Berik language
Tor language spoken in Indonesia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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]
| 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 |
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
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
Consonants
Vowels
Berik has the common six vowel system (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ plus /ə/).[5]
Verbal morphology
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 |
