Berik (Sewan) is a Papuan language spoken in Indonesia. Speakers are located in four village groups on the Tor River, in Sarmi Regency, Papua Province.Matthews, "Berik Literacy Program", p. 109
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". 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.
Locations In Sarmi, Berik is spoken in: 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 Labial Alveolar (Alveolo-)palatal Velar Nasal m n ng Plosive &affricate p t k b d j g Fricative f s Approximant l y w Tap r
Vowels Berik has the common six vowel system (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ plus /ə/).Westrum, "A Grammatical Sketch of Berik," p. 137
Front Central Back Close i u Mid e ə o Open a
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.
+ Sample of diurnal and nocturnal distinctions in the paradigm of the verb ‘to give’ in Berik (Westrum 1988:150, Jacques 2023:5, Table 1). Period Present Past Future Diurnal gulbana gulbanant gulbafa Nocturnal gulbasa gulbafant gubafa
Sample Angtaneʻ bosna Usafe je gatas tarnap ge nuin. Tesa ga belim taban, ga jes talebowel. "There was once a person named Usafe who lived near the sago acreages. Whenever he finished cutting down a sago tree, he pounded it"Taken from Jones, "In Pursuit of Discourse Particles", p. 130
Notes
References