as a language isolate.^[5]

Phonology

Phonology of Keuw from Kamholz (2012), quoted in Foley (2018):^[6]^[4]

Consonants

Keuw has ten consonants.

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		k
Plosive	voiced	b	d		ɡ
Fricative			s
Liquid			l
Semivowel		w		j

Vowels

Keuw has five vowels.

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e	o
Open	a

Tone

Keuw has contrastive tone. Some minimal pairs demonstrating phonemic tonal contrasts:

áalìyò ‘tongue’, áalíyò ‘house’
kíilyô ‘possum’, kíilyò ‘arrow’
úukyò ‘grandfather’, úunyô ‘woman’

Syntax

Keuw has SOV word order, as exemplified by the sentence below. The morphemic suffixes remain unglossed.^[4]

kómúul-yò

boar-?

yúmséet-yò

cassava-?

núu-nô

eat-?

‘The boar ate the cassava.’

Basic vocabulary

Basic vocabulary of Keuw from Kamholz (2012), quoted in Foley (2018):^[6]^[4]

Keuw basic vocabulary
gloss	Keuw
‘bird’	páupǝn
‘blood’	kpíi
‘bone’	ntyéns
‘breast’	túulí
‘ear’	téemé
‘eat’	núu
‘egg’	bléemí
‘eye’	mlúul
‘fire’	núup
‘go’	páwì
‘ground’	píi
‘hair’	plíikd
‘head’	kpúunt
‘leg’	páud
‘louse (body)’	máa
‘louse (head)’	bréen
‘man’	méeli
‘moon’	dyúutǝn
‘one’	bíisìp
‘path, road’	ngkéempúkə
‘see’	líyè, tíyè, kúntáb
‘sky’	tpáapí
‘stone’	tóotí
‘sun’	tandən
‘tooth’	mée
‘tree’	kúd
‘two’	páid
‘water’	yél
‘woman’	úun

The following basic vocabulary words are from the Trans-New Guinea database:^[7]^[6]

gloss	Keuw
head	kpúunt-yô
ear	téemé-yô
eye	mlúul-yô
nose	klókəә̀n-yô
tooth	mée-yô
tongue	áalì-yò
pig	kómúul-yò
egg	bléemí-yò
blood	kpíi-yò
bone	ntyéns-yô
skin	mpáakəә́t-yô
breast	túulí-yò
tree	kúd-yô
sky	tpáapí-yò
sun	táadəә́n-yô
moon	dyúutəә́n-yò
water	yél-yò
fire	núup-yò; óopí-yò
stone	tóotí-yò
road, path	ŋkéempúkəә̀-yô
eat	kéep-yô; núu-nô
one	bíisìp-yò
two	páid-yô

References

^ Keuw at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ Kamholz, David. 2012. The Keuw isolate: Preliminary materials and classification Archived 2015-05-29 at the Wayback Machine. In Harald Hammarström and Wilco van den Heuvel (eds.), History, contact, and classification of Papuan languages, 243–268. Special issue of Language and Linguistics in Melanesia. Port Moresby: Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea.
^ Donohue (2007)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d 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.
^ Palmer, Bill (2018). "Language families of the New Guinea Area". 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. 1–20. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
^ ^a ^b ^c Kamholz, David. 2012. The Keuw isolate: preliminary materials and classification. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia Special Issue: History, Contact and Classification of Papuan Languages: 243–268.
^ Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.