Usku, or Afra, is a nearly extinct and poorly documented Papuan language spoken by 20 or more people, mostly adults, in Usku village, Senggi District, Keerom Regency, Papua, Indonesia.
Wurm (1975) placed it as an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea, but Ross (2005) could not find enough evidence to classify it. Usher (2020) found that it was one of the West Pauwasi languages, though divergent from the other two branches of that family.New Guinea World Foley (2018) classifies Usku as a language isolate.
An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013)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). found lexical similarities between Usku and Kaure. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, the grouping could be either due to mutual lexical borrowing or genetic inheritance.
Basic vocabulary Basic vocabulary of Usku from Im (2006), quoted by Foley (2018):Im, Youn-Shim. 2006. Survey Report on the Usku Language of Papua, Indonesia. Unpublished report. Jayapura: SIL Indonesia.
|+ Usku basic vocabulary ! gloss !! Usku |- | 'bird' || rkwe |- | 'blood' || misie |- | 'bone' || kra |- | 'breast' || mi |- | 'ear' || bekria |- | 'eat' || nggreka |- | 'egg' || kri |- | 'eye' || nifi |- | 'fire' || yo |- | 'give' || roti |- | 'go' || rifri |- | 'ground' || taʔ |- | 'hair' || klekondia |- | 'hear' || yukri |- | 'I' || o |- | 'leg' || nafu |- | 'louse' || nimi |- | 'man' || na |- | 'moon' || menggrine |- | 'name' || təkwar |- | 'one' || kuskafi |- | 'road, path' || tra |- | 'see' || fra |- | 'sky' || mumgre |- | 'stone' || pani |- | 'sun' || winene |- | 'tongue' || bra |- | 'tooth' || ninggre |- | 'tree' || ninani |- | 'two' || narse |- | 'water' || a/æ |- | 'we' || no |- | 'woman' || ria |- | 'you (sg)' || po |- | 'you (pl)' || so
The following basic vocabulary words are from the Trans-New Guinea database:
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! gloss !! Usku |- | head || flekle |- | hair || flekle-kunda |- | ear || beikli |- | eye || nifi |- | tooth || neŋkle |- | tongue || bra |- | leg || nafu |- | louse || nimi |- | bird || lokwe |- | egg || kle |- | blood || kla; mise |- | bone || kla; mi |- | skin || ninje; ninye |- | breast || kiombra |- | tree || weli |- | man || mekenja; mekenya |- | woman || jomia |- | sun || nei |- | moon || meŋgerne |- | water || ei |- | fire || jo; yo |- | stone || pane |- | road, path || tra |- | eat || kepo |- | one || kisifaini |- | two || narna
Morphology Usku morphology as inferred by Foley (2018):
dative marker se tense suffix -mu ~ -mo allative postposition se ablative e
Sentences Word order in Usku is SOV.
Some of the few documented sentences in Usku are:
References
External links
Usku word list at TransNewGuinea.org OLAC resources in and about the Usku language