Maybrat language

 ( Language Isolates Of New Guinea ) 

Maybrat is spoken in a large area in the central parts of the Bird's Head Peninsula, with a large portion of its speakers concentrated around the Ayamaru Lakes, although many are also found in urban areas of Indonesian Papua. Maybrat is surrounded by a number of languages; to the north are two other isolates: Abun language and Mpur language; to the east are Meyah language and Moskona language, both members of the East Bird's Head language family; the South Bird's Head languages Arandai language, Kaburi language, Kais language, and Konda are spoken to the south, and to the west are Tehit language and Moraid language, both of the West Bird's Head family.

The Malay language served as the language of wider communication in this area during the Dutch administration, while more recently the related Indonesian language has taken up this role. Most Maybrat speakers in Ayawasi, for example, are fully bilingual in Indonesian, with the use of Indonesian loanwords and code-switching between the two languages fairly common.

The word "Maybrat" is a compound of mai 'sound, language', and according to one explanation, its meaning is "the language Brat", where "Brat" is the name of a hill near the village of Semetu in the Ayamaru region.

There have been various classifications and listings of the dialects of Maybrat. The local tradition of the speakers recognises the following six dialects (the districts and villages where each is spoken are given in brackets):

• Mayhapeh (Ayawasi, Kokas, Mosun, Konya, Kumurkek)
• Mayasmaun (Ayata, Kamat, Aisa)
• Karon Dori or Miyah (Miyah, Senopi, Fef, Syujak).
  Adolof Ronsumbre (2025). 9786023563180, Penerbit Kepel Press. ISBN 9786023563180
• Maymare (Suswa, Sire)
• Maymaru (Ayamaru): in Ayamaru District and Ayamaru Timur District
  Adolof Ronsumbre (2025). 9786023563180, Penerbit Kepel Press. ISBN 9786023563180
• Mayte (Aytinyo, Fuoh): in Aytinyo District

Irires is also known as Karon Dori, Meon, or Maiyach. Some exonyms include:

• Abun language name: Meon ‘people who speak language speedly’
• Mpur language name: Bakatan ‘people who produce and wear bracelets’
• Meyah language name: Meyah mewi ‘language root’

A non-phonemic schwa vowel is used, mostly to break up consonant clusters (see below). A schwa is also optionally inserted before the initial consonant in a small number of short words: ~ 'night'. Vowels are phonetically lengthened in stressed one-syllable words. A vowel at the start of a word is optionally preceded, and a vowel at the end of a word is optionally followed, by a non-phonemic glottal stop , typically when the word is uttered in isolation: ~ 'rain', ~ 'they drink'.

Not all of these allophones have been documented in the Maymaru dialect. However, it does have the following allophone rules not described for the Mayhapeh dialect: word-final /o/ is pronounced as after /i/, while unstressed word-final /a/ is realised as .

In the Mayhapeh dialect, the bilabial stop does not occur at the end of the word. It has two allophones – voiceless and voiced – which are in free variation in all positions: /tapam/ 'land' → ; the voiceless allophone is more common, even between vowels. The velar stop is voiceless, but it has an optional voiced allophone between vowels and an optional Unreleased stop allophone at the end of the word. The alveolar stop is always voiceless, and in word-final position is in free variation with the aspirated and the unreleased : /poiit/ 'food' → . The labial fricative /f/ has two allophones in free variation: the and the . The velar fricative //, which in the practical orthography is written as h, can be either voiceless or voiced : /xren/ 'they sit' → . The rhotic consonant is always an alveolar trill at the start of the word, while in other positions it is in free variation with the alveolar tap .

Voiced allophones are generally more common in the other dialects. For example, in the Maymaru dialect, spoken in the area of Ayamaru, the bilabial stop is always voiced , while the alveolar stop becomes voiced after . The velar stop becomes voiced either before or after .

The semivowels and are treated as distinct consonantal phonemes in Dol's study of the Mayhapeh dialect of Ayawasi, but Brown's analysis of the Maymaru dialect they are instead analysed as allophones of the vowels /i/ and /u/ respectively. In the remainder of this article, the semivowel // is represented with , following the practical orthography.

At the end of a sentence, many older speakers blow a puff of air through their nose, which appears to be a common phenomenon in the languages of the Bird's Head Peninsula.

The Maymaru dialect Clusivity between inclusive 'we' (meaning 'I + you') and exclusive 'we' ('I + he/she'). The inclusive form is anu (with corresponding person prefix b-) and the exclusive one is amu (with prefix n-). It also has somewhat different pronouns for the first and second person singular: tyo 'I', and nyo 'you (singular)'.

The person prefixes are obligatory for verbs and for inalienably possessed nouns (see below for these possession constructions). When added to a verb, the prefix indexes the subject ( -amo ' goes'), and when added to an inalienably possessed noun, it indexes the possessor ( -ana ' head'). If the verb or noun begins with the vowel a- then this vowel is dropped before prefixes for the first and second person plural. The following table lists the prefixes of the Mayhapeh dialect along with an example paradigm:

There are words, nouns or verbs, that do not take person prefixes. This is largely determined phonologically: the prefix is not allowed if its addition would result in a word of three or more syllables. There are also five verbs that are exceptions: they do not allow person prefixes even though they are otherwise phonologically eligible.

The demonstratives in the examples above have the prefix re-, which is used when the specific location of the object is known. If the exact location of the object is not known, then another prefix we- is employed:

Another prefix is te-, which refers to area, and so demonstratives with this prefix correspond to English words like "here" or "there", unlike ones with re- and we-, which can usually be translated as this or that:

All three prefixes discussed above – re-, we- and te- – mark their demonstratives for attributive use, that is, such demonstratives typically occur within a noun phrase and modify the head noun. Another set of prefixes is used for demonstratives, ones that can be used as adverbs to modify a clause. The following two examples contrast attributive and adverbial demonstratives:

Another prefix is me-. It expresses a presentative: it introduces a new referent, which will normally be the topic of what follows next. Examples are:

Two further prefixes are fi- 'similar.to', and ti- 'side':

The specific demonstratives mentioned earlier, refo, reto, and rono, can also be used without the re- prefix – as fo, to and no – without a significant change of meaning. Two of these – fo and to – have an additional function. They can serve as anaphoric pronouns, referring to entities mentioned earlier in the text.

Many of the demonstrative prefixes can also combine with the interrogative base -yo/ -ye, resulting in the question words fi-ye 'how?', ro-yo 'which one?' and three more that translates into English as 'where?': to-yo, wo-yo and mi-yo. The difference between the three parallels the difference between the corresponding demonstratives. Mi-yo is used adverbially, while wo-yo and to-yo are normally used to question the locational object of verbs, with the distinguishing feature between these two being the degree of specificity:

Other question words are awiya 'who?', r-awiya 'whose?', p-awiya 'what?', tiya 'how much/many?' and titiya 'when?'.

Nouns can be derived from verbs using the prefix po- (which can be a standalone word meaning "thing"): -iit 'eat' -> poiit 'food', hren 'sit' -> pohren 'chair', -kah 'burn' -> pokah 'garden', kom 'write' -> pokom 'pen'. If forming an agent noun, the verb will then also take the person prefix m- (provided its phonological form allows it): afit 'bite' -> pomafit 'mosquito' (lit. 'thing that bites'), haf 'pregnant' -> pomhaf 'pumpkin' (lit. 'thing that is pregnant').

Compound nouns can be formed of either noun + noun, or noun + verb. In both cases, the second element modifies the first one, for example fane rapuoh, a compound of fane 'pig' and rapuoh 'forest', means wild pig, which is a kind of pig. A compound noun is phonologically a single word, but each of the two elements retains its stress (unless this would result in two consecutive stressed syllables, in which case the stress of the first element is moved to the left), with the stress on the second element becoming the main stress of the compound.

Inalienably possessed nouns are the nouns for body parts (like "head", "root" etc.), kinship terms ("father", "wife" etc.), and ( m-aom 'outside', m-asuf 'middle', etc.). Such nouns obligatorily take a pronominal prefix, which agrees in person with the possessor; if the possessor is explicitly stated, then it precedes the possessed noun. For alienable nouns, on the other hand, the possessor follows the possessed noun, which does not feature a pronominal prefix but instead takes the possessive marker ro. An inalienably possessed construction can itself be embedded in another possessed construction:

head noun + adjectival verb + numeral or quantifying verb + demonstrative

A numeral can be preceded by a classifier, whose use is optional and does not affect the meaning of the noun phrase. Classifiers agree in person with the head noun.

There are four classifiers: -ana 'head' (a general classifier that is most commonly used for humans and animates), -akan 'seed/stone' (for seeds and fruit), m-ake 'fruit' (for fruit), and -ata 'leaf' (for money/banknotes). A similar use is made of the noun yu 'bag' when giving the quantity of uncountables:

Quantifying verbs include verbs like waro 'little' and -siar 'many'. There are several verbs that correspond to the English "everyone/everything", these include: -kak 'absolutely everything/everyone', pria(n) 'everyone/everything', -tut 'everyone/everything' (for small groups), and wisau 'everyone/everything' (for large groups).

Last in the noun phrase comes the demonstrative:

Verbs can be either intransitive (taking a single argument, a subject) or transitive (taking two arguments: a subject and an object). A subclass of intransitive verbs carry out functions for which languages like English use adjectives. Such 'adjectival' verbs can function both as predicates ("The book is red") and as attributes ("the red book"):

Clauses show a single intonation contour, which involves a rise in pitch on the stressed syllable of the last vowel in the clause, and a subsequent sharp drop.

Because verbs take obligatory person prefixes, there is no need for a subject to be explicitly given if it is readily identifiable from the context. Thus, sentences consisting solely of a verb (with a person prefix) are acceptable:

If expressed, the subject precedes the verb, while an object follows the verb. Thus, Maybrat has a rigid SVO word order.

The object can also be omitted if it can easily be inferred from the context:

An object can be given more Topicalisation by Left dislocation it to the start of the clause. The object then has an intonation contour of its own and it is separated from the rest of the clause by a pause:

for time are placed before the verb, and if there is a subject they can either precede or follow it:

All other types of adverbials (for manner, location, etc.) follow the verb:

In common with other languages of the region, Maybrat expresses negation by a clause-final particle. This particle is fe, whose typical use is given in the first example below. But fe can also function as a verb and take a person prefix, as in the second example. These two uses of fe can have different meanings, but the distinction between the two is not consistently maintained.

Questions have the same intonation pattern as other sentence types; this is in contrast to many other languages, like English, where questions typically have a high or rising pitch. Yes/No questions are formed by the addition of a at the end of the clause:

Content questions feature a question word replacing whatever part of the clause information is being sought for:

There is a cline between typical verbs on the one hand and typical prepositions on the other. The four "prepositional verbs" of Maybrat each fall on different points along this cline and possess different combinations of verbal or prepositional characteristics. One typically verbal characteristic is the ability to serve as the main verb of a clause: -ae 'at' alone among these four can function as the main verb of a clause. Another verbal characteristic is the ability to show agreement with the subject of the clause. In this respect, the two verbs -kit 'towards' and -pat 'from' are more verbal in that they always take person prefixes agreeing with the subject; this contrasts both with -kah 'with/to/for', which always takes only the unmarked third-person prefix m- regardless of the subject, and with -ae, which may follow either pattern. These four verbs also differ in the extent to which their objects can be extracted into relative clauses.

A similar construction involving the verbs -o 'take' and -e 'give' is available to express the meaning of 'giving something to someone; such a construction is necessary because verbs in Maybrat can only take two arguments (a subject and an object) and so -e 'give' on its own cannot take arguments for both the object given and the person who received it:

Disjunction ('either, or') can be expressed with the negator fe. Subordinate clauses for purpose or cause are introduced with re 'in order to', mi 'so that', or ke 'because':

A relative clause is introduced by the relativiser ro: this is the same particle as the one used in possessive constructions (see above), and it may be related to the demonstrative re-.

Similar constructions are available for several kinds of subordinate adverbial clauses. Temporal adverbial clauses are introduced by um ro (lit. 'the moment when') or kine wo (lit. 'the time when') – the difference between these two relativisers parallels the difference between the related demonstrative prefixes re- (specific, can be pinpointed) and we- (non-specific).

Adverbial clauses for manner are introduced with fi-re, where fi- is the demonstrative prefix meaning "similar to". The marker for locative adverbial clauses can be one of wo, wo-yo or wo-re, without an apparent difference in meaning. An example of a locative clause:

A style figure common in narratives is tail-head linkage, where the last predicate of one sentence is repeated at the start of the next one:

• William U. Brown (1991). 085883393X, Dept. of Linguistics, Australian National University. 085883393X
• Philomena Hedwig Dol (1998). 9789042006447, Rodopi. ISBN 9789042006447
• Philomena Hedwig Dol (2025). 9780858835733, Australian National University. ISBN 9780858835733
• William A. Foley (2025). 9783110295252, De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 9783110295252
• Nancy E. Gratton (1991). 9780816118090, G.K. Hall. ISBN 9780816118090
• (2025). 9783110295252, De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 9783110295252
• Ger Reesink (2025). 9780858835627, Pacific Linguistics. ISBN 9780858835627

• Contains a Maybrat story along with interlinear glosses and a translation.

• An open access collection of Mai Brat language (CVL1) at Paradisec (requires registration)
• A wordlist at the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database (the more fragmentary list at TransNewGuinea.org includes items from the Karon Dori dialect)