Wena
Wena (also known as Hibu, Hibuese, Mannenese or Nenge) is a language isolate spoken by around 60,000 people on the Hibu Islands in the Hibu Province of Papua New Guinea. It is called by its speakers either nenge wena or nenge wana, both essentially meaning 'our language', the former using the exclusive word 'we, not you' and the latter using the inclusive word 'we, including you'. The closest land to the Hibu Islands is Simberi Island about 150 kilometres to the southwest. Nuguria Atoll is a similar distance away to the southeast. About half of the Wena people are monolingual, the other half also having knowledge of Tok Pisin and a much smaller percentage know English. Dialectal differences are little-documented and appear to be small, most likely owing to the high degree of travel around the island.
Wena appears to be a language isolate. It is a right-branching, strongly isolating language, notable for its largely oligoanalytic nature, its complete lack of verbs other than the non-inflecting copula i, and for its sex-based speech registers, whereby initiated men pronounce all consonants other than /h/ as voiced.
Classification and history
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain plosive | b 1 | d 1, 2, 4 | g 1 | ( ʔ ) 6 | ||
| Prenasalised plosive | mb 1, 3 | nd 1, 3, 4 | ŋg 1, 3 | |||
| Nasal | m | n 4 | ŋ | |||
| Fricative | v 1 | z 1, 4 | ( ʒ ) 1, 4 | h 4, 5 | ||
| Affricate | ( d͡ʒ ) 1, 4 | |||||
| Prenasalised affricate | ( nd͡ʒ ) 1, 4 | |||||
| Lateral | l 4 | |||||
| Approximant | w5 | j 4 |
- 1 The plain plosives /b d g/, the prenasalised plosives /mb nd ŋg/ and the non-glottal fricatives /v z/ are pronounced voicelessly in a register called nenge la, which is spoken by most speakers: [p t k], [mp nt ŋk], [f s]. The voiced pronunciation is only used in a register called nenge hu, which is only spoken by men who have passed initiation. The early missionaries who first described and wrote down the language were only allowed contact with initiated men, which is why the voiced allophones, although used by less than half of the speakers, are traditionally used to describe these phonemes.
- 2 In nenge hu, /d/ is frequently pronounced as a tap or flap [ɾ] when before an unstressed vowel.
- 3 Post pausa, the prenasalised plosives /mb nd ŋg/ are preceded by a syllabic nasal [m̩.p n̩.t ŋ̩.k] or [m̩.b n̩.d ŋ̩.g]. When immediately following a vowel, the nasalised onset can phonetically be regarded as belonging to the previous syllable Some speakers of nenge hu, pronounce the prenasalised plosives in all positions as geminate nasals [mː nː ŋː]. This same tendency in nenge la retains the lack of voicing during the release into the vowel, causing these to sound like [mh nh ŋh].
- 4 /j/ has a palatalising effect on preceding consonants, especially alveolar consonants and /h/. The sequence /hj/ is pronounced [ç]. The sequences /dj ndj nj zj lj/ generally end up pronounced towards [t͡ɕ~d͡ʒ nt͡ɕ~d͡ʒ ɲ ɕ~ʒ ʎ]. This effect on obstruents tends to be stronger in nenge hu, resulting in postalveolar [d͡ʒ nd͡ʒ ʒ] whereas nenge la tends to use palatalised [t͡ɕ nt͡ɕ ɕ] or [t͡sʲ nt͡sʲ sʲ]. Three additional phonemes */d͡ʒ nd͡ʒ ʒ/ are sometimes suggested in order to explain the presence of a contrast between plain and palatalised pronunciations of /d nd z/ before /i/, while the sequence /ji/ is elswhere prohobited. Analyses that do not posit these extra phonemes simply allow /ji/ to appear in this location.
- 5 /w/ has a labialising effect on preceding consonants, with /hw/ most notably being pronounced [ʍ].
- 6 The glottal stop [ʔ] can appear any time two vowels are adjacent to each other. This is most common between two identical vowels and more frequent in clear speech but there is a large degree of variation. Because its possible distribution is predicted by the distribution of vowels and is non-contrastive, the glottal stop is not phonemic.
Consonant Spelling
The consonants are written using their phonemic representations in IPA with the exception of the prenasalised plosives /mb nd ŋg/, written mb, nd and ngg respectively, /ŋ/, written ng and /j/ written y. The letter r is used in some texts to indicate where the tapped or flapped allophone of /d/ appears. This is not consistent, although the Wena bible uses this and many names are spelled this way.
The following table shows the basic pronunciation of each written letter or letter combination.
| Writing | Nenge La | Nenge Hu |
|---|---|---|
| b | [p] | [b] |
| bw | [pw] | [bw] |
| by | [pj] | [bj] |
| d | [t] | [d]~[ɾ] |
| dw | [tw] | [dw] |
| dy | [t͡ɕ]~[tsj] | [d͡ʒ] |
| g | [k] | [g] |
| gw | [kw] | [gw] |
| gy | [kj] | [gj] |
| h | [h] | [h] |
| hw | [ʍ] | [ʍ] |
| hy | [ç] | [ç] |
| l | [l] | [l] |
| lw | [lw] | [lw] |
| ly | [ʎ] | [ʎ] |
| m | [m] | [m] |
| mb | [mp]~[mh] | [mb]~[mː] |
| mbw | [mpw]~[mʍ] | [mbw]~[mːw] |
| mby | [mpj]~[mç] | [mbj]~[mːj] |
| mw | [mw] | [mw] |
| my | [mw] | [mw] |
| n | [n] | [n] |
| nd | [nt]~[nh] | [nd]~[nː] |
| ndw | [ntw]~[nʍ] | [ndw]~[nːw] |
| ndy | [nt͡ɕ]~[ntsj] | [nd͡ʒ] |
| ng | [ŋ] | [ŋ] |
| ngg | [ŋk]~[ŋh] | [ŋg]~[ŋː] |
| nggw | [ŋkw]~[ŋʍ] | [ŋgw]~[ŋːw] |
| nggy | [ŋkj]~[ŋç] | [ŋgj]~[ŋːj] |
| ngw | [ŋw] | [ŋw] |
| ngy | [ŋj] | [ŋj] |
| nw | [nw] | [nw] |
| ny | [ɲ] | [ɲ] |
| r | [t] | [ɾ] |
| v | [f] | [v] |
| vw | [fw] | [vw] |
| vy | [fj] | [vj] |
| w | [w] | [w] |
| y | [j] | [j] |
| z | [s] | [z] |
| zw | [sw] | [zw] |
| zy | [ɕ]~[sj] | [ʒ] |
Vowels
| front | central | back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| close | i | u | |
| open mid | e | o | |
| low | a |
The true values of the vowels /a e i o u/ tend to be closer to [ä ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ] although, for simplicity's sake, they tend to be transcribed with <a e i o u> even in narrow phonetic transcription. Each vowel has a fairly wide allophonic range and the cardinal [a e i o u] values fall within these ranges.
The high vowels /i u/ have non-syllabic allophones, [i̯~j] and [u̯~w] respectively. These appear when these vowels are unstressed and following another vowel.
Phonotactics
Prosody
Word classes
Nouns
Monosyllabic nouns
Echo nouns
Polysyllabic nouns
Compounding
Reduplication
Gendered nouns
Pronouns
Wena's pronouns are syntactically no different from any other nouns.
Personal pronouns
The pronominal system of Wena is, like most other parts of the language, composed of transparent compounds. It contains three types of clusivity: exclusive, inclusive of third person, and inclusive of second person. The third person pronoun is generally glossed as DEF.E (definite entity) as it is used as a definite article in a lot of situations.
| Person | Singular | Exclusive Plural | Inclusive of 3rd | Inclusive of 2nd |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | na | wena | wena | wana |
| 2nd | wa | wewa | wade | - |
| 3rd | de | dwe / de (we) | - | - |
The distinction between wena "we" and wana "we" is that the latter includes any listeners whereas the former does not. In the second person, wewa is used to refer to a group with all members present and being addressed. Wede refers to a group whose members are not all present or being spoken to.
All the pronouns have distinct genitive forms equivalent to being preceded with ya. For example, ya na is equivalent to nga, with the former being more emphatic and the latter being more common. The forms are shown in the following table.
| Person | Singular | Exclusive Plural | Inclusive of 3rd | Inclusive of 2nd |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | nga | vyena | vyena | wona |
| 2nd | wo | vyewa | wode | - |
| 3rd | zyi | zyi (we) | - | - |
Note that zyi we is often pronounced as one syllable, losing the /i/. This is sometimes indicated in writing as zy'we.
Modified and replaced pronouns
Any of the pronouns may be followed by any of the kinds of modifiers that any other noun can. Appositional modifiers are quite frequent. Wa da is used as an honorific when speaking to an important man. When speaking to a chief, however, one should avoid the above listed pronouns entirely and refer to him simply with the word mwada 'chief'. People addressing the chief humble themselves by referring to themselves as na di.
In the third person, when talking about a number of people or things, modifiers are frequently used to disambiguate between referents that would otherwise all be referred to as de. Some commonly used phrases are de la 'the woman', de hu 'the man', de ngo 'the person', de nu 'the thing'. These are also very commonly used without de, as definiteness tends not to be marked explicitly except through the use of the genitive form zyi.
Reciprocal and reflexive pronouns
The reciprocal pronoun is dede 'each other', 'one another'. It has the genitive form zyide.
Wena i le zyide. wena i le zyide 1p.EXCL COP love.AG GEN.each_other We love each other.
Hu gwe ndudu i li dede. hu gwe ndudu i li dede man and frog COP become.AG each_other The man and the frog swapped bodies. Lit.: The man and the frog became each other.
Reflexive pronouns may be formed by suffixing -zu onto any of the personal pronouns. In the first and second persons, the -zu is only used emphatically and otherwise dropped. In the third person, it is the zu that is kept, with the de disappearing.
| Person | Singular | Exclusive Plural | Inclusive of 3rd | Inclusive of 2nd |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st ABS | na(zu) | wena(zu) | wena(zu) | wana(zu) |
| 1st GEN | nga(zu) | vyena(zu) | vyena(zu) | wona(zu) |
| 2nd ABS | wa(zu) | wewa(zu) | wade(zu) | - |
| 2nd GEN | wo(zu) | vyewa(zu) | wode(zu) | - |
| 3rd ABS | (de) zu | (dwe) zu / (de we) zu | - | - |
| 3rd GEN | zyizu / ya zu | zyizu (we) | - | - |
Quite frequently, -zu attaches as a compound element on to the end of other nouns in order to create a lexical reflexive. Compare the following three sentences.
Na i ze ngu nga. na i ze ngu nga 1s COP NEG.E murder.AG GEN.1s I'm not going to kill myself.
Na i ze ngu ngazu. na i ze ngu ngazu 1s COP NEG.E murder.AG GEN.1s.REFL I'm not going to kill myself.
Na i ze nguzu. na i ze nguzu 1s COP NEG.E murder.self.AG I'm not going to commit suicide.
It should be noted that the reflexive pronouns are not used to highlight the subject, as they can in English. This is instead done by repeating the subject in an adjunctive modifier.
Na i ze ngu o na. na i ze ngu u na 1s COP NEG.E murder.AG ADJN 1s I'm not going to kill (anyone) myself.