Mpur language

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Mpur is a language isolate spoken by the Mpur people in Mpur and Amberbaken Districts, Tambrauw Regency, on the Bird’s Head Peninsula of New Guinea. It is also known as Amberbaken, Kebar, Ekware, and Dekwambre. About 5,000 people spoke it in 2002. The language is not closely related to others, though some scholars once linked it to West Papuan languages; today it is generally treated as an isolate. The Mpur people live in Kebar, Kebar Timur, Manekar, Amberbaken, Mubrani, and Senopi districts, with villages such as Akmuri, Nekori, Ibuanari, Atai, Anjai, Jandurau, Ajami, Inam, Senopi, Asiti, Wausin, and Afrawi. Mpur has five vowels: /a, e, i, o, u/. It features a complex tonal system with four lexical tones plus a fifth contour tone formed by combining two tones. This tone system is somewhat similar to nearby Austronesian languages like Mor and Ma’ya; the neighboring language isolate Abun is also tonal. Basic vocabulary and linguistic details have been documented in studies such as Miedema & Welling (1985).