Menggwa Dla is a Papuan language spoken in Sandaun Province of Papua New Guinea and Kabupaten Jayapura of Papua Province, Indonesia. Menggwa Dla is a dialect of the Dla language; together with its sister language Anggor (e.g. Litteral 1980), the two languages form the Senagi language family, one of the small Papuan language families found in North-Central New Guinea. The main text of this thesis is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the linguistic, cultural and political landscapes of the Indonesia-Papua New Guinea border area where the Dla territory is located. Chapter 2 introduces the phonology of Menggwa Dla; described in this chapter are the phonemes, allophonic variations, phonotactics, morpho-phonological processes, stress assignment and intonation of the language. The inventory of phonemes in Menggwa is average for a Papuan language (15 consonants and 5 vowels). The vast majority of syllables come in the shape of V, CV or C1C2V where C2 can be /n/ /r/ /l/ /j/ or /w/. In C1C2V syllables, the sonority rises from C1 to V (§2.2.2). Nevertheless, there are a few words with word-medial consonant sequences like ft /ɸt/, lk /lk/, lf /lɸ/ or lk /lk/ where the sonority drops from the first to the second consonant; the first consonant in these sequences is analysed as the coda of the previous syllable (§2.2.3). Chapter 3 is an overview of the word classes in Menggwa Dla; the morphological, syntactic and semantic properties of the three major word classes (nouns, adjectives and verbs) and the minor word classes are compared in this chapter. Chapter 4 describes the properties of nouns and noun phrases; the person-number-gender categories, noun-phrasal syntax, nominal clitics and personal pronouns are outlined in this chapter. Menggwa Dla has a rich array of case, topic and focus markers which comes in the form of clitics (§4.5). Subject pronouns ('citation pronouns') only mark person (i.e. one for each of the three perso
